Up to 50% of fatal encounters with law enforcement involve someone with a mental illness, a 2016 study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine estimated. And nearly 1 in 4 people fatally shot by police since 2015 had a mental illness, including a disproportionate number of people of color, according to a Washington Post database of fatal shootings by on-duty officers. There has been a growing consensus that armed officers are not the responders best-suited for mental health emergency calls after Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Black man, died in police custody in Rochester, New York, in March 2020 as he was suffering a mental health crisis.