'This is an illness, not a crime': Mental health training vital for officers handling crisis situati
Independent TribuneJun 20, 2017
The recent police shooting of a mentally ill
While family members condemn what they perceive to be a failure to help
The two deputies - who, along with a
During the first attempt on
"They had a court order to go and get him, and that's what they should have done," Lowe-Barre said. "I just know it wasn't handled right or my son would be alive and getting treatment today. They knew he was mentally ill. They know the longer people are off their medication, the psychosis gets worse. They should be specially trained for that."
She also didn't understand why the deputies never called
After reviewing reports of the previous visits, Regalado maintained his deputies made the right choice to not escalate the situation by entering Barre's home. He said they had no time to call a mental health professional on the day of the shooting because of the "rapidly evolving situation."
In the past six months, the unit made about 1,420 pickup attempts, of which about 285 were successful. Regalado said the deputies are trained to be selective in choosing the right moment to pick up mentally ill subjects, who often are hallucinating or suffering from psychosis. If deputies feel proceeding could be dangerous - for their safety or that of the individual - but there is no threat to the public, they may choose to leave and wait for a better opportunity.
All
Although budgetary and personnel issues prevent him from adding a fifth member right now, Regalado lauded the group's efficiency. He said each member was chosen for their temperaments and strengths in decision-making and communication.
"Typically these deputies come into contact with subjects while they're in psychosis and they have to be able to decide oftentimes very quickly whether or not they need to simply walk away or whether the actions of that individual dictate something further," he said. "They have to take not only their safety but the safety of that individual into account."
The sheriff also took issue with a lack of state funding for mental-health treatment. He acknowledged a "significant uptick" in his agency's contact with the mentally ill over the past two decades because of drastic budget cuts and closures of mental health hospitals. He said law enforcement is undertrained and underequipped to handle the influx.
Regalado questioned whether the shooting would have happened if mental health were properly funded and if Barre had had access to full-time inpatient treatment.
"I hope that the one thing that comes out of this is - and that Joshua didn't die in vain - is to realize what the core, fundamental underlying problem is," he said. "It's not law enforcement. In the state of
Capt.
Additionally, about 135 officers have received voluntary Crisis Intervention Team training. CIT is a national program dedicated to helping authorities better react to situations involving mental illness. The training is more in-depth than what officers receive at the academy. It also gives them a chance to hear members of the
Officer
Seibert stressed the importance of learning to identify someone who is symptomatic and being able to de-escalate the situation. However, training can only do so much, she said, and officers sometimes are forced to take drastic measures.
"At the end of the day, they're not therapists. They protect the public," Seibert said. "There's a point in time when someone's armed or doing something that's putting someone else in danger - why they're doing that behavior is put on the back burner, and we have to do what we do as police officers. It's a tragedy because this is an illness, not a crime."
Mental Health Association Oklahoma helped bring CIT training to
Although he agrees with Regalado that more in-house crisis beds are needed for the increasing number of mental illness patients, Brose said there first needs to be more emphasis on community-based services to respond and collaborate with law enforcement in addressing the needs of somebody symptomatic before they reach crisis.
"We don't think it's fair to our law-enforcement people to send them out and deal with these sometimes very complex mental health crisis moments when someone is in the middle of a period of untreated mental illness where they might have delusions or hallucinations," Brose said.
One program that has Brose hopeful is the
Brose also places value in the
Brose is hesitant to make a judgment on the Barre shooting while information still is limited. But he does hope to see the community rally together and work to provide law enforcement the support they need.
"When this happened, I thought unfortunately this is going to give us an opportunity to communicate what we are trying to accomplish, and I guess we're going to step it up," he said. "We have to. It's our job. We can't go back to business as usual. We've got to continue to forge ahead together to figure out better ways of preventing these things from ever occurring again."