RAEFORD, N.C. – After witnessing a shooting firsthand, a father is working to become an advocate for those suffering from mental health disorders and improving how they are treated by law enforcement.
What You Need To Know
- Father calls for increasing police de-escalation training to match mental health concerns in society
- Crisis Intervention Team training prepares officers to handle mental health calls in the field
- Fifty percent of Americans are diagnosed with a mental health disorder in their lifetime
According to the Center for Disease Control, more than half of Americans are diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their lives. Larry McRae is the father of Tavares Harrington, who was battling numerous diagnoses when he was killed by law enforcement in December in Hoke County.
“I was hollering at the cops, he’s out of his head, he doesn’t understand what y’all saying,” McRae said.
While he doesn’t dispute the officers’ account of his son having a gun in his possession while they approached, he said he doesn’t feel like officers are properly equipped to handle a mental health crisis in the field and is sharing his son’s story in the hopes of seeing change take place.
“He didn’t die in vain, I’ll make sure of that,” McRae said.
Crisis Intervention Team training provides officers the knowledge and skills to de-escalate persons in a mental crisis with the goal of using non-lethal force if possible.
“When they started shooting him, it’s like everything shut down with me,” McRae said.
The CIT program has been around since the late 1980s and was first implemented in North Carolina in 2005; however, it is not a mandatory program. By 2015, one third of law enforcement officers in North Carolina had received the 40-hour training, encompassing de-escalation role-play and ending with a use of force continuum, which covers when to use and not use less lethal weapons.
“If they would’ve shot him in the arm where he had the gun, that would’ve been OK with me, at least he would’ve been alive,” McRae said.
Spectrum News 1 reached out to the Raeford Police Department in an effort to learn more about their training and de-escalation tactics, and they said their officers do go through critical incident training, which is offered in Hoke County.
Following the shooting, both officers were placed on leave while an investigation was conducted. According to the State Bureau of Investigation, no charges have been filed, and the investigation continues.