Cheryl Bader was quoted in an amNewYork article about the NYPD’s neighborhood policing program following the recent shooting of Saheed Vassell, a Brooklyn man with bipolar disorder.
Fordham University School of Law professor Cheryl Bader said it’s important that community policing is conducted in a comprehensive way and noted that the NYPD’s program is still being rolled out.
“I think most of the policing that gets done in marginalized neighborhoods of color is still a patrol car response to the 911 call,” she added.
Introduced in 2015, the NYPD has launched neighborhood policing in 63 precincts and nine housing districts, with the goal of bringing the program to all 77 precincts by 2019. NCOs were introduced into the 71st Precinct, which covers Crown Heights, in 2016.
It’s not a guarantee, however, that Vassell would have lived if NCOs had responded to the scene, Bader said.
“Even if you’re familiar with someone, and know that they’re mentally ill. . .it’s hard to predict their conduct,” she said. “And so, it’s not clear to me that having more NCOs would have prevented this particular tragedy.”
Another side to Vassell’s case, according to Bader, is how the city’s criminal justice system addresses mental health issues.
“When you’re dealing with people who are mentally ill, I think the criminal justice system is very ill equipped,” Bader said.
Both Williams and Bader pointed to a lack of training across the police department when it comes to handling calls involving people with mental health problems.
“What happens is that we get the average police officer dispatched to the community, that may have some form of mental health training, but not sufficient to assess the particular situation and not provide the appropriate amount of support,” Williams said. “When you have these particular issues, police usually revert to what they were trained, and the training is usually to arrest, to stop the individual by any means necessary.”
Bader said the NYPD could benefit from a more comprehensive approach to learn from high-risk incidents after they happen.
“After that encounter, they need to go through a process of reflection and focus on what was done that escalated the process and what was done to de-escalate the process and really try to learn from reflection,” she said. “That kind of training and time to reflect is very costly and it’s an investment, but I think that’s an investment that needs to be made.”