The federal government came under fire this year from activists, media outlets, and officials for not keeping a comprehensive database that tracks the number of fatal law enforcement encounters in the U.S. Mentally ill adults who were shot and killed by police, according to a new report.

One in every four fatal police encounters involves an adult with untreated, severe mental illness, according to an analysis published Thursday by the Treatment Advocacy Coalition, a nonprofit focused on mental illness.

The report’s authors analyzed the data that does exist—a combination of anecdotal reports collected by citizens, FBI data, and data culled by news organizations.

In October, following years of criticism, federal officials from the FBI and the Department of Justice said they would create comprehensive programs to track police shootings of civilians. Based on the numbers that are available until those resources are created, the authors suggest that specifically focusing on reducing encounters between law enforcement and people with severe mental illness could be “the single most immediate, practical strategy for reducing fatal police shootings in the United States.”

It’s a problem that seeks an urgent solution: This year alone, a project by The Guardian has tracked fatal police shootings of 1,063 civilians. Of those people, 207 were unarmed. Mentally ill people are especially vulnerable to these encounters, in part because police are not trained to act as mental health practitioners, and because treatment for the mentally ill is lacking, according to the report.

“What we need to do is treat the person before the police are ever called,” report coauthor John Snook told USA Today. “This is a mental illness, but we respond by calling the police and arresting a person.”

The report’s authors, as well as other advocates, refer to this as the criminalization of mental illness, and it’s the same factor that results in one in every five prison and jail inmates having a severe untreated mental illness. One of the best ways to address the problem, according to the report, is to prevent people with mental illness from deteriorating to the point that the police are called. This could be achieved by increasing the number of hospital beds available to chronic psychiatric patients, and expanding the use of outpatient treatment for individuals who have frequent contact with law enforcement, the report says.

More than 2,800 police departments in 46 states have implemented Crisis Intervention Training programs that partner mental health practitioners with police to better prepare them for these encounters, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Still, more than 10,000 other police departments don’t use such programs.

To bridge the gap, the report’s authors say mandating the collection of data on police shootings, and on the status of mentally ill adults in general, is a crucial step. If policy makers can better identify the role of mental illness in police shootings, they will be better equipped to make funding decisions that support the mentally ill, relieve police of a role they aren’t outfitted for, and save taxpayer money.

By Rebeca McCray for takepart.com

It is unclear yet what led to the shooting, but police sources claim the Los Angeles woman was armed with a knife. Eyewitnesses, however, say the woman, who was homeless, did not have a knife.

The LA Police Department (LAPD) says officers responded to a call of an armed woman at 22nd and San Pedro streets around 9:30 a.m. on Sunday.

Paramedics were sent to the area at 9:42 a.m. and rushed the woman to a nearby hospital, where she died.

One of the two LAPD officers involved in the incident is a training officer while the other is a probationary officer.

Both are being placed on administrative leave as is standard protocol after any officer-involved shooting.

On Wednesday, a police officer in the US state of Maryland fatally shot an unarmed 19-year-old African American man as he allegedly tried to purchase narcotic medicine with a fake prescription.

Also, a video shot the same day showed US police officers fatally shooting a paralyzed black man in wheelchair in the State of Delaware.

The latest killings come amid growing sentiments against police violence against unarmed African-Americans in the past year.

Protests and riots have occurred across the US against police brutality and racial injustice since last summer.

Nearly 900 people have been killed by police since the beginning of 2015, according to data collected by an activist group known as Killed by Police.

“We see it every day, in the news and in the media, confrontations between people with mental illness and authorities,” the narrator begins as a crying woman is seen strapped to a gurney in a jail surrounded by a half-dozen police. The scene shifts to a city sidewalk where police surround and beat a man. “Or people with mental health issues find themselves being run into a dysfunctional prison system without getting the appropriate care.”

That is the start of a new short video series by Brave New Films, This is Crazy: Criminalizing Mental Illness, that underscores a somber and overlooked reality: that police and jails, not trained social workers and treatment, are America’s frontline with the untreated mentally ill.

“More than half of all suspects shot and killed by police were suffering from mental illness—this is crazy,” said Robert Greenwald, president of Brave New Films. “Over 300,000 Americans in prison today have a mental illness diagnosis… This three-part series calls on the critical and immediate need for the treatment of mental health through a public health system, not the barbaric criminalization of it.”

The series opens by focusing on what happens when law enforcement is not trained to recognize and deal with people with mental illness. It underscores that training police officers in crisis intervention is the most cost-effective solution. But most departments don’t use it.

“In the worst cases, these encounters end in tragedy,” the narrator continues, as a Black man who has been shot in the back lies on the ground, badly bleeding. “Or people with mental health issues find themselves run into a dysfunctional prison system.”

The film continues with the story of Becky, a Black woman who tells her story of unexpectedly slipping into mental illness, starting with hearing voices and other auditory hallucinations. She recounts losing control, threatening a woman she didn’t know, and was charged with felony harassment and jailed. A month after she was released, she tried to commit suicide. Becky soberly tells the camera that all she needed was treatment for her illness, including taking medication.

But as the filmmakers note, there are more than 356,000 people with mental illness in jails and prison across the country, versus 35,000 in state hospitals. The jailed and imprisoned might consider themselves lucky in a macabre sense, because as the film continues viewers see a stream of TV news reports where police killed mentally ill people.

The solution, the film’s on-camera experts say, is training police to take control of difficult situations without resorting to violence—such as knowing how to identify people who are mentally ill, how to talk to them without escalating to a confrontation, and calming a situation so the ill person can get help at a treatment center and not a jail.

As the film points out, police have become the most frequent first responders to untreated mental illness. “More than half of all suspects shot and killed by police suffered from mental illness,” it notes, adding that treatment programs cost a fraction of jailing a person.

But, as New York City psychologist Dr. Sahar Khoshakhlagh—who was accidentally hit in Times Square when police shot at a mentally ill man—told the filmmakers, “because the NYPD have not had the training to work with people with mental illness, they can’t differentiate a person with mental illness with someone who’s actually trying to hurt someone.”

Meanwhile, there is no mystery about the better approach needed.

“If I had been diverted to a mental hospital, I wouldn’t have a felony on my record,” Becky said. “And I would have immediately gotten treatment. Because when I did get treatment finally, when I got medication that worked, I came out of the confusion.”

Brave New Films’ Greenwald asks viewers to post a link to the video on the various presidential candidates’ Facebook pages so “we can call on them to come out for humane police trainings, not more tasers and abuse for mentally ill people!”

Two former Marion police officers were sentenced to a combined 30 months in federal prison Monday after pleading guilty to use of excessive force in an April 2013 incident that involved the use of a Taser on a mentally handicapped woman at least eight times.

Eric Walters received 12 months and one day, and Franklin Brown received 18 months. Both men will serve three years of probation.

United States District Court Judge Bryan Harwell ruled over the sentencing. He said cases such as this compromise the integrity of law enforcement and cause the community to lose respect for good officers.

“This puts a spotlight on the bad cops as opposed to the good ones who put their life on the line every day,” Harwell said during Brown’s sentencing. “Unnecessarily Tasing someone is wrong, just wrong. … There’s no legitimate law enforcement conduct behind that.”

Walters and Franklin each pleaded guilty last October to one count of deprivation of rights under color of law for using unreasonable force, according to a release by the United States Department of Justice. The release says Walters and Brown were charged for their role in repeatedly using a Taser on a victim when she posed no threat to either officer.

According to case documents, during an arrest attempt, Walters used the Taser, which caused the victim to fall to the ground and injure her head. Once on the ground, Walters continued to use the Taser on her multiple times.

Documents state that Brown arrived at the scene a short time later and used the Taser on the victim even though restrained in handcuffs, sitting on the curb and surrounded by other officers.

Walters and Brown admitted in court there was no legitimate law enforcement purpose for repeatedly using the Taser on the victim. According to the release, they said she posed no threat to themselves or other officers on the scene.

The maximum penalties for their charges are up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Stay with the Morning News as we continue to develop the story.