THE FATAL SHOOTING of David Walker two weeks ago probably had more to do with his mental illness than his race. It was obvious from the start that Walker, who was killed by Seattle police after stealing a carton of orange juice from a Queen Anne Safeway, had emotional troubles: No sane person of any color would ignore eight police officers -- armed with Glocks and shotguns -- while alternately walking slowly and skipping down the street, brandishing a knife, with a gun tucked neatly into his jeans. And to police, mental illness equals unpredictability. You can wonder all day whether Tommie Doran, a 15-year Seattle police veteran and a one-time "Officer of the Year," would have been lighter on the trigger had he been looking down his gun barrel at a white guy. But you can be reasonably sure he would have if Walker hadn't been acting so erratically.

The real question people should be asking right now is the one posed by Harriet Walden, head of Mothers for Police Accountability: "Where was the [Seattle Police Department's] CIT unit?"

CIT stands for Crisis Intervention Team. Founded in 1998, the CIT is comprised of officers who are specially trained to recognize and deal with crises involving the mentally ill. They learn techniques that apply to specific illnesses; for example, when dealing with a paranoid schizophrenic, officers always show their hands, so it's obvious they're not hiding something. The program is modeled after a similar team established 10 years earlier by the Memphis Police Department, which, before it started its CIT unit, was "justifiably" killing mentally ill people at a rate of seven per year. Once the team was established, that rate dropped to just two (albeit controversial) shootings in the past decade.

Seattle's record is nowhere near as bad as Memphis', though there have been a couple high-profile shootings of mentally ill men in the past five years. Last December, Seattle police shot and killed Thomas Morgan after a standoff outside his brother's home. Morgan had just killed his brother and his brother's wife. And in 1995, police shot and killed Antonio Silo Dunsmoor, who flashed what turned out to be a toy pistol outside the Garfield Community Center.

In Memphis, the CIT wields great authority. If, for example, a CIT officer is involved in a standoff where several other, non-CIT-trained officers are present and it turns out the suspect is mentally ill, the CIT officer can make decisions that automatically override commands from others. "Whenever a CIT officer is on the scene, he has command of the scene," says Officer Tony Kingery of the Memphis Police Department. Kingery says that, on several occasions during the CIT's life span, officers have been able to disarm mentally ill people and avoid the use of deadly force. Seattle has had success in at least one case, too: In 1997, a mentally ill man held police at bay for 11 hours on a downtown street corner with a giant sword. Police subdued him by squirting him with a fire hose. Nobody was seriously injured.

Walker wasn't so lucky. It turns out there were CIT-trained officers among the group that surrounded him as he skipped down the street; out of the estimated eight to 12 officers present, three had CIT training, according to SPD spokeswoman Pam McCammon. So why didn't the CIT officers take the lead in trying to apprehend Walker safely?

McCammon says the situation was too confusing for such intervention to occur. "We had no idea of that person's [mental] status," she says. "And at that time, you cannot guess. You have to deal with the facts that are occurring." McCammon adds, "Safety comes first, and then we use the other skills [like CIT training]. Those procedures are all dependent on the situation and the threat that a person is presenting." Walker had fired at security guards at the Safeway, McCammon notes, and he was still armed.

A television news videotape reveals the rest. When police caught up with Walker on Taylor Avenue North near John Street, he had a knife in his hand; his gun was still visible in the front of his pants. Police say they sprayed Walker with pepper spray -- though there is no videotape footage to confirm this -- but that it didn't have any effect. Surrounded by police with guns drawn, Walker continued ambling nonchalantly down the street. It was when Walker leapt vertically into the air, perhaps about to begin skipping again -- his empty hand outstretched, the knife-wielding hand curling inward -- that he was shot in the chest by a single bullet from Doran. The videotape indicates that Walker wasn't lunging at anyone, though his jump into the air did place him a few steps closer to Doran.

Helen Adamo, an advocate for the mentally ill in Memphis who works with that city's CIT, thinks Seattle police could have handled the situation differently. "I can see how [Doran] got scared and trigger-happy," she says. "But those [CIT] officers should have been in command." With their training, she says, they might have been able to talk him into giving himself up, a markedly different approach from just ordering him to surrender. Harriet Walden, like many others who saw the tape, agrees with Adamo and is sure that "something more could have been done to prevent this."

There's only one thing to do now, however: wait for the SPD and the FBI to complete their separate investigations into the shooting, and their assessments of the actions of all officers involved. Seattle Mayor Paul Schell has also assured the city's African American leaders that he will form a committee to look at the use of force by the SPD. Doran is on leave with pay.