Opinion Editorial from the Portland Tribune, December 4, 2008
By Roy Silberstein, president of the Mental Health Association of Portland, and Beckie Child, president of Mental Health America of Oregon.
OHSU gross anatomy class, about 1920
This conclusion may surprise the thousands of peaceful daily visitors, including patients, family members, faculty and staff because, according to a search of the past 10 years of local news archives, OHSU has not experienced gun violence.
The task force’s basis for judging this risk is obscure, but it has made a proposal to the OHSU board of directors to both train and arm security guards with guns.
As an advocate for patient rights, the Mental Health Association of Portland opposes this conclusion and urges the OHSU board to ignore the proposal.
Disoriented and demented people who pose no threat come daily to OHSU for medical treatments.
They include elderly people, people with ailments like Alzheimer’s, epilepsy and schizophrenia.
They include veterans with brain injuries, sleepy students attending lectures, distressed people coming to the emergency room, people detoxing from drugs, and people who are grieving. Helping these people is the mission of the hospital.
People with mental illness or other cognitive dysfunction come to OHSU for healing and safety. They come to the hospital because their behaviors are aberrant, because they misunderstand communication, because they seem strange to others, because they want help.
And they have special needs – foremost is understanding, empathy and compassion.
The behaviors of these people occasionally require intervention by OHSU security guards, but we believe issuing handguns and rifles poses a direct lethal danger to these innocent people and those who care for them.
Adding guns as an option for OHSU security guards will result in an expensive tragedy – someone is going to get killed.
The proposal suggests OHSU doesn’t sufficiently train security guards to anticipate problems for people in crisis. This training is well-recognized and, understanding this risk, the Portland Police Bureau is an excellent role model.
After the death of James Chasse Jr., Mayor Tom Potter and Police Chief Rosie Sizer ordered crisis intervention training for all officers.
The case of Jose Mejia Poot, a misdiagnosed person in a locked psychiatric ward who was shot and killed by three police officers in Portland in 2001, illustrates how the mere presence of guns in a hospital setting can result in tragedy.
The public reaction to the Mejia shooting resulted in apologies and reparations from the mayor and the closure of Portland’s Pacific Gateway Hospital.
Has there been gun violence at other hospitals? Yes, but rarely.
We found news stories about police officers being disarmed and shot by criminals they were escorting, of gang violence in Los Angeles, of staff members shooting one another, and security guards shooting visitors and each other.
Each story is tragic, and rare – by our count, roughly 50 nationwide incidents in the past 20 years.
From our perspective, adding guns to this situation is never a good idea. It never leads to safety or security. It always leads to someone getting shot. It always leads to a false sense of security. And security guards requesting guns always is the result of undertraining and undermanagement.
If OHSU changes policy to allow security guards to use guns, it is only a matter of time before one of our friends or family members is killed.
I know this is a while after the article was written. As a police officer in the Portland area, I think you are completely distorting the issue. I carry a gun everyday I work. I have extensive training on how and when to use my gun–the same training that the OHSU officers would receive. They would be certified as peace officers and be exactly the same as any other officer in the state of Oregon. Are you objecting to police officers carrying guns on duty?
I respond to incidents at hospitals and take people to hospitals on mental holds. And guess what? I don’t shoot them. Just because the officers at OHSU would carry guns does not mean they would start shooting all the mentally ill people. The only time that would happen would be if someone posed a lethal threat, and I would sincerely hope you would not object to an officer using deadly force in that situation.
Also, the officers at OHSU are not security guards. They are Public Safety officers, meaning they have the same arrest powers as any police officer. The only difference is they are unarmed. I personally know several of the officers at OHSU, having gone through some training with them. They are some of the most professional and intelligent officers I have had the privilege to work with. I have no doubt in my mind that if they were trained in firearms and armed for their work, they would make the right decisions on if and when to use their guns.
I am in favor of gun control. However, I am also in favor of keeping OHSU campus as safe an environment as feasibly possible. I am not sure that having our current force carrying weapons on their hips is the safest answer. If (Portland PD)response time is an issue, then it might be feasible that a rack of weapons be made available in the station should such an event arise. This would help avoid an unfortunate event of unnecessary force.
Hi John. MHAP actively opposed OHSU security having guns when it was proposed in about 2010. No one joined us.