TACTICS FOR MENTALLY ILL
Portland police may have playbook on dealing with conflict
THE 911 caller had reported a man with a samurai sword, lunging at people on the waterfront.
It was evening, and when the police arrived, they saw the man pacing the beach and called to him. He responded by throwing a rock at the embankment where they stood. They shouted to him from a sheriff ’s boat; he threw another rock. They told him to drop the sword; he said he would kill them. He started to leave the beach, and after warning him, they shot him in the leg with a beanbag gun. He turned back, still carrying the 4-foot blade.
In another city — or in Portland itself not that long ago — the next step would almost certainly have been a direct confrontation and, had the man not put down the weapon, the use of lethal force.
But the Portland Police Bureau, prodded in part by the 2012 findings of a Justice Department investigation, has spent years putting in place an intensive training program and protocols for how officers deal with people with mental illness.
At a time when police behavior is under intense scrutiny — a series of fatal shootings by police officers have focused national attention on issues of race and mental illness — Portland’s approach has served as a model for other law enforcement agencies around the country.
And on that Sunday last summer, the police here chose a different course.
At 2:30 a.m., after spending hours trying to engage the man, the officers decided to “disengage,” and they withdrew, leaving the man on the beach. A search at daylight found no signs of him.
People with mental illnesses are overrepresented among civilians involved in police shootings: Twenty-five percent or more of people fatally shot by the police have had a mental disorder, according to various analyses.
In Chicago, for example, police officers killed a 19-year-old mentally ill man, Quintonio LeGrier, in December after the police said he had come at them with a baseball bat. In Denver, Paul Castaway, 35, who had a history of mental illness, was fatally shot by the police last year after they said he moved “dangerously close” to them, holding a knife to his own throat. Similar encounters have occurred in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Dallas, Indianapolis and other cities.
In response to public outcry, many police departments have, like Portland, turned to more training for their officers, in many cases adopting some version of a model pioneered in Memphis, Tenn., almost three decades ago and known as crisis intervention team training, or CIT.
Studies have found that the training can alter the way officers view people with mental illness. And the approach, which teaches officers ways to defuse potentially violent encounters before force becomes necessary, is useful for officers facing any volatile situation, even if a mental health crisis is not involved, law enforcement experts say.
Whether the training leads to less use of force by officers, however, is still an open question. The findings of studies have been mixed, although one study to be published later this year suggests that Portland’s program, which is based on CIT, is having an effect. And training alone is not enough, experts say. For the approach to be effective, it needs the full backing of a police department’s leadership, continual checks on its effectiveness, and collaboration with the mental health community.
“The training is great, but it’s not magic,” said Laura Usher, coordinator of crisis intervention team training for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “The thing that actually transforms the way the system works is when everyone gets together.”
Debate signals a culture shift
The decision by the Portland police to leave the sword-wielding man on the beach was controversial within the department. Some officers argued that more should have been done. What if the man had injured or killed someone?
Others countered that it was late and that the secluded area was deserted. The man had committed no crime. And a confrontation could easily have ended with him or the officers being harmed.
But the discussion itself, some officers said, was a sign of change.
“Ten years ago, we would have been more proactive in dealing with him at the start,” said Officer Brad Yakots, a specialist in mental health issues who was called to the scene. “It’s a new way of looking at it.”
As in other cities, change in Portland began with a fatal encounter: On Sept. 17, 2006, James Chasse Jr., 42, a singer in a local band who had schizophrenia, died after a confrontation with police officers.
Chasse’s death outraged the public. The Police Bureau, in response, revised policies and required all its officers to complete 40 hours of crisis intervention training.
But after more troubling instances involving the mentally ill, a Justice Department investigation concluded in 2012 that the Police Bureau had shown “a pattern or practice of unnecessary or unreasonable force during interactions with people who have or are perceived to have mental illness.”
This time, the Police Bureau’s leadership responded far more aggressively. In addition to the mandatory training for the entire force, a group of about 100 patrol officers signed up for 40 extra hours of instruction to handle more complex calls involving mental illness or drug and alcohol addiction.
Teams of officers were paired with mental health clinicians to follow up on cases. New protocols were put in place. And the police connected with housing and mental health organizations to help further.
“It’s really about a culture shift,” said Lt. Tashia Hager, who heads the unit that coordinates the department’s mental health response.
She noted that in cases like that of the man with the sword, “there’s a potential negative outcome regardless of the decision we make.”
In the past, she said, officers were taught, “If you do this, I’m going to do that.” Now they are encouraged to question whether “that” is really necessary.
Yakots, who has been on the force for nine years, said he thought that the department’s efforts to shift course had been largely successful. But he added: “Do things fall through the cracks? Yeah, it’s not perfect. A lot of times we have limited resources.”
It was a Monday night in late February when he and his partner, Officer Michael Hastings, were making the rounds of makeshift homeless camps and downtown street corners, listening for radio calls that might require their presence.
An adolescent girl was on an overpass, threatening to jump. A college student had called his mother in another city and told her he was going to kill himself. A 38-year-old woman was standing outside a mental health treatment center demanding to be taken to the hospital because, she said, “I am suicidal and homicidal.”
Hastings said that before the department changed its approach, the attitude was “enforce, enforce, enforce, arrest, arrest, arrest.”
But taking people to an emergency room or putting them in jail did nothing. “These people, they’re out within four hours most of the time,” he said.
At least in Portland, Hastings said, most police officers had accepted that part of their job was now dealing with mental illness and helping to find longer-term solutions.
“We’ve realized that it is what it is,” he said, “and we’re the ones that are going to be responding to that.”