A call for crisis training
New police strategies focus on easing tensions with the emotionally distressed
Like he had many times before, Jason Daigneault strolled into the front lobby of the county’s busy social services building, this time to apply for a new food stamp card.
The visit to the Schenectady building in the spring culminated with Daigneault turning combative, facing criminal charges for refusing to wear a face mask and then wrestling while handcuffed with a sheriff’s deputy. Video of the incident appeared to show him being punched in the face by a city police officer who was among a few officers who arrived to help the deputy.
As Daigneault crumpled to the ground, the video also showed a plainclothes Schenectady detective strike him in the upper back or head with a handheld portable radio before Daigneault was led out the building. He was not seriously hurt.
It’s unclear if the deputy or
city police officers — none of whom had masks on — who responded as back-up knew they might be dealing with a troubled man who, as his mother explained to the Times Union, has had a few run-ins with the law and has been diagnosed with Asperger’s and Tourette’s syndromes.
He also suffers from a learning disability and anxiety disorder.
Cheryl Daigneault said her son struggles when he gets angry and that the “best way to help him is to support him by allowing him to process what’s going on and the space and time to work out how to express his feelings in a calm way.”
The altercation illustrates the enormous and complicated challenges law enforcement agencies nationwide face when responding to emergency calls with a person in emotional crisis or with a developmental disability. Such encounters can occur when people do not take medication or threaten family members with violence.
Daigneault, who is on four different medications, said the deputy never offered him a mask. He said he normally doesn’t wear them because it’s hard for him to breathe. The situation was exacerbated because the county apparently does not have a written policy for a person who may have a valid medical reason, such as respiratory issues, that precludes them from donning a mask.
Schenectady County spokeswoman Erin Smith said in part that “county departments will work with anyone who is unable to wear a mask due to a medical condition to accommodate their needs as much as possible.”
Daigneault, 36, acknowledged that his memory of the incident May 29 has largely faded and that he never told the police officers about his disabilities.
The video, which the Times Union obtained through a Freedom Information Law request, does not have audio. It showed Daigneault, with his hands cuffed behind his back, kick the deputy between the legs.
The incident, which resulted in Daigneault being charged with harassment, a violation, underscores the difficulties that police face when dealing with a person who is struggling with a mental health issue.
That issue drew national attention last month when Philadelphia police officers fatally shot Walter Wallace Jr., 27, who was clutching a knife as he walked toward the officers. His family said Wallace had mental health problems, including bipolar disorder, and that it was the third time that day police had responded to a disturbance involving Wallace.
In 2015, Donald “Dontay” Ivy Jr., an unarmed mentally ill Black man, suffered a fatal heart attack after he was chased, tackled and tasered by Albany police officers who confronted him as he walked along an Arbor Hill street. Ivy, 39, had not committed a crime and grew agitated and ran away as the officers, who were part of a special antigun detail and patrolled the entire city, had mistakenly suspected he was carrying a handgun. They began patting him down and asking him questions.
A grand jury declined to file charges against the officers in that case. Years after Ivy’s death, Albany agreed to a $625,000 settlement to resolve a wrongful death suit filed on behalf of Ivy’s son and the boy’s mother.
Attorney Michael Rose, one of the lawyers who represented Susan Bartlett, the mother of Ivy’s teenage son and executor of Ivy’s estate, said greater public awareness would help avert tragedies when police interact with the mentally ill.
“The better trained police officers are, in order to recognize and deal with people who are mentally ill, the better they will be prepared to deal with situations like that of Mr. Ivy,” Rose said.
Rose also said it is critical for municipalities to rely on community police officers who are more aware of the people in the neighborhoods they patrol.
He pointed out that Ivy, who was schizophrenic, had a regular routine that included walking two blocks from his apartment to a nearby corner store after midnight, where he would often buy cigarettes or candy just before it closed. His public disability funds usually hit his bank account around midnight, and Ivy would visit an ATM off Clinton Avenue to check his balance and withdraw money.
“If you have community officers who are working within a particular neighborhood, then they’re more likely to recognize a particular situation being familiar with people who live there and have different types of issues such as Mr Ivy,” Rose said. “There was nothing abnormal about what he was doing at that particular time if someone was familiar with him and the neighborhood.”
Calls involving emotionally disturbed individuals are often the most likely to escalate to violence. Since 2015, 105 people have been shot and killed by police in New York, according to a Washington Post analysis. And of those, 39 had a mental illness.
“These calls are the most dangerous because you have to remember the person’s not in the right mind set. They’re not looking to necessarily harm you, but sometimes they may not be really comprehending what’s going on, or they’re threatened by you,” said Bethlehem Police Commander James Rexford.
David Whalen, who runs the First/emergency Responder Disability Awareness Training for law enforcement through Niagara University, estimated that law enforcement encounters with people with disabilities can account for more than half of the emergency calls during a shift.
The increase in de-escalation training that police officers receive often aligns with the surge in calls they see, including in Colonie, where calls involving emotionally distressed people have doubled from nearly 500 in 2010 to around 1,000 in recent years.
“There’s no longer backside care for these people, so they’re now being reintroduced to society,” said Lt. Robert Winn, a spokesman for the Colonie Police Department. “At the end of the day, somebody’s going to be calling about them, somebody’s going to have to deal with them and that falls, oftentimes, on our officers.”
Schenectady Police Chief Eric Clifford said police sometimes find themselves in a tough spot when dispatched to a call for a mentally ill person who may be prone to violence or may just be having a rough day and needs to be taken to a hospital or to speak with a medical professional. Clifford and other police leaders concede that police work often now means taking on the role of a social worker.
In the incident earlier this year at the Schenectady County social services building, an internal probe concluded the Schenectady officers who used physical force to subdue Daigneault did not violate departmental policies and no discipline was imposed.
“We’re not psychologists or psychiatrists, and unfortunately in this day and age, police have to wear many different hats, one of which is a social worker, and I don’t know that’s always fair to police,” Schenectady County Sheriff Dominic A. Dagostino said.
The increasing interactions between police and someone with mental illness has resulted in many police agencies implementing Crisis Intervention Team training, a 48-hour curriculum that teaches officers how to respond to people experiencing a mental health crisis. And in training academies across New York, police officers are being taught de-escalation techniques that are intended to help defuse tense situations and
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The better trained police officers are, in order to recognize and deal with people who are mentally ill, the better they will be prepared to deal with situations like that of Mr. Ivy.”
— Michael Rose, lawyer who represented Susan Bartlett, the mother of Ivy’s teenage son and executor of Ivy’s estate
We’re not psychologists or psychiatrists, and unfortunately in this day and age, police have to wear many different hats, one of which is a social worker, and I don’t know that’s always fair to police.”
— Schenectady County Sheriff Dominic A. Dagostino
calmly deal with individuals they deem uncooperative.
Don Kamin is a psychologist and director of the Rochester-based Institute for Police, Mental Health & Community Collaboration. He backs police training but asserted significant transformation of the system is the only way to minimizing how often police officers are first responders.
“Yes, police training is important but it really is the time now to look at continuing to work on system reforms so that we decrease the police involvement, whenever possible,” said Kamin. He added that CIT training is consistent with the ongoing push for police reform in New York and nationwide.
Kamin said the institute meets for upward of six hours with county mental health officials, law enforcement, EMS, family members of people with emotional issues “mapping out that crisis response system” and then provide some suggestions and follow up report.
Kamin said Broome County has trained 911 dispatchers to transfer certain calls to their local crisis hotline or mobile crisis team if the person consents.
But de-escalation has become a buzzword of sorts in policing, and the specifics of what the training looks like is sometimes murky.
“It’s kind of a pet peeve of mine to say, ‘Hey, deescalate.’ But what does that mean?” said Lt.
James Gerace, who is in charge of the Colonie Police Department’s crisis negotiation team and takes an active role in training the department’s mental health division. “What does de-escalation actually look like?”
It starts with treating people with “respect and dignity,” he said, which means understanding that an officer’s presence often innately means an individual is experiencing one of the most fraught moments in their lives.
The second step is for officers to maintain their distance. For example, he said, many calls describe individuals as seeming “intoxicated” or “acting irrationally.”
“We want our officers to understand that this guy probably has a lot going on … and before rushing in to engage him, we want them to try to get some more information,” Gerace said. “Just slow things down. The more time you can infuse into one of these crisis situations, the better it is for everybody.”
Lt. Willie Flack, who is the CIT training coordinator for the Albany Police Department, said threefourths of Albany officers have received CIT training.
The department also partners with the Mobile Crisis Team, which was developed in 1984 by the Albany County Department of Mental Health after police shot and killed Jessie Davis, a 35-year-old mentally ill Black man. The team assists all 17 law enforcement agencies in Albany County and has eight social workers on staff who operate around-the-clock shifts. Most of the team’s calls relate to concerned family members or people themselves, the county said.
The team asks questions about an individual’s history with mental health and their willingness to meet with a social worker or go to a hospital if needed. Police are involved as co-responders if a person is uncooperative, assaultive or aggressive.
In recent years, the team has assisted nearly 1,000 individuals. Half of those interactions have required police assistance, they said, and 60 percent of cases are diverted from hospitalization or incarceration.
But the challenges are still present, county officials said, because of hospital closures and deinstitutionalization that has resulted in an “increasing number of individuals in our communities who are in need of behavioral health services.”
“Too often our criminal justice system has become a replacement mental health system,” the county said, adding that jails and prisons have become the “largest de-facto psychiatric hospitals.”
Clifford said having licensed professionals from hospitals and social services agencies on the front lines of these calls instead of police is something Schenectady is hoping to expand. The department partners with Schenectady County and Northern Rivers’ Mobile Crisis Response Team. Northern Rivers provides a raft of support services to people coping with everything from abuse to mental health woes. The skills officers need, he said, include developing a rapport, asking probing questions, being a good listener and trying to get the person help if they ask for it.
In Eugene, Ore., a program called CAHOOTS has crisis workers who are unarmed respond to mental health calls that don’t involve a legal issue, violence or risk to the worker.
But Flack, who is with Albany police, said he believes these types of calls are “fluid,” adding, “violence and volatility can happen at an instant.”
“I don’t know that it’s wise to do that,” Flack said. “I don’t see the reality of that being practical. By the same token, I don’t believe that officers should be responding to these calls unless they’re properly trained.”
Whalen’s first responder disability awareness training at Niagara University teaches a model called RIAIR — an acronym for recognize, identify, approach, interact and respond — which informs officers to recognize symptoms, identify a disability and ask themselves how to best approach an individual and interact and respond to them.
He said besides the mandatory mental health training police recruits receive, there needs to be more emphasis on ongoing training throughout their careers.
Erik Geizer, a deputy executive director at The ARC New York in Latham, said education is critical to ensuring safety. Statewide, the organization serves about 60,000 people with a wide range of developmental disabilities, including at staffed residences.
“(Police) just see there’s a person being pretty aggressive, and they’re scared and things can escalate,” Geizer said. “Anytime we have that sort of breakdown in communication, there’s a risk of harm — not only to the individual with the disability but also to law enforcement.” He added that education is key because some officers may never have been exposed to someone with a developmental disability.
Cheryl Daigneault, who witnessed what happened to her son at the DSS building, acknowledges that he could have been more compliant. He pleaded guilty to harassment and the case could later be dismissed.
But she contends that police overreacted and need to be more mindful of the person with whom they’re interacting. She said because of her son’s disability, he becomes very agitated and angry when something upsets him.
She suggested officers approach such people with hands up, backup and ask if the person is OK.
“You have to learn how to approach them, how to calm them down, before they can even talk to you because, like Jay said, ‘They see red, the minute they go off, it’s red, they don’t remember nothing,’” Cheryl Daigneault said. “They’re so angry that they don’t remember anything that goes on.”