AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine's Deadly Force Review Panel released its third annual report on Tuesday about incidents police officers responded to.
Of the 20 cases the panel reviewed since it launched in 2019, all of the incidents involved white men who had weapons "at hand."
In 63 percent of those cases, the men used those weapons during the incidents. A total of 26 percent of them were legally prohibited from possessing firearms at the time.
The panel's job is to make sure officers followed best practices, and recommend ways officers can improve in future incidents.
The report also found the men police responded to tended to have a history of violence. A total of 80 percent had criminal histories and 47 percent involved domestic violence. In 84 percent of cases, families, friends, or neighbors described the men as violent.
One of the trends the panel noted was the pervasive issue of mental health going untreated: 74 percent were in a mental crisis or experiencing suicidal thoughts, and 47 percent of those were also using substances like drugs or alcohol.
Half were living in isolated, rural locations of Maine.
The panel made a few recommendations:
1. Develop a form to take potentially dangerous people into protective custody. Biddeford and Saco Police departments have one that they use which the panel referenced in the report.
2. Expand education and information regarding the use of protective custody to prevent dangerous individuals from accessing firearms.
A total of 79 percent of deadly force incidents in total, and 71 percent of mental health-related deadly force incidents, involved a firearm.
The Panel noted the second recommendation is difficult to achieve right now.
"The current process to prevent dangerous individuals from accessing firearms requires law enforcement to take a person into protective custody and have that person assessed by a medical practitioner to determine whether the individual presents a 'likelihood of foreseeable harm.' If the assessment is affirmative, law enforcement then seeks judicial endorsement of an initial weapons restriction. The Panel understands that the protection of substantial threat statute is not being used on a regular and responsive basis often because of the lack of an available medical practitioner to complete an assessment," the report said.
Panel Chair and Executive Director of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence Francine Garland Stark told NEWS CENTER Maine, "We need to expand medical professionals' knowledge and confidence in using the state statute, and get them appropriately trained."
She said the lack of mental health treatment often leads to situations that no one, not even the officers, want to end up in.
The panel noted that the time for the Maine Attorney General to rule on whether an officer's use of deadly force was justified or not has decreased since the panel started its work.
The cases that the panel reviewed when the incident occurred before 2019 took an average of 28 months from the date of the incident to the issuance of the AG Report. In 2019, the time decreased to 27 months. Since the beginning of 2020, cases took an average of 11 months from the date of the incident to the issuance of the AG Report.