Aamer Madhani , USA
Police departments and
policymakers around the country are grappling with how to bolster training for
cops on mental health issues in the midst of a string of high-profile fatal
incidents involving suspects believed to be in the throes of mental breakdowns.
The current debate on policing in
America has largely focused on whether inherent racial bias has led to police
disproportionately using deadly force against African-Americans.
But long simmering on the back
burner is the struggle for police departments to deal with the eye-popping
number of deadly incidents that involve people with mental health issues, law
enforcement and mental health experts says. A study by the Virginia-based
Treatment Advocacy Center published last year found that people with mental
illness are 16 times more likely than others to be killed by police, while
theNational Alliance on Mental Illness estimates 15% of men and 30% women
annually booked at U.S. jails have mental health problems.
“What departments are going
through right now is nothing short of a cultural revolution,” said Peter
Scharf, a criminologist at the LSU School of Public Health and Justice.
"Jails have become the alms house of this generation and police have
become the first responders to the mentally ill."
The issue of mental illness and
policing was drawn back into the spotlight after police in El Cajon, Calif., on
Sept. 27 fatally shot Alfred Olango, 38, an unarmed man who was killed after
his sister says she called police for help because he was in the midst of a
mental health crisis. Olango's sister, who has not been identified, says she
told police that Olango did not have a weapon.
Police in the San Diego suburb
said officers fatally shot Olango only after he rapidly pulled an object from
his waistband and took what was described as a “shooting stance.” After
shooting him, police discovered the object that Olango drew from his pants was
a vape device.
The Olango shooting came days
after the controversial police-involved shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in
Charlotte in which his wife can be heard on a cellphone video telling police
officers that Scott suffered a traumatic brain injury moments before they
opened fire. Police say Scott was holding a gun when he was shot, while some
family members say he was only holding a book.
Before the incidents in Charlotte and San
Diego, there had been a surge in the effort by police departments and
politicians looking to find ways to reduce the number of instances in which
force is deployed and diverting the number of mentally ill people from the
expensive proposition of incarceration.
In Minneapolis, Mayor Betsy
Hodges in August introduced plans for a pilot programthat would pair mental
health professionals with streets cops responding to emergencies. Meanwhile,
the Chicago Police Department this month launched a new mandatory de-escalation
training program for the nation’s second-largest police force that has a heavy
focus on mental health training.
And during the first presidential
debate, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said the federal government should
do more to support police departments to deal with the vexing issue.
“Police are having to handle a
lot of really difficult mental health problems on the street,” Clinton said.
“They want support, they want more training, they want more assistance. And I
think the federal government could be in a position where we would offer and
provide that.”
TRAINING WITH BALANCE
In the newly launched Chicago
training program, officers, over two days, are presented a variety of live
scenarios and exercises that force them to wrestle with how they would respond
to tense situations.
As part of the training, the
department is using some recent incidents as teaching moments — including
having officers study aspects of a controversial police shooting last year in
which a Chicago cop killed a bat-wielding college student in the throes of a
mental health crisis, while also mistakenly fatally shooting the young man’s
55-year-old neighbor.
That incident last December came
a little more than a month after the city was forced by court order to release
a chilling video showing a white police officer fatally shoot a black teen 16
times. Laquan McDonald, 17, who was gunned down holding a small knife as he
appeared to run away from police had a history of mental health problems.
Sgt. Larry Snelling, lead
instructor of the Chicago training program, said the department wants officers
to use the least amount of force as possible.
“That being said, de-escalation
doesn’t always work,” Snelling said. “The training is balanced in the hopes
that officers when they are faced with a deadly threat…are capable of
responding to save the lives of one of our citizens or themselves.”
TRAINING ALONE NO PANACEA
More than 3,000 of the nation’s roughly
18,000 police departments have some or all of their officers go through Crisis
Intervention Team (CIT) training, according to Laura Usher, a program manager
for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
The model for the program, which
was pioneered in the late 1980s by the Memphis Police Department, calls for 40
hours of training that includes teaching officers verbal de-escalation skills,
scenario-based training and having officers spend time interacting with
individuals who have gone through a mental health crisis.
It’s unclear what percentage of
departments have such robust training. A survey published by the Police
Executive Research Forum last year found that that new recruits received a
median amount of eight hours on crisis intervention training compared to 58
hours on firearms training.
Usher said that while police
chiefs largely recognize that a disproportionate number of people arrested have
mental health issues, but they struggle to make time for training when they
face demands to keep officers on the street.
“The other thing is that the
training is not a panacea,” Usher said. “It’s also about the partnerships with
their local mental health agencies and advocates in changing the culture and
how the community approaches people in a mental health crisis.”
Some law enforcement experts,
including the LSU criminologist Scharf, say mental health training can help
officers reduce arrests for relatively small infractions and help cops build a
baseline of understanding about what mentally ill people experience – valuable
knowledge when thrown into a volatile encounter with someone in the midst of a
crisis.
But Scharf cautioned that the
training has its limitations for a cop who has to make a split-second decision
particularly when dealing with someone who is believed to be armed and
agitated.
"Should police get this
training? Yes," Scharf said. "But just like you can't do neurosurgery
with eight hours of training, you can't expect a cop to be able to learn to
talk a gun out of the hands of someone with such limited training."
COPS BUDDY UP WITH MENTAL HEALTH
PROS
Over the years, a handful of
large and midsize departments – including Los Angeles and San Antonio – have
partnered with mental health professionals to work as “co-responders,”
assisting street cops responding to incidents involving individuals in the
midst of a mental health crisis.
Some midsize departments in
recent years have begun testing pairing cops with mental health professionals.
The Overland Park (Kan.) Police
Department, a force of about 250, hired a “co-responder” in 2014 to assist
officers after seeing a surge in mental health related calls, which were often
bogging down beat officers’ time.
During her first year on the job,
the co-responder, Megan Younger, helped divert individuals on 129 occasions to
receive mental health care, according to Overland Park Police.
The department estimates that her
work also helped the department avoid making 40 arrests during her first year
on the job, saving the department $61,000 in costs.
Overland Park police officials
believe that the interventions with the co-responder, who has made more than
1,800 visits with people with mental health issues during the time with the
force, mitigate the chances of a more dangerous encounter with the individuals
occurring in the future.
Officer Jackie Zickel said she
partnered with Younger not long after the department started the program and
saw firsthand the efficacy of having a
mental health specialist by her side. The first call she was on in which
Younger was deployed involved a couple whose adult son was destroying their
home during a schizophrenic episode.
Zickel recalled that when she and
her police partner arrived at the volatile scene the young man had locked
himself in his room. Zickel was eventually able to talk the young man into
coming to the family’s living room to meet Younger, who was able to persuade
him to take his medication.
“They see the difference between
us and her,” Zickel said. “It helps them understand that we’re there to make
sure the situation stays safe, and that she is there to help them get out of
the crisis.”
Fla. Woman Charges That Cop Baked
Her a ‘Sorry I Tased You’ Cake
Stephanie Byron has filed a civil
lawsuit claiming that former Escambia County Deputy Michael Wohlers used
excessive force, violated her civil rights, committed battery against her and
caused her hardships—then baked her a cake to say “Sorry.”
