Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen is calling for a hearing to examine the city’s crisis response systems after three Baltimore residents died or were killed during interactions with police officers “while experiencing behavioral health crises.”
“The City Council has fought for years to increase funding for Baltimore Crisis Response Inc because we know that law enforcement alone can not be expected to solve this problem,” he wrote in a statement.
On June 17, police shot 38 times at Bilal “BJ” Abdullah, killing the well-known arabber, near the Upton Metro station after Abdullah appeared to shoot at officers chasing him. A crowd of several hundred people gathered in West Baltimore to call for justice for Abdullah after his death, while family members and loved ones held a vigil and funeral for him.
The Attorney General’s office, which investigates police-involved fatalities in Maryland, announced on June 26 that it was investigating an incident from the night of June 24 in which a man who appeared to be having a mental health crisis was restrained by officers “for the man’s own safety” after he attempted to walk into the road several times. While in handcuffs and leg restraints, the man became unresponsive. When EMS didn’t arrive within the hour, officers took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead several hours later.
On June 25, police shot and killed Pytorcarcha Brooks, a 70-year-old woman who was allegedly wielding a knife, while responding to calls about a behavioral health crisis on Mosher Street. They had responded to behavioral health calls at that address 20 times this year alone, Commissioner Richard Worley said.
BPD has a single crisis response team for the entire city, which was in Remington the day of Brooks’ death for more than 16 hours responding to a man experiencing a behavioral crisis and threatening to jump from a 13th-floor balcony, spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge said in an email.
Eldridge said that when the crisis response team receives a call while they’re responding to another one, the team members “would be briefed on both situations and a determination would be made on where they would be most needed.”
A police department spokesperson did not respond to inquiries about whether the officers responding to Mosher Street were trained in crisis response, and it’s unclear whether the officers involved in the other incidents were, either.
“Our community is still dealing with the trauma of witnessing the tragic death of Bilal Abdullah in the Upton community. And now we also have to reckon with the loss of one of our village elders being killed when what she probably needed was help,” Aaron Maybin, chair of the Baltimore City Civilian Review Board, said in a statement. “I understand that police officers have one of the most difficult jobs there is, but they need to find a way to respond to these types of situations that doesn’t end with deadly force. A 70-year-old woman with a knife should be able to be disarmed and apprehended without shots being fired.”
“I understand that police officers have one of the most difficult jobs there is, but they need to find a way to respond to these types of situations that doesn’t end with deadly force. A 70-year-old woman with a knife should be able to be disarmed and apprehended without shots being fired.”
Aaron Maybin, chair of the Baltimore City Civilian Review Board
“The most frustrating thing about both of these situations over the past couple of weeks is that neither one of them had to end with our citizens being killed.”
In a 2019 report about gaps in BPD’s crisis response system after a federal consent decree named it a problem area for the department, the Human Services Research Institute noted the low rates of crisis intervention-trained officers responding to behavioral health calls.
“It is critical that police officers be better prepared for such contacts, so that the individuals in crisis and the officers, family members, and other individuals responding to it are not at risk of further traumatization from the act of seeking help,” the report reads.
All incoming officers receive 24 hours of behavioral health training at the police academy and an annual eight hours or more of behavioral health work provided during in-service training, but CIT-trained officers become certified by attending a 40-hour specialized training in addition to an annual refresher training.
The report also noted that the city’s failure to adequately track data “hampered” the organization’s ability to thoroughly analyze responses to crises, though it was clear that the city needed to make a shift toward community-based solutions.
A February 2024 consent decree monitoring report recorded that approximately 10% of BPD patrol officers were crisis intervention trained, nowhere near the department’s goal of 30%.
In December 2024, the monitoring team reported that BPD reduced that goal to 20% of patrol officers and was meeting that, but the department was still not ensuring the presence of CIT-trained officers at behavioral crisis events. The report also found that BPD was not doing enough to interview and review potential CIT training candidates.
Police involvement in mental health crises has been heavily debated. The conversation in Baltimore comes as media reports show that, despite a decrease in violent crime nationwide, the number of people fatally shot by cops has increased every year since 2020.
Though localized data was not immediately available, multiple studies have found that any police involvement in mental health crises can do far more harm than good.
A 2021 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that “even when officers undergo training in these areas, research demonstrates that it is not effective.”
“In the United States, a police encounter with a civilian is 16 times as likely to result in that person’s death if they have an untreated mental illness as if they do not,” the study states. “Structural racism exacerbates this risk, placing Black men with mental illness at significant risk for dying from U.S. police violence. And each killing reinforces the link between Black racial identity and violent fates, worsening the mental health of Black Americans.”
“In the United States, a police encounter with a civilian is 16 times as likely to result in that person’s death if they have an untreated mental illness as if they do not.”
A 2021 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine
BPD told the monitoring team ahead of the December report that the “deficiencies” had been addressed. The consent decree monitoring team planned a re-assessment for early 2025, but it’s unclear whether that’s been conducted. The team did not respond to requests for comment.
Because this portion of the consent decree requires collaboration with other entities, the city and the Department of Justice agreed to a set of guidelines in 2023 that outline the city’s specific obligations, which include “Auditing and reviewing significant behavioral health events that resulted or nearly resulted in serious negative outcomes.”
In 2021, Baltimore launched the Behavioral Health 9-1-1 Diversion Pilot Program, which aims to avoid police involvement in behavioral health crises by diverting calls to mental health professionals.
Under the program, if a 911 operator deems that a caller is in a crisis, they can direct the caller to the 988 help line operated by trained mental health clinicians.
“The central mission of this pilot program is to match individuals to the most appropriate and available resources when they call for assistance and reduce unnecessary police encounters with people in behavioral crises,” according to the program’s website.
Available data shows that, between June 2021 and February 2025, there were 3,968 crisis calls, 18% of which were unable to be diverted. The data shows that police still had a visible presence in behavioral health matters, with police involved in 44% of all calls during this time.
Calls peaked in 2022, when there were more than 1,500 incidents reported. The number has been on the decline since, with 55 calls as of February this year.
The diversion program is ongoing, said Adrienne Breidenstine, the vice president for policy and communications at Behavioral Health System Baltimore, which partnered with the city on the program. Mobile crisis teams, which do not include police, can be deployed through the 988 help line.
Madeleine O’Neill contributed reporting.