Local News

Boston to pay $4.7 million settlement after police fatally shoot mentally ill man

31-year-old Terrence Coleman was suffering a mental health crisis outside his South End home in 2016 when police responded and shot him.

Hope Coleman at Moakley Federal Courthouse for a hearing on the death of Terrence Coleman, who Boston Police shot and killed in 2016. David L Ryan/Globe Staff

By Molly Farrar

March 26, 2024

1 minute to read

The City of Boston will pay more than $4 million to the mother of a Black man who was shot and killed by Boston police while suffering a mental health crisis in 2016.

Police killed Terrence Coleman, 31, at his South End home in October of 2016 after his mother Hope called 911 for an ambulance to transport him to a hospital. Coleman had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Hope filed a federal lawsuit in 2018 after local prosecutors ruled that the shooting was justified. Then-Suffolk County DA Daniel Conley’s investigation found that Terrence, wielding a 5-inch kitchen knife, was a danger to the officers and others.

Hope said in 2018 that she initially called 911 because Terrence wouldn’t come inside off their front stoop. She told 911 she didn’t want police there, but the operator said it was policy for EMTs to be accompanied by officers.

Now, about eight years after Terrence’s death, the City of Boston will pay $4.7 million in damages to his mother.

“No mother should have to witness her child killed at the hands of police and fight, the way that I have had to fight now for so many years, to gain accountability,” Hope Coleman said in a statement released by her lawyers. “Nothing can bring Terrence back, but today at least some measure of justice has been done.”

There have been an increasing number of fatalities when police respond to mental health crises, including people who are suicidal, experiencing a breakdown, or mentally ill, according to a 2023 review by the Boston Globe.

Boston city councilors have proposed efforts to redirect nonviolent or mental health calls away from police and to trained public health officials, but no changes have been made official.

“This lawsuit uncovered grave deficiencies in the readiness of Boston Police and EMS to serve persons in mental health crisis,” one of Hope’s lawyers, William Fick, said in a statement. “BPD and BEMS remain woefully unprepared to handle such situations safely.”

In 2023, Cambridge police shot and killed a 20-year-old experiencing a mental health crisis who was armed with a knife. The officer was found not criminally responsible for his death after shooting him six times.