‘Disturbing’ NYPD flaws

THE NYPD HAS more than 4,000 specially trained cops to deescalate incidents involving the mentally ill, but they’ve been woefully ineffective in getting the officers to critical scenes, a report released Thursday found.

Emergency dispatchers, according to the report by NYPD Inspector General Philip Eure, have no way of knowing where members of the Crisis Intervention Team, or CIT, are when they field 911 calls related to a “mental crisis.”

The NYPD got 157,000 calls last year regarding people who were emotionally disturbed — about 430 per day. The crisis team was created about 18 months ago.

“911 dispatchers cannot assign CIT-trained officers to crisis calls because they have no way of determining which patrol cars in the field contain CIT-trained officers,” the report found. “This is highly problematic.”

The report noted that in October, a sergeant who fatally shot a schizophrenic woman, Deborah Danner, 66, had no crisis team training. Following that incident, Police Commissioner James O’Neill stated, “What’s clear in this instance is that we failed.”

The dispatching function needs fixing, Eure said in the Thursday report.

“NYPD has no system currently to dispatch officers,” he said. “We have 4,700 officers who are trained, but it’s basically a random chance as to whether any of those officers show up in a crisis situation.”

Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters — to whom Eure reports — said the NYPD needs to commit to a “firm framework” to solve the problem within 90 days.

Police spokesman Peter Donald acknowledged the dispatch problem and said a solution is in the works.

“The department is currently assessing the ongoing CIT program in an effort to more effectively address the availability of trained personnel to respond to calls for the emotionally disturbed, in the most timely and efficient manner possible,” Donald said.

The inspector general also found: l The NYPD’s dispatch system “lacks the technological capacity” to allow dispatchers to locate cops with crisis team training. The department’s technology bureau said upgrading the system would involve “considerable costs, time and testing.” l The NYPD patrol guide contradicts crisis training. The patrol guide “emphasizes containment and placing the individual in custody,” while crisis training emphasizes “engagement, deescalation, officer discretion and alternative dispositions.”

This was an issue in the Danner shooting, in which the sergeant could have waited for an Emergency Services Unit — which also has mental health crisis training — to arrive. l The NYPD has funding to train 5,500 cops in the crisis team, or about 25% of its 22,000 patrol officers. Other police departments have a much higher percentage of crisis-trained cops, including Seattle (60%) and Albuquerque, N.M. (40%). The NYPD plans to train all its new hires in crisis intervention going forward. l In early December, NYPD brass told supervisors in all commands to be aware of all their crisis-trained officers and “whenever feasible” dispatch them to “EDP (emotionally disturbed person) jobs.”

But the IG said this system was “more prone to human error” than integrating the list of available crisis team officers into the NYPD’s emergency communication system.

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