ARLINGTON COUNTY, Virginia — Two Officers have been hospitalized and a suspect is dead after police received at call at The Gates of Ballston apartment complex.
The suspect, an Asian male was hit in the chest after a scuffle with police. He -was -pronounced dead. The call came in as a domestic incident. A witness told WUSA reporter Peggy Fox that the man was mentally ill, schizophrenic. The report said the man was attacking the Officers when he was shot. It’s unclear if he was armed.
One of the injured Officers is in surgery after suffering a “serious facial laceration.” The other Officer was hit by a taser. Both are expected to survive.
A woman at the residence was also injured. Her condition is unknown. Ballston is a neighborhood in Arlington County, Virginia.
From TP: The U.S. Supreme Court dealt at least a partial blow to police reform advocates Monday, in a ruling that held police officers could not be sued after all for firing gunshots at a severely mentally disabled woman who threatened violence.
The decision is a loss for plaintiff Teresa Sheehan, who survived the deadly police force, and had won the right to sue in the lower courts. Studies in several cities have found that about half of police shooting victims are mentally ill, and that the mentally ill are disproportionate victims of excessive police force. Sheehan, like many of disabled police shooting victims, was shot in what started as a call to police for help.
It’s a common scenario for police interactions with the mentally ill to escalate from what starts as a call for help. Part of the problem is that the typical strategies used by officers when faced with suspects they perceive as violent can have an adverse impact on those with mental illness. Particularly in instances when police know before they arrive on the scene that a patient is suffering from mental illness — in fact is in need of police help precisely because of their mental illness — some police departments deploy special mental health crisis teams.
Photo: nbc Washington
