San Jose leaders defend police following investigation on use of force against mentally impaired people

Mayor, police chief highlight strides made in crisis-intervention training and a lack of viable alternatives

SAN JOSE, Calif. — In response to a Bay Area News Group investigation that found mentally ill people are disproportionately subjected to serious force by San Jose police, city leaders defended police training while blaming broader failures in mental health services and a lack of viable alternatives that could shift the burden of dealing with people in crisis away from police.

The groundbreaking investigation, which examined more than 100 use-of-force cases in San Jose between 2014 and 2021, discovered that nearly three-quarters of those seriously injured or killed by officers were thought to be mentally ill or intoxicated. Eighty percent of the 25 fatal cases during that time period involved people with those conditions.

According to the Oct. 8 report, despite the fact that SJPD has mandated crisis-intervention training for all officers since 2017, making it the first major U.S. police department to do so, the percentage of those seriously injured by police who are mentally impaired has actually increased.

The news investigation, according to Mayor Matt Mahan, confirmed the unfair expectations placed on police officers.

“Our jails should not be turned into mental health hospitals, and our police officers should not be forced to play the role of trained clinicians,” Mahan told this news outlet. “While we strive to continuously improve our training programs, especially related to an issue as complex as mental illness, I want to make clear that the failure of California’s mental health system has put our officers in an untenable position.”

However, Raj Jayadev, co-founder of the civil-rights organization Silicon Valley De-Bug, stated that the news investigation “confirmed through data and empirical evidence what we had known anecdotally from people who have come through our doors.”

“The most vulnerable populations in the city are the most targeted and more likely to be on the receiving end of force,” Jayadev said in a telephone interview. “People who are homeless and people on the streets because of their mental-health issues and because of substance use.”

He added that the report’s findings have added resonance because it was released at a time when the city is looking to expand its police force and commit resources to keeping certain repeat offenders in jail — a policy that Jayadev argued would only perpetuate over-policing of these populations.

“At a time when you have a report showing that people with these issues have a higher likelihood of being killed or being a recipient of (police) violence, the city is investing in more police contact with these people,” said Jayadev.

In an op-ed published by this news organization, Police Chief Anthony Mata questioned the report’s emphasis on serious use-of-force cases, reiterating the department’s claim that, while the number of calls involving mental health crises has increased dramatically in recent years, the overall rate of cases involving force has decreased, including among cases involving mental health crises.

Since the implementation of mandatory crisis training in 2017, he claims that use of force in incidents resulting in an involuntary mental health hold — colloquially known as a 5150 case — has decreased by 91%, and force involving any level of psychiatric crisis has decreased by 22%.

“Even though mental health calls have increased significantly since 2014, increasing the potential number of cases that could end with violent encounters, use of force in these cases is dropping,” Mata said in a statement.

However, the figures cited by Mata and the department are limited to cases in which police were specifically called to respond to a person suffering from a mental crisis — cases in which police knew what they were getting themselves into. They do not include situations in which police initiated contact with someone they suspected was mentally ill or intoxicated, or where the person’s mental state was unknown until police arrived on the scene.

The San Jose Police Officers’ Association echoed Mata’s criticisms of the news report’s selection of cases, which was limited to those resulting in serious injury or death – the only cases required by law to be released. Police are permitted but not required to release cases in which they believe their use of force resulted in minor or no injuries, and San Jose does not release them in general.

The union also took issue with the news investigation’s decision to group cases of apparent mental illness and severe intoxication together — a methodology based on the conclusion that erratic behavior in both scenarios often presents itself similarly, and in both cases, people are in crisis.

Officers, according to union president Steve Slack, are “doing an exemplary job in improving mental health call outcomes, and no amount of cherry-picking data can change that.”

Both Mahan and Mata emphasized the need for alternative response models to divert mental health emergencies away from police responses, and the chief wrote that there is still no workable substitute for an officer responding to a mental-health call involving a serious public safety threat.

Though Mata acknowledged community-led programs and hybrid response models that pair clinicians with police officers, he noted that “they have not materialized at scale, and officers often remain the social workers of last resort,” and praised his department’s efforts in this regard.

“I won’t label it a success, but I will present it as proof of progress,” the chief of staff said.

Jayadev, whose organization is assisting in the support of civilian-led response models currently being tested in the county, agrees that there is a need for a broad shift in how the government handles mentally ill people, but sees conflicting messaging.

“You can’t have it both ways,” he pointed out. “You can’t say police should not be the responders to what is a public health issue, and also double down in investments to increase those police contacts.”