Natasha McKenna, a 37-year-old Fairfax County, Virginia woman suffering from mental illness, died in jail after being tasered by police.
The NAACP has a point that tasers should not be allowed to be used on mentally ill people, but the real issue is why Natasha was in jail and not in a treatment facility. The mentally ill have no place in jails because they need care, not incarceration. Across the nation, our prison system is the main provider of mental health care. A prison is no place for a person with mental illness.