Dr. Paul Appelbaum's Reaction in Washington Post

 "Most police officers have frequent contact with people with mental illness, but have minimal training in recognizing the symptoms and assessing when they should be taken to a clinic or emergency room for further evaluation. Perhaps the most useful intervention …  is to provide police officers with some good, basic mental health knowledge. They don't need to be trained to make diagnoses, much less to assess dangerousness (which is difficult even for psychiatrists)--merely to know when there are enough signs that something serious is wrong that further professional evaluation is warranted."
Read more:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/17/why-law-enforcement-missed-elliot-rodgers-warnings-signs/