A spate of high-profile police shootings in the last year have drawn attention to the way police respond to people dealing with mental illness.

Until recently, that response was arrest first, and ask questions later. But as Rhode Island Public Radio’s Kristin Espeland Gourlay (@kristingourlay) reports, a rising number of police departments around the country are re-thinking the way they handle these crises.

This story comes via the New England News Collaborative.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

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