Two years after police killed Andrew Washington during a mental health crisis and 11 months since Jersey City announced it would join the statewide mental health response program ARRIVE Together, Jersey City police officers are still meeting mental health incidents with force.
Between October 2020 and July 2025, Jersey City officers used force in at least 407 incidents against people whom they reported to be experiencing a potential mental health crisis or symptoms of a crisis, according to data the Jersey City Times obtained from a New Jersey Office of the Attorney General dataset. The force officers used in those incidents ranged from using their arms or hands on people (258 times), to using takedowns (145 times), to using pressure points (64 times), to discharging chemical weapons (10 times), according to the same data.
Jersey City has taken measures to reduce the amount of force officers use against people in mental health crises since Washington’s death, including by implementing ARRIVE Together, which pairs officers with mental health professionals to respond to mental health-related calls. But mental health-related uses of force have persisted. Despite a decrease in the average number of incidents per quarter since the city announced three force reduction measures, there have been over 50 mental health-related use of force incidents this year, according to the data. These incidents continue to lead to injuries among the people officers use force against and officers themselves…