Solution Alert! The Police Can be Trained to Deal with the Mentally Ill … Here’s How

WHO WE ARE-Police shootings are on the rise or at least seem to be thanks to the street level reporters, social media, smart phones, concerned citizens with handy cams and the ever growing “anti-police” movement in America.  

Some of these incidents include Oakland, CA BART shooting, the 2013 shooting of an unarmed man in Gardena, CA (caught on video), the LAPD shooting of a mentally ill man in downtown Los Angeles (also caught on video), and the South Carolina shooting in 2015 of Walter Scott in the back while he was running away unarmed, and more recently the shooting of a man on 8^th and Sycamore in Los Angeles.  

Many of these shootings were caught on tape, which unfortunately really serves to fascinate the media and fuels anti-police movements in America.  But whether these were caught on tape or not, the police and the rest of America are both focusing on the wrong issues such as “getting in front of the incident” or “posting it on social media to enact anti-police rage in the citizens”.  What we need is a solution.  Not a temporary solution, a permanent solution that will last and not be torn down by another passage of another law by another administration. 

Crime is on the rise throughout America.  In just the first 6 months of 2015 in Los Angeles for example, crime has risen to the levels higher than in the entire year of 2014.  What is even more interesting is that everyone wants to blame the police for this.  

The police did not cause this crime wave – we did.  We voted for Prop 47 so that everyone gets a misdemeanor vs a felony for “non-violent crimes”.  We voted for laws to be passed so that in the cases of overcrowding in the jails, criminals can just be let loose on the streets, and we voted for Laura’s Law which allows for the mentally ill to be discharged from the prison system onto our streets with little to no assistance or treatment other than “court mandated psychotropic treatments”, which at this point have not proven to be effective. 

POLICING: A THANKLESS JOB

The purpose of this piece is to highlight not just the challenges faced by our communities but by also the police force we entrust to keep us safe from crime.  Little by little the police agencies are getting their hands tied behind their backs by these laws, and then when they do arise to the occasion of responding to a crime, we and the media sit there and vilify them publicly when things go wrong (or when we perceive things to go wrong).  

The police department’s job is to enforce the laws, but when our laws are tailored to decriminalize gateway crimes such as drug offenses and to downgrade low level offenses so that these criminals can get back to doing what they do best – we are fighting a losing battle and I would say “prepare to get robbed again” because they will be back out on the streets in no time at all. Policing in 2015 has become an absolute thankless job and we all allow it to be that way unchecked.  

MENTALLY ILL, THE HOMELESS, HOSPITALS, AND TRAINING POSSIBILITIES FOR POLICE OFFICERS

If America was serious about a solution to the mentally ill issues, it also needs to tackle homelessness, but more so than that, we need funding for the police agencies to get better training on de-escalation tactics, or AB-508 (hospital mandated training on dealing with assaultive patients), or even a public-private partnership between hospitals and police agencies to allow police officers to rotate through and get the chance to witness how the mentally ill are dealt with in emergency rooms or lockdown psych units.  

This training and rotation may make for a more well rounded police force that will be better equipped on how to deal with the mentally ill in the execution of their job on the streets.  The thing is, any additional skill set that can enhance their ability to deal with the mentally ill will cost money in training hours.  Having a partnership with local hospitals (who are in need of extra guidance from law enforcement as well) to provide their facilities as an additional learning environment only solves a part of this picture.  What the police agencies will need is a commitment to provide this training from above and then funding the program to ensure that officers get the “real-life experience” they need in negotiating with and dealing with the mentally ill. 

How will this work?  Just imagine a daily scenario in the emergency room of a standard size hospital in Los Angeles, a patient is brought in by paramedics who is on a 5150 (danger to themselves or others) hold or even a patient in the waiting room mumbling to himself about hurting themselves – you never hear of a doctor or a nurse shooting the patient and killing him do you?  

No you don’t because many healthcare providers are trained effectively on de-escalation techniques, and how to deal with these patients.  Do not forget that healthcare providers don’t carry weapons either, so if a volatile patient wanted to get violent – the only real option is to duck, call security, and write an order for soft restraints.  

This is pretty much all we can do in a healthcare setting.  The only protection for healthcare workers is a law called AB508 that mandates that any healthcare worker that is assaulted on the job report the assault within 72 hours to the local police agency, that’s it.  

So with that said, if a police officer, without their weapons and uniform were to rotate through an emergency room for 12 to 24 hours total, and attend hospital mandated de-escalation training, do you think that they would find this type of exposure valuable?  

Do you think that this will better the relations between the community, as well as the mentally ill population? And finally do you think that this can make for a better equipped police force? I’d like to know you comments.

 

(Roque Wicker is the Principal and SVP of Operations for C-T Watch, Inc. a US defense contractor based out of Los Angeles, Mr. Wicker is the FBI Los Angeles InfraGard Sector Chief for the Government Sector, is on the Hospital Association of Southern California’s (HASC) Safety and Security Committee, and also serves on the Los Angeles Mid-City West Community Council as the Zone 7 representative and is highly involved in community education on public safety matters.  He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 59

Pub: Jul 21, 2015