As many as 20 percent of police calls involve a mental health crisis, and in recent weeks, many of these calls have turned deadly in Massachusetts.
A 32-year-old woman was fatally shot by police in Northfield, New Hampshire, in early April. Police said they responded to a domestic disturbance and that the woman was armed with a knife. That same weekend, police exchanged gunfire with a 38-year-old man in Raymond, New Hampshire, before investigators say the man killed himself. His brother told WBZ-TV he had a lengthy history of mental health issues. In Boston, on the same weekend, officers shot and killed a man in the Fenway neighborhood after police say the man attacked first responders with a sword.
WBZ-TV reached out to researchers at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center to see if there is any trend behind the rash of shootings and if there is a link between police shootings and mental health crises.
Data on police involved shootings
The first hurdle was finding accurate data. The FBI collects data on police involved shootings, but relies on individual police departments to report them.
The Harvard Injury Control Research Center collects some data from a Washington Post database of fatal police shootings since Massachusetts does not track officer-involved shootings statewide. According to the most recent data available from the Post, the state had two fatal police shootings in 2024. In 2023 and 2022, there were five fatal police shootings in both years.
WBZ-TV graphic.
CBS Boston
The New Hampshire Attorney General’s office does collect data on both fatal and non-fatal police involved shootings. According to the office, there have been three police involved shootings in the Granite State in 2026 so far, there were nine in 2025, and nine in 2024.
WBZ-TV graphic.
CBS Boston
There is no clear increase or decrease in police-involved shootings in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Dr. David Hemenway, the Director of the Injury Control Research Center, says he can point to one clear trend in the data: that is the correlation between the availability of firearms and the number of police involved shootings.
“States with weak gun laws have lots of guns, and that’s where police get killed. Similarly, those states are the same places where police are killing,” said Professor David Hemenway. “Northern New England, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, if you are a resident there, you are something like more than five times as likely next year to be killed by a police officer.”
He showed WBZ-TV that there is a correlation between the prevalence of guns and police killings. Fischer explained that 12 percent of fatal police shootings in the United States were while they were responding to a behavioral health call.
Injury Control Researcher, Sam Fischer, is close to publishing data about the data related to police involved shootings and suspects experiencing mental health crises.
“12% percent of fatal police shootings in the U.S. at that time were in response to a behavioral health call,” Fischer told WBZ.
Fischer said it’s tough to say if police are responding to more mental health crises in recent years, but it would not be surprising.
“I think broadly speaking, the U.S. went through a de-institutionalization period in the 70s, 80s, and even into the 90s and transitioned to community-based care models for intense mental health,” Fischer said, “I could understand that argument in saying that police are increasingly becoming front-line mental health workers.”
Training to deal with mental health cases
Despite hard data, some law enforcement officials are approaching mental crises from a different angle.
Retired New Hampshire Police Colonel Russell Conte teaches Crisis Intervention Training to officers in New Hampshire. He explained that the focus is now on strategies that prevent police involved violence. Troopers now participate in Crisis Intervention Training (CIT), a program about building trust and a network of advocates and clinicians to help people with mental illnesses before, during, and after they encounter police.
“It starts off with you talking to someone like they’re a human being,” Conte said. “We have opened ourselves up to an awareness of this, which is why CIT exists and why we’re going upstream.”
If you or someone you know needs mental health help, you can contact the National Alliance of Mental Health by visiting namimass.org or calling 627-580-8541.
More from CBS News