We’ve discussed the divide between police and the policed, but perhaps none is more pronounced than law enforcement’s handling of those with mental health issues. Dozens of times a year, someone in need of intervention or caretaking is killed by police officers who have responded to relatives, friends, or family calling for help.

911 is a dumb pipe. It will route the info to all, but it’s usually police who end up acting as first responders, even when the crisis is health-related. Any combativeness is viewed as a threat, rather than a rational response to loud, violent stimuli. If the person needing help has a criminal record (and many people with mental health issues do), the “threat” is perceived before officers even make contact. In rare cases, these “wellness checks” end peacefully and with a resolution in line with the terminology used by law enforcement.

In most cases, an arrest is involved. In many cases, the “wellness check” ends in someone’s death. Nearly 250 people suffering mental health crises were killed by officers in 2017. The story here is unique in that it didn’t end in death, a violent arrest, or something else not even roughly aligned with the idea of community caretaking. But that’s possibly due to the fact no one was home.

Shortly after Chelsea Manning posted what appeared to be two suicidal tweets on May 27, police broke into her home with their weapons drawn as if conducting a raid, in what is known as a “wellness” or “welfare check” on a person experiencing a mental health crisis. Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst turned whistleblower and U.S. Senate candidate, was not at home, but video obtained by The Intercept shows officers pointing their guns as they searched her empty apartment.

The footage, captured by a security camera, shows an officer with the Montgomery County Police Department in Bethesda, Maryland, knocking on Manning’s door. When no one responds, the officer pops the lock, and three officers enter the home with their guns drawn, while a fourth points a Taser.

Granted, some people use firearms to end their lives, but guns drawn appears to be the default response in welfare checks. Officers are operating with limited information, but that should indicate a need for both caution and de-escalation tactics, rather than responding to a third-hand account of suicidal tweets with something that could pass for a rather low-key drug bust.

The responding agency — the Montgomery County Police — appears to know this isn’t the proper response. Its first reaction when reached for comment was to accuse The Intercept of posting a possibly-unauthentic video. Police Captain Paul Starks also questioned The Intercept’s facts, asking how it knew “no one was home.”

Then he defended the guns-first approach to community caretaking.

“They don’t know what kind of circumstances they are entering when they enter a home,” Starks said, increasingly flustered. “The fact that a weapon is drawn doesn’t mean that they are going to shoot it.”

Perhaps not. But it makes it far more likely that they will use weapons, sometimes inadvertently. Unless you’re intending to kill something or someone, the guns should remain holstered. That’s just common sense, especially when multiple officers are exploring an unfamiliar space with limited information. It’s not just the person being “helped” who might end up shot. It’s other officers responding to the same call possibly startling another responder already on edge with a gun drawn.

Being a police officer in America is an astoundingly safe (in terms of risk of death, if not secure, lifelong employment) career choice. And yet, officers respond to many welfare checks as though the person in need of physical or psychiatric health is determined to Bonnie and Clyde their way through the attempted intervention. Cops are rarely killed in the line of duty — even less so by firearms — but the mentality is that every member of the general public is just dying to escalate a car stop or frisk into Murder One charges with a law enforcement sentencing enhancement tacked onto it.

The militarization of police has turned community servants into combatants despite the level of violent crime dropping precipitously over the last three decades. As public violence continues to decline, police keep amping up their response to “threats” only they can see, feel, or hear. The only sure way to make it through a wellness check alive is to be like Chelsea Manning — nowhere near the address reported by people who thought they were doing the right thing.

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