Ismaaiyl Brinsley, the man who killed two New York City police officers execution style before taking his own life, struggled with unaddressed mental health issues while building a lengthy criminal record that included convictions for violent acts against women, according to court records and family members’ accounts.
This new information counts among the evidence authorities have collected in the days since Brinsley opened fire on Officers Rafaeal Ramos and Wenjian Liu as they sat in their patrol car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Civil rights leaders, lawmakers, activists, and law enforcement officials have decried the acts of violence that have taken place amid the peaceful protests of police killings of young men of color across the country.
“I condemn [Saturday’s] senseless shooting of two New York City police officers in the strongest possible terms. This was an unspeakable act of barbarism, and I was deeply saddened to hear of the loss of these two brave officers in the line of duty,” Attorney General Eric Holder wrote in a statement on Saturday.
Some police union leaders have placed blame on the ongoing protests against police violence in Ferguson and New York. But the facts emerging about Brinsley’s fragile mental state, criminal history, and the circumstances leading up to his brutal acts on Saturday bear a similarity to the cases of Adam Lanza, Elliott Rodger, and others who have carried out acts of violence against women before killing other people.
Hours before killing the NYPD officers, Brinsley shot his girlfriend in the wee hours of the morning after entering her Maryland home with a key he was not supposed to have. The sequence of events characterize a significant number of mass shootings, according to an analysis by Everytown for Gun Safety, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun violence prevention group. That study found that at least 57 percent of mass shootings that took place between 2009 and 2014 followed acts of violence against significant others or family members.
Even if domestic violence doesn’t escalate into a mass shooting, it is often deadly for victims. According to the CDC, more than 50 percent of female homicides happen because of intimate partner violence. When violent spouses involve guns in disputes, a woman’s chances of being murdered more than quadruples. Current laws have done little to protect women against their potential abusers with narrow definitions that exclude women who cohabitate or share a child with their violent significant other from protection.
The incident in Baltimore County this past weekend wasn’t the first time that Brinsley had been documented committing violence against women. In 2011, he shot a woman’s car with a stolen .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun in Atlanta. While entering a plea bargain for that charge, Brinsley revealed that he had received some mental health treatment, the specifics of which have not been disclosed.
It usually doesn’t end well for the mentally ill who come into contact with the justice system. While under a psychotic or delusional state, they may commit acts that warrant police intervention — but law enforcement officials may worsen matters by punishing offenders for a violent act, rather than getting to the root of the unaddressed mental ailment that caused it. That’s why the mentally ill population in prisons has swelled to ten times that of local psychiatric facilities.
Police officers also receive little training in interacting with the mentally ill. According to a study conducted by the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, the mentally ill count among the more than half of the 350 to 500 people shot and killed by law enforcement officials every year. In most cases, the state attorney’s office justified the killings, most likely touching on the actions of the mentally ill suspect in their reasoning.
Though law enforcement officials tried to help Brinsley, they lost track of him shortly after sentencing him to probation in 2011. He stopped reporting to his probation supervisor and failed to undergo court-ordered screenings from anger issues and drug and alcohol abuse, but remained active on social media, expressing anger toward the government and police. He attempted suicide last year.
In railing against the establishment, Brinsley still showed signs that he may have been struggling with his mental health, as shown in his expressions of “anger” and “self-despair.” Those negative feelings would continue to haunt him in his last moments as he alluded to the shame that his criminal past brought him in his final Facebook post:” I Always Wanted to Be Known for Doing Something Right but My Past Is Stalking Me and My Present Is Haunting Me.”