COLUMBUS, Ohio — It’s an issue that several cities have brought to the top of their priority list: figuring out who should respond to mental health emergencies. 

And the answer isn’t always cut and dry. 

Columbus police said they responded to an incident Wednesday night where someone experiencing a mental health emergency had assaulted two people. When officers got there, they determined it was a domestic violence incident. But they couldn’t get the man to surrender, and they said after the man hit an officer in the face with a weapon, they shot and critically injured him. 

It happened just two days after city council members addressed the topic of how to respond to people who are having mental health emergencies. The City of Columbus has an alternate crisis response team in place that can respond without police. But things become a little more unclear in an incident like the one that happened Wednesday night that might need both mental health professionals and police.

Spectrum News 1 asked Policy Matters senior researcher Piet Van Lier how to determine when to involve either law enforcement or alternative crisis response programs. His main piece of advice is de-escalation.

“It’s that sort of approach of de-escalation and using techniques that prevent or at least try to deter the possibility of violence. And these are difficult situations there’s no question about that but this is an old story that’s repeated time and time again," said Van Lier. 

Along with the Columbus, other Ohio cities, like Cincinnati and Cleveland, have put programs in place to deal with mental health emergencies in a safer, less invasive way.