Mental Illness, Police Use of Force, and Citizen Injury

• DOI: 10.1177/1098611116681480
• Date: 01 June 2017
• Published date: 01 June 2017
• Author: Michael T. Rossler,William Terrill
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Mental Illness, Police

Use of Force, and

Citizen Injury

Michael T. Rossler

1

and

William Terrill

2

Abstract

Police departments are increasingly becoming the primary entity for managing inci-

dents involving persons with mental illness, thereby leading to calls for additional

research. Drawing on a multicity use-of-force research project, the current inquiry

examines whether citizens displaying signs of mental illness are subjected to higher

levels of police use of force, and whether they are more likely to be injured, con-

trolling for a host of relevant predictors. The findings show that officers use higher

levels of force on persons with mental illness, but such citizens are not at an

enhanced risk of injury. The policy and research implications of the findings are

discussed.

Keywords

police, mental illness, use of force, injury

Police officers play a varied role in society, serving citizens in tasks ranging from

crime fighting to order maintenance to service-related functions. Increasingly,

officers are being asked to manage persons with mental illness (PMI; Borum,

Deane, Steadman, & Morrissey, 1998; Fuller, 2012; Gur, 2010; Mulvey & White,

2014). Deinstitutionalization policies coupled with a relative reduction in mental

health spending have increasingly made the police a first and last resort for issues

surrounding PMI (Mulvey & White, 2014; Teplin, 1984). Amid the shift of

mental illness from a public health problem to a demand on the police,

1

Department of Criminal Justice Sciences, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA

2

School of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Michael T. Rossler, Illinois State University, Campus Box 5250, Normal, IL 61790-0001, USA.

Email: mtrossl@ilstu.edu

Police Quarterly

2017, Vol. 20(2) 189–212

!The Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/1098611116681480

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administrators (e.g., police chiefs) are expressing concern that officers lack the

requisite experience or training to properly manage and deescalate encounters

involving PMI (Kerr, Morabito, & Watson, 2010; Martinez, 2010). Moreover,

the expansion of access to police behavior via cell phone and dashboard or body-

camera footage has brought increased attention to these concerns as well. Such

technology has led to increasing news media coverage documenting incidents

with PMI involving serious injuries and death (Al Hajal, 2014; Antlfinger, 2014;

Hallman, 2014), thereby decreasing police legitimacy while increasing civil liti-

gation (Cordner, 2006; Fyfe, 2000; Kerr et al., 2010).

To date, there has been limited empirical inquiry examining the relationship

between citizens with mental illness, use of force, and citizen injury, which has

led to calls for additional research in this area (Kaminski, Digiovanni, & Downs,

2004; Kerr et al., 2010). Moreover, policing scholars have expressed particular

interest in research that can adequately control for potential contributing factors

(e.g., citizen resistance and drug–alcohol influence), beyond mental illness, when

assessing citizen injuries (Kerr et al., 2010). Further, the limited research thus far

has been unable to consistently demonstrate whether officers are more punitive

and aggressive, or more empathetic, toward PMI (Mulvey & White, 2014;

Novak & Engel, 2005).

Drawing upon a multicity study examining officer use of force, the current

inquiry seeks to further clarify the relationship between citizens displaying signs

of mental illness, officer force levels, and citizen injury. Adding to the existing

literature, the present study uses multivariate modeling techniques to account for

the influence of citizen resistance, drug or alcohol influence, officer force level, as

well as a host of other relevant control variables. In doing so, we isolate the

effects of mental illness on citizen injury from confounding explanations, a valu-

able contribution to the policing and mental illness literature.

Literature Review

There are two primary theoretical perspectives to explain how the police may

respond to citizens displaying signs of mental illness. The first centers around

VanMaanen’s (1978) asshole description and has been used to forward the pre-

diction that officers will be more lenient and understanding toward PMI, par-

ticularly at lower levels of citizen resistance (Johnson, 2011; Mulvey & White,

2014). The basic argument offered by VanMaanen is that officers judge a person

to be an asshole (i.e., worthy of an arrest or police force) when the person is both

aware that their behavior is undesirable and able to behave in a manner other

than that which is deemed undesirable by police. Johnson (2011) argues that

because PMI are viewed by officers as not having control of their behavior (i.e.,

mental illness prevents behaving in a manner deemed appropriate) that officers

may show leniency for PMI compared with those without mental illness. Thus,

lower levels of force are used and injury is less likely in incidents involving PMI.

190 Police Quarterly 20(2)