Policing mental health crises

What can go wrong when police are the ones responding to mental health crises. And grieving virtually during the pandemic.

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The final moments of Stacy Kenny’s life are captured on a recorded 911 call. 

Kenny, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, begs an emergency operator to explain why she’s been pulled over. 

The officers – Springfield Sgt. Rick A. Lewis and Officer Kraig Akins – smash the windows on her car. They Taser her twice, punch her in the face more than a dozen times and try to pull her out by her hair. She is unarmed and restrained by her locked seatbelt.

Her life ends – as does the call – when she tries to flee by driving away with one of the officers still inside the car. He shoots her in the head.

In 2019, her death in Springfield, Ore., was one of 1,324 fatal shootings by police over the past six years that involved someone police said was in the throes of a mental health crisis. 

Investigative reporter Kimberly Kindy breaks down why such fatal shootings of people in mental health crises are on the rise in small and mid-sized cities – and what those left to live with loss, like Stacy’s parents, Barbara and Chris Kenny, hope police departments will change about how they respond to mental-health-related calls.

The pandemic has changed the way we process grief. Animator Kolin Pope and audio editor Ted Muldoon bring us a meditation on Zoom funerals. 

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