Mother Phones 911 For Help With Mentally Ill Son. Police Shoot/Kill Him Brandishing Red Broom

Reagan's Releasing The Mentally Ill From Asylums Has Left Them Worse Off
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/02/reagans-freeing-mentally-ill-from.html

Mother calls 911 for help with mentally ill son, police shoot and kill him. He had a red broom.

Sean King

Police in the United States continue to shoot and kill mentally ill people with reckless abandon. The latest victim, 25-year-old Lavall Hall of Miami, had only been released from a mental hospital for a week. His mother, struggling to care for him, called 911 for help.

"If I (knew) they (were) going to kill my child, I would have never, ever called them," she said.

Hall had recently been released from a mental health facility. Brown said police should have known about his mental illness as they had been called to his home before.

"When they left (here) they went home to their family," Hall's cousin, Walter Pinkins, told Local 10. "They (are) probably home eating, drinking (and) having a good time. But we (are) back here grieving. That's not fair."

It's despicable that American police continue to insist that shooting and killing mentally ill people is their only recourse when it just doesn't happen in developed countries around the world.

Earlier this month police shot and killed a mentally ill man who was throwing rocks and was surrendering to them.

In January, police shot and killed a mentally ill teenage girl who had been in the lobby of the police station for an hour in a cry for help.

These killings by police are many in a long line of shooting deaths of mentally ill men and women who could've been subdued and hospitalized instead of shot and killed.

Our nation must consider new policies and options on how to handle people struggling with mental illness.

See the local news story from Miami below the fold.