NYPD Sergeant Charged with the Murder of Emotionally Distressed Bronx Woman
Here is my statement in response to today's news that an NYPD Sergeant has been charged with the murder of Deborah Danner, who was fatally shot in October last year:
"The situation is a tragedy — for Deborah Danner and her loved ones and now the NYPD Sergeant, his family, and all first responders who must make life-and-death decisions.
The fact of the matter is that with better training, this situation would likely have turned out much differently.
We need more police officers who have undergone Crisis Intervention Training (CIT), an evidence-based, 40-hour program where officers learn how to properly defuse a situation with a person exhibiting emotional distress. The training has been proven to work and has been adopted in over 3,000 communities in the U.S.
We have been calling on the NYPD to train 15,000 officers. To date, approximately 2,500 have been trained. It's a start, but not enough.
If we want to prevent the Deborah Danners of the future from facing the same fate, we need to provide more police officers with this valuable training. Further, more steps should be taken to insure that officers dispatched to EDP situations are officers who have completed the CIT course."
Community Access provides housing, health, and employment services to individuals with mental health concerns. We have been a leading advocate to have the NYPD expand Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) to 15,000 police officers, 10,000 more than the current plan calls for.
