To the editor:

I am sure that most of you are aware of the shooting death of a black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., and the outrage and turmoil that has ensued.

You may have missed another story this week. Just two miles from the intersection where Michael Brown was killed, another black man was shot to death by St. Louis police. Yet, there was no outrage, rioting or protests.

What was the difference in these two incidents? In the second case, the police were quickly able to explain that the man was behaving erratically, talking to himself, i.e., he was mentally ill.

And, once again, as happens all too frequently in this country, a person with a serious mental illness does not receive the appropriate intervention, but is shot to death by police not with a community “bang” but with a “whimper.”

Within this past decade, suffering from a serious suicidal episode, I was confronted in my own garage by police with guns drawn, shouting at me to drop my knife. I guess I wasn’t as suicidal as I thought because I dropped the knife. I feel certain that had I not, I would have been shot to death.

As a person with a serious mental illness, you can only imagine how my hopes for our situation and care were raised when I heard that our local leaders are asking for more community caregivers for our mentally ill, i.e., more deputies to handle the mentally ill overload at our county jail! Is this really the best you can do Lawrence?