More than a third of all police shooting cases in the City of Los Angeles last year involved mentally ill individuals, according to new data released by the Los Angeles Police Department.
The comprehensive 300-page report was released Tuesday as part of an effort to reduce use-of-force incidents involving members of the LAPD. It showed that the number of documented mentally ill individuals shot by police had nearly tripled between 2014 and 2015.
In addition, the new report revealed a disproportionate number of African Americans being shot by police. Between 2011 and 2015, 35 percent of people shot at by officers were black, despite the fact that African Americans make up just nine percent of the city's population.
Overall, officer-involved shootings in the City of Los Angeles trumped those involving the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. But use-of-force incidents still remain relatively rare, official said, accounting for less than 2,000 out of the 1.5 million interactions that occurred in 2015.
Read more about the newly-released figures here.