Much has been bandied-about lately regarding mental health issues in our society. The latest drop-kick to that seemingly unhinged door is the slaying of 17 students and teachers coupled with many more injured by a young man who repeatedly telegraphed that he was burdened with mental disarray. Somehow, crickets prevailed leading up to the school campus havoc.
Of course town hall meetings must occur. Definitely, we must deeply analyze our laws, especially those related to citizens suffering mental illness and Constitutional access to firearms. Existentially, these tragic instances need abatement. Naturally, the police are the country’s most-readied first-line of defense. But are they uncompromisingly prepared to take on mental health counseling to the degree whereby it will make any substantive difference?
To an extent, cops have the crisis-training hat among many other hats they wear on patrol. During my police academy experience many years ago, a course called “Crisis Intervention Techniques” sought to teach cops the rudimentary aspects of mental health and the pathology of people. Kind of equating it to the combustible engine, humans tend to bottle-up angst and similar unhealthy emotions, without seeking a release of the potent ingredients we tend to gather under the mental disorder umbrella. That ostensible powder-keg winds up in the laps of cops, as was the case on February 14, 2018 in Parkland, Florida.
Portland Police Behavioral Health Unit
Given first-hand contacts with individuals weighted by mental disorder(s), the police role in abatement is crucial. One such law enforcement agency doing its part in the resoundingly complicated national mental health crisis is the Portland Police Bureau. It’s formal Behavioral Health Unit consists of sworn cops and civilian licensed counselors teaming-up to do whatever it takes before lives are taken by affected parties.
Portland Police Bureau has a formal cadre of cops and mental health counselors partnered to traverse their city and directly address reported or perceived mental anguish-related folks. These two-person units cater armed, custodial authority and trained, licensed clinicians to the sidewalks, alleyways, wherever downtrodden folks may be hunkered. Whether sans-drug or medication-failing episodes are part of or the only reason for someone garnering attention, Portland police teams try to sort through the mired mindsets and implement resources found in the community.
The Portland police Behavioral Health Response Teams (BHRT) “pairs a patrol officer and a licensed mental health professional from Cascadia Project Respond. The Portland Police Bureau has three BHRT cars. The officers and mental health professionals work proactively with individuals who have a mental illness [and who] are identified as having multiple or high-risk contacts with police. The BHRT cars work to connect individuals to appropriate community resources in order to reduce their frequency of contact with police.” Besides calls being made to police dispatchers, “referrals to the BHRT cars are [also] made through [non-BHRT] patrol officers.”
The Portland police protocol appears to be more preemptive rather than reactive. Facilitating help before a situation arises is every cop’s mission. Sometimes, it doesn’t go as planned, and people constrained by conscious thoughts act-out to the level of criminality.
A November 2017 Portland police BHU newsletter proclaimed: “We continue to coordinate the response of law enforcement and the behavioral health system to aid people in behavioral crisis resulting from known or suspected mental illness and/or drug and alcohol addiction. We currently have 3 BHRT teams (officer/clinician) and 133 Enhanced Crisis Intervention Trained (ECIT) officers.” ECIT principles exceed the basic crisis intervention training and education all cops receive while in the police academy. Basic instruction is a national standard among America’s police academies.
How do police officers use the CIT training received in the police academy? Recognition of symptomatic cues ordinarily exhibited by someone experiencing mental breakdown is step one, followed by calming techniques stemming from evidence of excitability. The meat and potatoes of crisis intervention becomes an art in certain senses: measured communication to ensure the affected individual feels rapport with the police official is the stalwart covenant. Leveraging chats and principles of human-to-human relations succeeds and attempts to settle matters of the mind.
Possessing a love for human psychology, I always gravitated to this type of police response. As it relates to our topic, I found the following condensed information pertinent.
Inside Success published, “mentally strong people seek strength and fortitude by building themselves up every day.” Casey Imafidon wrote a self-help piece titled “8 Daily Habits to Build Your Mental Strength” delineating how best to engender balance in mental acuity. Although Mr. Imafidon wrote with focus on business success and determination, the principle points he makes have empirical relevance. Here are just three I find wholly applicable to our discussion and what I often used as a policeman trying to quell mentally-troubled individuals. Per Mr. Imafidon:
- Be Willing to Adapt: Change is a constant factor in life; you have to learn to deal with it because nothing stays the same. It takes mental strength to be flexible and adjust to outside circumstances. You cannot afford to play the blame game or complain about imperfect situations, so learn to work toward solutions regardless of changing circumstances.
- Be Self-aware: The right questions offer the right answers. It takes mental strength to understand your emotions, strengths and weaknesses. Even when you are having a rough day, you are aware of what you need to do to find peace. Assessing your emotions and knowing yourself can help you retain a calm attitude even during times of crisis.
- Be Responsible: Your successes and failures are on you, not anyone else. Although some people prefer to blame others, you become mentally strong by admitting errors and taking responsibility for the challenges you face. Show others what needs to be done instead of retreating in fear, and take pride in overcoming your daily encounters.
Perhaps easier said than done, but reminders serve especially well when we feel in our gut (and see with our eyes)that something is off. Instilling the tenets that Mr. Imafidon wrote can help shape the necessary bond between cops and mentally ill folks. Sort of like gentle reminders to anyone: You can do it! These are no bag-of-tricks fixes but basic human capabilities with which we were all born, sometimes needing trumpeting to get back on track and defuse self-implosion.
Police Psychologist Hat
Yesterday at Walmart, I observed a young petite woman dressed in a pure-white sun dress. Her bright-blue eyes darted while her eyebrow kept rising and dropping animatedly, as if she were in a conversation with another person; she was complementing her muttering with facial gestures and hand movements indicating the human trait of signaling.
But she walked alone. She had no earpiece or dangling wires to denote she was talking to someone on the other end of the line. No one was even remotely near her. I noticed that no one else seemed to notice the animated woman —or, if anyone did, they didn’t seem to be concerned. Cop or not, antennae went up: cover/concealment; nearest escape routes; line-of-fire; citizens in background/foreground; potential for weapons on this diminutive lady.
Then, once through checkout, I saw the same woman out in the parking lot, slowly walking without all the aforementioned nuances, signs, and traits of attention-grabbing behavior. My first thought was I wonder if she acts (reacts) that way when she is around too many people.
Admittedly, I pondered if the young lady was under some form of prescribed psychiatric medication or lacking such aids. Social atrophy? Anxiety? Schizophrenia? I’ve no idea, but radar was blipping, as any cop’s combined innate/trained system is relegated to do.
Jailing Jesus?
Nope, not trying to be sacrilegious or sinful. I am relating facts, however. In my police career, I lost count of how many times I had “Jesus” —not the Hispanic kind but the God Almighty kind— sitting right behind me in the rear, caged compartment of my police cruiser. Confined in the rear of a police car means one thing…and it usually is not a good sign.
For whatever criminal misdeeds, arrestees took the ride to county jail, and some harbored highly-evident mental disorders. I guess we can label it delusional. No harm, no foul…just Hey, officer…now you can tell your friends you took Jesus to jail! (Have I mentioned how much I loved and miss my police career?) Much like I was trained to do in my Crisis Intervention Training instruction at the police academy, I listened and measured words carefully. I implemented human relations skills sprinkled with diversity training tenets and received the word of Jesus countless times.
“Jesus” once told me the winning lottery numbers. Jesus used to strike deep conversations about “forgiveness” then ask me if we were “really going to jail?” Power of suggestion, I presume. Jesus once told me that my children were beautiful —I kept wallet-size pictures of them on my police cruiser dash— and that he blessed me with them because I was a “good man.” I believed all of that…except his proclamation that he was Jesus.
Although these are just a few Jesus-episodes, the point is many chapters in cop culture include highly-colorful interactions with people who are experiencing hard-to-understand malfunctions of mind…and it takes a police officer with patience, understanding, and measured responses to subdue one’s behavior from exceeding the threshold of bonkers while also preserving grace and humility.
Incidentally, I only smiled/laughed when Jesus and others under some psychosis laughed. Much like cops are taught to come down to a child victim’s level when interviewing or trying to form rapport, the same principle holds for adults too.
Regarding mental health treatments, I concur with the theory that jail is not the answer. Yes, some folks commit crimes stemming from a bogged-down existence created and stored in their minds. That is not to suggest being mentally burdened is a get-out-of-jail card, but causative factors must be part of the resolution under consideration.
Referring to “causal factors,” DC Clothesline‘s Jon Rappoport wrote, “Drugs aren’t the only causative factor, but they produce what I call the Johnny Appleseed effect throughout society. Sprinkle enough of the drugs among enough people and you get otherwise unexplainable violence popping up—in schools, in workplaces. The psychiatric plague eats out the country from the inside.” That connotes the “self-implosion” I mentioned earlier.
What are cops doing to defray what Rappoport discusses? In addition to Crisis Intervention courses taught in law enforcement academies, police officers are also being instructed in sort of a police pharmacology class called “Intro to Psychiatric Medication,” part of a 40-hour block of CIT training.
For the most dire manic cases of mental disruption, psychiatric institutions are in-place to get a hold on such patients. For individuals who not even remotely come close to dire-need levels, arrest and incarceration are suited. Then there are those cases who are placed in custody and suddenly have onset of mental derangement, feigning a psychiatric episode to get out of going to jail. A police colleague of mine calls it “fake quackery.”
In any and all of these likelihoods, cops have to figure it out before anyone meets mayhem, including self-harm.
The coin-toss flips and flops pertain to the question: Is mental illness a police problem or a community resources responsibility gone unchecked? Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich feels the federal government insinuates mental illness is best handled by local cops yet he argues, local governments are poorly funded and meagerly staffed to get a plausible fix on such a societal epidemic.
In September 2017, Sheriff Knezovich opined that Congress should be doing far more in terms of helping the mentally-ill demographic across America, specifically allocating more funding for mental health systems.
Is meting-out mental illness more optimized on a grass-roots level, a state level, or by the federal government? After all, states’ mental health laws/acts authorize only law enforcement and physicians to exercise custodial authority over individuals deemed subject to mental evaluation, especially when the person in-question is threatening harm to self or others…yet refusing counseling.
My police career was bolstered by authority to exercise Florida’s Baker Act law (BA-52), a civil proceeding whereby mental disorder meets standards to assume custody for evaluatory purposes. Speaking for myself, processing that civil Act can be quite frustrating while (most often) having nothing to do with criminality, giving rise to a newfound appreciation for psychiatrists.
Sort of presciently, Sheriff Knezovich segued and foretold what one may describe as burn-out among law enforcement officers. He said “When we start giving up, you’re in trouble.” Sheriff Knezovich said those words after he revealed first-hand knowledge of a 15-year law enforcement veteran quitting from mountainous stress heaped from The Job.
Cassie O’Brian wrote in response to Sheriff Knezovich’s revelation: “That is a very scary thought. At some point, will those who protect us give up and leave people to fend for themselves? I certainly couldn’t handle the job. I’m grateful there are still people willing to serve in an increasingly thankless and violent position, but I can see a time coming where people think it isn’t worth the risk. Where will we be then?”
We might be in Parkland, Florida…where the nation (world) wonders where a few Broward County deputies were (contextually) while a lone gunman’s bullets felled 17 lives. Indeed, they were there, but where the hell were they?
And here is where we segue to a gross complication and perplexing reality. We are mired with sorting out the muck left by a few Broward County deputies who ostensibly froze when duty called loudly and unequivocally.
Parkland Shooting Nuances
In light of the Broward Sheriff’s Office school resource deputy who “never went in,” and the tragic fallout brewing as we speak, alternate perspectives are compelling: 1) Despite some cops (FBI and BSO) grossly dropping the ball, by-and-large…law enforcement is doing all it necessarily can to abate such walking time-bombs from imploding/exploding in schools or elsewhere, and 2) BSO’s SRO may have had his very own mental health breakdown (although now seemingly inexcusable, given the circumstances).
Other than BSO Sheriff Scott Israel, we’ve not heard from that particular deputy…until today. Through his attorney, Deputy Scot Peterson wants it known that he is not a coward. Okay.
Any possible mental health woes suffered by now-resigned Broward deputy Sheriff Scot Peterson may be dispelled with late-breaking accusations of more failure on the part of additional Broward deputies on scene at the time of the shooting.
Sunday’s Fox News report indicates that at least three other Broward County deputies were seen standing outside the building as the gunfire persisted within. That claim came from several Coral Springs police officers who rushed to the school in an all-call response, routine in such calamities (active shooters).
Broward County sheriff’s Internal Affairs detectives launched an investigation stemming from Coral Springs cops’ allegations that several BSO deputies were standing around outside the door of the building where murders were in-progress. Just when the Parkland school shooting is too much to bear, more thorns prick deeply.
The title of the article you are reading is “Police Role in America’s Mental Health Crisis: A Dire Duty” and I composed those words not merely by flipping a coin but by evaluating both sides. Again, this is not to excuse the Broward deputies inert stance and ill-explained behavior, but to attempt to understand why he (they) failed to get the job done. Any subsequent civil and/or criminal consequences were earned. Undoubtedly, they are coming. Assuredly, the series of lawsuits stemming from the pre- and post-Parkland failures are indefensible.
Lord knows, if anyone in society has more than enough influence to break-down and combust, it is police, fire, military, nurses, ER physicians. Again, no excuse, but to solve anything we must evict ourselves from the myopic bubble and consider all angles, perspectives, and pathological symptoms. I am one among many who claw to know what the heck went so inexplicably awry. We can’t change time or restore lives to how they were on February 13, but we can grow from the painful pangs born on February 14…having nothing to do with Cupid.
Suggestions I read elsewhere speculated (stirred) that the four deputies may have been told to stand-down and/or followed some stupid self-serving political policy, thus doing nothing! That sounds reminiscent of the alleged police stand-down orders shamefully evolving during the August 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia riot. According to Factcheck.org, that sordid contention is debatable; I’d hate to imagine we are in that ugly abyss once again.
Mental Health First Aid USA has a site set-up addressing both first responders who heed the call of those experiencing mental duress…as well as public safety professionals who suffer the consequences materializing in the form of PTSD. PSAs posted by Mental Health First Aid inform both sides of that often-barbed fence. We are seeing an increase of PTSD and, conversely, a continuum of police suicides.
Nowadays, a growing number of cop shops have designated mental health units emplaced to combat the non-novel scourge. Rhetorically, I suspect costs of such programs and meager budgets may be prohibitive, but sewing together the fabric of tears in society ought to spare no expense.
And that is precisely another angle I wish to address: overthrowing our Constitutional 2nd Amendment rights and inherent costs to mass-confiscate Americans’ guns can easily be allayed by gross-funding mental health woes among our affected citizens. It boils down to a matter of letting steam out (irony, given this topic), putting thinking caps on, and placing money where our mouths are.
If we know our math equation is mental illness plus firearms equals misery, why are we not doing a better job of organically calculating the part of the problem which has a heartbeat?
The Parkland shooting and all it dredged from so many sides with varying conflicting points may simmer after percolation. Despite the latest wave of stone-throwing directed at law enforcement, cops have been and continue patrolling the beat among aimlessly wandering folks whose ebb and flow is not unlike unloosed rowboats.
Any and all of this inarguably relates to everything surrounding the Valentine’s Day Massacre, to include the shooter not feeling loved (foster system). No matter the causal factor(s) for someone’s “brokenness,” the National Council for Behavioral Health reports, “The difference between life and death or crisis and recovery can be a neighbor, faith leader, teacher or teammate who knows how to recognize and respond to warning signs of a mental health or substance use challenge. Anyone, anywhere can be the one to make a difference.”
Cops and citizens alike, we can all make a difference in the lives of those burdened with mental boulders. We must act!
