Officers confront rising number of mentally ill suspects

Thousands of officers from across the country traveled to San Jose Thursday, for veteran officer Michael Johnson’s funeral.

Johnson was shot and killed on March 24th, 2015 while responding to an apartment where a man, going through a mental crisis, put a gun to his head, threatened his wife, and threatened suicide.

Hollister Police Chief David Westrick attended the slain officer’s funeral. He said now with mental illnesses on the rise, situations like that are all too common.

“I don’t think there’s a typical bad guy anymore,” said Westrick.

Westrick has been an officer for 25 years. He said now when officers respond to a person in crisis, they have no idea what they’re getting into.

“You have to understand what’s happening prior and that’s really difficult because we’re responding to a call for help and so we have to analyze really quickly,” said Westrick.

When an officer is killed in the line of duty, the other officers often bring the stress home with them.

“One of the things we get concerned about is our law enforcement officers who have to go on these high intensity calls,” said Devon Corpus, with Monterey County Crisis Services.

Corpus is a behavioral and crisis intervention expert who helps train officers to deal with people suffering from mental illness. But she said anyone, even an officer, can suffer from a crisis situation.

“When they have witnessed a traumatic event like one of their own officers getting shot and killed right in front of them and that can stick with them,” said Corpus.

Westrick agrees. He said officers are compassionate and human just like everyone else. That was seen Thursday at Michael Johnson’s funeral.

“We’re tough and all that but we all have hearts, we all have families, so it’s was very touching,” said Westrick.