Nearly half of all people killed in encounters with police in New Jersey are experiencing mental health crises, a Kane In Your Corner investigation finds. New Jersey is currently rolling out several programs in hopes of reducing the likelihood of such incidents.

In September 2022, Myrlene Laurince called Englewood police to say her 22-year-old son, Bernard Placide, was having a mental health crisis. Body-worn cameras show that by the time police arrived, Placide had retreated to his bedroom. He was armed with a knife but was alone, posing no immediate threat to anyone but himself.

“He wasn't in front of them, going to attack him,” Myrlene Laurince says. “He was behind the door. Talk to him.”

Instead, officers ordered Placide to come out of the room. When he didn’t comply, they entered the room and stunned him with a Taser. One officer then got on the floor with Placide and tried to wrestle the knife from his hand. After a brief struggle, she fired a fatal shot. From beginning to end, the incident took less than two minutes.

A grand jury cleared the officers, but the Placide family is suing Englewood police, alleging that police needlessly escalated the situation.

“Everything was done wrong from the moment they got to the scene and started up those stairs,” says Eric Kleiner, the family’s attorney. “They pulled out their guns, cocked them, put their laser sights on, and told him they were going to shoot him. That’s so far from de-escalation, it merited an indictment.”

What happened to Bernard Placide is not uncommon. Kane In Your Corner reviewed every case in the state’s Use of Force database since it went online in October 2020 and found people with apparent mental health incidents made up a third of all police uses of force and nearly half the incidents of deadly force.

They are people like Victoria Lee, who was shot and killed in Fort Lee. Like Placide, she was armed with a knife and barricaded inside her family’s apartment. But there was a key difference: her mother was in the apartment with her.

Body-worn camera footage shows police officers breaking down the door and then fatally shooting Lee after she threw a water jug in their direction.

Kyung Yong Lee, Victoria’s father, blames the police response for his daughter’s death.

“The police officer tried to come in and that escalated my daughter's emotion,” he says.

The Lees had attempted to keep police out of the situation. When her brother called 911, he asked for an ambulance only. When a dispatcher told him police had to be dispatched in mental health cases, he tried to cancel the call, but 911 recordings show the dispatcher told him it was too late.

In August 2024, New Jersey Attorney General Matt Plakin issued a new directive, dictating how police should deal with barricaded suspects.

He said officers should “wait for appropriate resources" and "not attempt to force a resolution, unless such action is immediately necessary to prevent injury or death."

Some mental health professionals applaud the directive.

“We don't want to rush these situations,” says Matthew Camarda, with the New Jersey chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Health. “We don't want to escalate them; we want to de-escalate them and sometimes that just takes time.”

If the new guidelines had been in place in 2022, Bernard Placide might still be alive. It’s less clear if they would have helped Victoria Lee.

Because her mother was in the apartment with her, police might still have felt compelled to act. In fact, the body-worn camera captures officers having that exact discussion.

“Normally, with barricaded (suspects), we wait,” one officer can be heard saying, “but there's someone (else) in there, so we need to go.”

Some law enforcement experts say officers who respond to mental health crises are placed in nearly impossible situations.

“They have to make a split-second decision,” says Brian Higgins, a former New Jersey police chief who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Those people judging them get the luxury of the moments that the police officer doesn't get.”