Kristiana Coignard.  

© In Loving Memory of  




Kristiana Coignard Facebook photo Kristiana 




Coignard. Just after sunset last Thursday, 




17-year-old Kristiana Coignard entered a police 




station in Longview, Texas, a small city two hours 





east of Dallas with a history of police violence not 




all that different from the rest of the United States 




– but no less mysterious.




Coignard picked up a red, wall-mounted phone in 




the police department lobby and asked to speak 




with an officer – for reasons that also remain 



unclear.





The teenager may have been “wielding a knife”,  



according to the mayor. Police say “they were 





confronted by a white female who threatened 





them” – after which she brandished some sort of 



weapon, “made threatening movements toward 



the 




officers and was shot”. Motives on either side are 




still relatively unknown.




What is clear, nearly a week later in Texas and six 




months after police killings and community 



relations starting coming under renewed scrutiny 




across the US, is that another teenager has died 




after being shot “multiple times” by local cops. 





Three officers are on paid leave, the Longview 




police told the Guardian. A preliminary autopsy 




report has ruled the death a homicide.






And in the case of Kristiana Coignard, as in what 




advocates and sheriffs agree constitute more than 




half of US police killings each year, the victim 




appears to have had mental health problems.




Call it “justifiable homicide”: FBI statistics 




counted 461 encounters between police and those 




they killed with the threat of violence in 2013. 




Some have dubbed it “suicide-by-cop”, as about 




one-third of such cases can be classified – in 




addition to undoubtedly many more undercounted 




deaths. The hacktivist collective Anonymous 




prefers “trained to kill”.






Whatever you call the overlapping patterns of 



police violence and brief encounters with young 



and possibly unstable citizens, mental health 



advocates insist the United States is “not keeping 



track”.




“We’ve deputised America’s police to be mental 




health workers,” Doris A Fuller, executive 




director 





of the Treatment Advocacy Center, told the 





Guardian. “We’re asking cops to make a split-





second decision about whether someone is 




actually a threat to them.”




On a Facebook page for the Longview police, a 



user claiming to be Coignard’s uncle wrote that 





“for quite a few years my niece suffered from 



mental illness”.





The teenager was taking medication, seeing a 





therapist and living with her aunt, Heather 





Robertson, according to an interview with 




Robertson at ThinkProgress. She told the website 





that Coignard had struggled with depression and 




bipolar disorder since her mother’s death when 




she 





was four years old. Robertson said her niece had 





been “only violent with herself”.






“I think it was a cry for help,” Robertson said of 




the incident in the police department lobby. “I 






think they could have done something. They are 





grown men. I think there is something they are 




not telling us.”



There is video of the killing, Coignard’s aunt said 


 

the police told her.






A Longview police spokesperson, Kristie Brian, 








told the Guardian there are currently no plans to 








make footage available to the public. She declined 






to confirm the type of weapon Coignard allegedly 






brandished but said the department expects to 


 

release more details about the shooting later this 








week. The Texas Ranger Division is investigating 




the incident.





Brian said Longview officers “are trained in all 






kinds of different situations”, including dealing 







with people with mental health problems, and that 






the county has a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT), 




which sees specially trained officers dispatched to 





urgent psychiatric situations. She said she did not 





know whether the three officers currently on 

 

leave had been CIT-trained.





Signboard is the third person – and the third 


young person – shot dead by Longview police in 


less than a year. No charges were filed by a grand 



jury against three officers who killed a 



15-year-old robbery suspect during a shootout last 


March. A 23-year-old cook with a history of 


making threats  




died in August after a routine traffic stop went 





away.




Three-and-a-half hours south, in Houston, the 




2012 death of Brian Claunch had exemplified the 




potential for tragedy when police with limited 





training encounter a troubled individual in a 




pressurised situation. Though Houston has a 








widely praised CIT programme, two officers 




without that experience were called to a care 




home 



one night when Claunch, a schizophrenic, 




wheelchair-bound double amputee, started 




behaving erratically.





Police said that he grew violent and cornered an 





officer while waving a shiny object in their 





direction. Matthew Marin shot the 45-year-old in 





the head. The object proved to be a ballpoint pen. 





In June 2013, a grand jury declined to bring 




charges against the officer.



That year a police officer in Dallas was dismissed 



from his job, and indicted by a grand jury in 



2014, 



after he shot a mentally ill man who was holding 



a knife but standing still several yards away. The 



encounter lasted less than 30 seconds from the 


officers’ arrival to the gunfire.



A 2013 joint report by the Treatment Advocacy 


Center and the National Sheriffs’ Association 


found  


that while no national data is officially collected 


on fatal police shootings of the mentally ill, 


“multiple informal studies and accounts support 


the conclusion that ‘at least half of the people shot 

and killed by police each year in this country have 


mental health problems’.”





A third of “justifiable homicides”, the study 


found, could be characterised as “suicide-


by-cop”, and many victims were not taking their 


medications nor under close supervision by 



mental health agencies.



Not unlike the larger call for more reliable 


nationwide numbers to address all police killings, 


advocates say a lack of firm data leads to a 


standard of police responses to encounters with 


the mentally ill that depends on officer training 


and varies widely from department to department.



“We’re not keeping track of that, so we don’t 


really have a handle on the situation,” said the  



Treatment Advocacy Center’s Fuller, adding that 


research indicated about half the US population  


lives in counties served by CIT policing.



Ron Honberg, national director of policy and 


legal 

affairs at the National Alliance on Mental Illness,  

said his organisation has called on the US justice 



department to keep better track of deaths involving  


police and the mentally ill. Outgoing attorney 



general Eric Holder, whose replacement was 


expected

  

to pass confirmation hearings on Wednesday in 


Washington, recently called the lack of more  



comprehensive police incident data “troubling”.




Honberg said the standard police response to 


someone behaving aggressively is often to “come 


in and  



be very assertive, and that can be exactly the 


wrong way to deal with someone who may be 


having a  


serious psychiatric episode” and may have a fear 


of the authorities.


While better training and protocols are vital, he 


told the Guardian, at their core the violent 


encounters are “a manifestation of a broken 


mental health system”.



Anonymous, in a video posted on Saturday, cited 


Coignard’s death as the impetus for a new 


operation  


called Stop Lethal Force on Children.


“In 2014, we watched as police killed children 

and 


it started a army [sic] of angry Americans,” the 


group said. “This teen girl’s death just put fuel on 


that fire.”
  •  
  • In the US, the National Suicide Prevention
  •  
  •  
  •  Hotline is 1-800-273-8255 and the Trevor 
  •  
  •  
  • Project’s Lifeline is 1-866-488-7386.