(9-4-20) I deeply appreciate law enforcement officers who want to help individuals in crisis by undergoing Crisis Intervention Team training. Sadly, too many Americans with mental or drug problems end up being arrested, injured or dead after the police are called. This is why I favor community alternatives that put responsibility back on social services and the medical community, such as mobile crisis response teams and peer support, to de-escalate a situation, while acknowledging that sometimes police must get involved.

The Rochester N.Y. police department’s response to Daniel Prude is calling attention to the deaths of not only people of color, but those having a mental health/drug crisis, as noted today in The New York Times. Eugene, Or., is cited as an example of alternatives to having police always be the first responders. Compare that community’s approach to the horrific police killing of Patrick Kenny in Springfield, Or..  What makes Kenny’s death even more appalling is that all of the officers involved had undergone CIT yet none used any of the de-escalation tools taught to them.

Mental health as crime New York Times by David Leonhardt

Daniel Prude, right, and his brother, Joe.Roth and Roth LLP, via Associated Press

On March 23, just a day after having gone to the hospital for mental health problems, a 41-year-old man named Daniel Prude bolted out of his brother Joe’s home in Rochester, N.Y, wearing few clothes. Joe was scared about what might happen to his brother.

So he did what many Americans do when facing an emergency involving mental illness. He called 911.

In the hours that followed, police officers found Daniel Prude walking down a street and handcuffed him. One officer held a knee on his back for two minutes. Unable to breathe, Prude lost consciousness and died a week later.

On Thursday, after the Prude family released a video of the confrontation, the mayor of Rochester suspended seven officers. (For a more detailed account, you can read this reconstruction by Times reporters.)

The case has raised many of the same questions — about racism and police behavior — as some other recent deaths of Black men. It has also highlighted a specific issue that many experts believe is crucial to reducing police-related violence: mental illness.

“Americans with mental illnesses make up nearly a quarter of those killed by police officers,” Pete Earley, whose mentally ill son has twice been shot with stun guns by police officers, has written for The Washington Post. As Earley also points out, “115 police officers have been killed since the 1970s by individuals with untreated serious mental illnesses.”

Are there any promising solutions? There appear to be.

Some cities have had success moving more mental health treatment — including emergency response — out of the criminal justice system. And many advocates for better policing have called for an expansion of these efforts, as part of shifting some police funding to other areas. “This is the only medical illness that we use criminal justice to respond to,” John Snook, the executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, told Vice.

One alternative: Eugene, Ore., routes some 911 calls — like many involving mental illness or homelessness — to an emergency health service, the White Bird Clinic. Last year, the clinic received 24,000 such calls Ebony Morgan, a White Bird crisis worker, told National Public Radio. In fewer than 1 percent of those cases did White Bird need to call for police backup as part of its response.

It’s hard not to wonder whether Daniel Prude would still be alive if his brother had been able to call medical professionals instead of the police.

Michael Skinner

(8-31-20)

D. J. Jaffe and A Culture of Fear by Michael Skinner

Dear Pete,

I read your blog post, “Influential Critic D. J. Jaffe Has Died: Remembered As “Bomb Thrower” Who Demanded Mental Illness Reforms” and thought of how he has done so much to hurt those of us labeled “mentally ill”. You considered him a friend, he was anything but for those of us struggling with the challenges of trauma, abuse and mental health concerns.

These are some of my thoughts on D.J. Jaffe. He did not have the best interests of people struggling despite all of his rhetoric, it was based in fear, hate and disdain for those of us labeled “mentally ill.” There was no compassion in that man or his cohort, E. Fuller Torrey, despite their bombastic appeals to the contrary.

They built a house of cards, a hurtful, dangerous house of cards.

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(8-24-20) D.J. Jaffe, an influential critic of our mental health care system and self-proclaimed advocate for Americans with serious mental illnesses, has died.

His mentor and close friend, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey announced D. J.’s death in an email this morning. The cause of death was leukemia, which D. J. had been fighting for more than 15 years. He passed away in his New York City home on August 23.

“Since 1998, when we first started making plans for what became the Treatment Advocacy Center,” Dr. Torrey wrote, “D. J. has been the single most effective advocate I have worked with and a close personal friend. His dedication to improving the treatment of people with serious mental illness, based on his experience with his sister-in-law has been extraordinary.”

D. J., who I also considered a good friend, was well-known for his outspokenness and relentlessness in pushing reforms that he believed were essential to improving care for those with mental illness.

His passion was unequalled.

In a tribute posted by TAC, its executive director, John Snook, recalled his first encounter with Jaffe some 20 years ago.

“We were testifying at a contentious hearing in New York’s City Hall. D.J. was in rare form. At the first challenge by the chair, D.J. was out of his seat, calling out the assembled council for their failures and their cowardice. Eventually, we were escorted out of the hearing by security.It remains, to this day, the only hearing I’ve ever been thrown out of.”

In an email, Ron Honberg, retired legal policy expert at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, wrote: “D.J. was one of a kind, firm and resolute in his advocacy passion and not afraid to be the skunk at the garden party, in fact he relished it.  He will be missed.”

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Sales video promoting BOLA Wrap by Wrap Technologies

(8-3-20) Three comments about law enforcement and state prisons.

What do you do when Crisis Intervention Team Trained Officers are criticized for violence? 

Last Thursday’s blog post about four Springfield, Oregon police officers who fatally shot an unarmed young man with schizophrenia outraged many readers. What made the officers’ actions even more appalling was that all had undergone Crisis Intervention Team training and one of them was the department’s CIT trainer. None of the officers made an attempt to use his CIT training to de-escalate the situation, according to a detailed account written by Kimberly Kenny, whose brother, Patrick, was killed.  Nor were any of the officers disciplined – one was given a medal by the police union. The police department and city settled a wrongful death lawsuit out of court for $4.5 million.

Based on Kimberly’s report, I would not want these officers responding if I called the police and requested a CIT trained officer to help me during a mental health crisis. There should be some way for officers and departments to loose the right to identify themselves as CIT trained when none of what CIT teaches apparently is practiced.

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Patrick Kenny before he was fatally shot by police.

(7-30-20) Dr. Mark Muentz wrote about the importance of Crisis Intervention Team training in a Monday blog post, but what happens when officers who have received CIT training are involved in a violent incident with someone who has a serious mental illness. In today’s blog – one in a series that I am posting about shifting responsibility for the seriously mentally ill from the police to social service agencies and the medical community – we hear from Kimberly Kenny, whose brother, Patrick aka Stacy, was fatally shot by police in Springfield, Oregon.  

Crisis Intervention Training Didn’t Prevent Four Police Officers From Assaulting and Killing My Brother

Guest blog by Kimberly Kenny

The entire incident took less than five minutes.

It happened a little before 9 pm on a Sunday, near a hardware store Patrick liked to go to sometimes.

Officer Kraig Akins saw Patrick driving and ran his license plate, and then didn’t see Patrick’s car again for another two minutes, when they happened to cross paths again. Patrick was driving west on Olympic Street, Akins was on a side street and as Patrick passed, Akins pulled out behind Patrick. Akins’ lights and siren were off. Patrick immediately signaled and pulled over, probably because he was scared and hoped the policeman would drive by.

Patrick had paranoid schizophrenia and one of his biggest fears was the police. He was kind and generous and smart, and with his schizophrenia sometimes he acted weirdly but never violently.

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(7-22-20) Advocates who have written for my blog or spoken to me personally are releasing three new books about mental illness. The titles are:

A Family Guide to Mental Health Recovery: What You Need to Know from Day One by Virgil Stucker and Stephanie McMahon.

He Came In With It: A Portrait of Motherhood and Madness by Miriam Feldman

Fix What You Can by Mindy Greiling

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