Incidents in which unarmed apparently mentally ill people are killed by police are a major factor driving the public’s negative perception of law enforcement, and many police departments are responding with increased training to try and prevent future deaths. 

Recent statistics are difficult to find, but there have been numerous reports of individual cases. 

In December, for example, Guillermo Medina, who was reportedly having a mental health crisis, was shot by Culver City, California, police responding to a call regarding a domestic violence incident in which he was allegedly threatening his wife with a gun, according to news reports. Mr. Medina was unarmed. 

His family later filed a lawsuit against the police department.

“Many cities are trying to bring in social workers as well as mental health professionals to work with their police force to respond in cases where there’s somebody” experiencing a mental health crisis, said Sandra McFarland, New York-based senior vice president in Marsh LLC’s U.S. public entity casualty placement practice. 

Issues surrounding police in general and access to mental health services bleed together and the increase in the frequency in which police officers encounter such situations, whether individuals are armed or not, increases their exposure if an incident occurs, said Adam Miholic, Chicago-based consultant, global captive solutions, for Hylant Group Inc. 

Insurers want information about police departments’ mental health procedures, including training in de-escalation techniques, said Lindsay Cunningham, Seattle-based North American public sector and education industry division leader for Willis Towers Watson PLC. 

“We all like to believe that someone could talk a mentally ill person into submitting to authority, but that’s not always the case,” said Mark Dillard, president of Richardson-based Public Risk Underwriters of Texas.

Steps to address this issue are being taken, experts say.

“Departments are doing a better job of de-escalating the situation” and are more aware of the need to delay a forced entry or wait for mental health support, Mr. Dillard said. 

Tom Kulhawik, who retired as police chief of Norwalk, Connecticut, in January, said Norwalk’s and other departments have embedded social workers. 

“We have seen a real turn” toward social workers assisting the police departments in this area, said Mr. Kulhawik, who is now Stamford, Connecticut-based Northeast regional program manager for the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. 

Many departments, especially in California, require police officers to take a 40-hour course in crisis intervention training, said Howard Jordan, Oakland, California-based consultant with Sloan Sakai Yeung & Wang LLP, who is a former Oakland police chief. 

Some departments have taken a step further and designated certain officers as risk response team officers who respond to calls when it is believed there is a mental health crisis, he said. 

Police officers are required to notify supervisors and request the team’s assistance to help resolve the situation without force. 

“It’s been effective,” Mr. Jordan said. It gives police departments “more tools to address something they’re not really trained to do,” he said.

Mr. Jordan said police departments that have embraced this approach have seen improvements, although he acknowledged not everyone is “really enthusiastic” or “is really going to do a good job.” 

One tool increasingly used by police in their encounters with the public is body cameras, experts say. 

In some cases, the cameras can help exonerate the police, but in other cases that footage can provide evidence for plaintiffs, Mr. Dillard said. 

“But the body-worn cameras are absolutely a net positive,” he said.

“They can also serve to dramatize just how dangerous the job can be,” Mr. Dillard said. 

Body cameras are very helpful, said Keith Hummel, Camden, New Jersey-based associate director at J.A. Montgomery Risk Control, who works with Parsippany-based Municipal Excess Liability Joint Insurance Fund in New Jersey. New Jersey mandates that police use body cameras. 

“They cut down on the number of complaints and people can see what the officers are actually dealing with,” said Mr. Hummel, who is a retired chief of police of Vorhees, New Jersey.