From Street Roots, September 19 2008
If anything has become clear in the two years following the beating death of James Chasse by the hands of Portland police, it is that police officers need to know what to do when responding to a situation involving someone with a mental illness.
Soon after Chasse’s death, Mayor Tom Potter convened the Mental Health Task Force. On the task force’s recommendations, Project Respond, an information referral program for people with mental illnesses, received $290,000 in additional funding to strengthen the ties between law enforcement and mental health providers to deal with individuals suffering from mental illnesses.
“Police officers are the default interveners for people with severe mental illness,” says Jason Renaud, a long-time mental health advocate and volunteer with the Mental Health Association of Portland. “They need to know what to do.”
“It takes a long time for the police to figure out a situation with someone’s that mentally ill,” says Greg Borders, Clinical Director of Crisis and Intake Services at Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare.
One of the Task Force’s recommendations was to make a training called Crisis Intervention Training mandatory for all patrol officers and their sergeants. Officers receive 40 hours of training about mental illnesses, their signs and symptoms, and how to interact with someone expressing those symptoms. Borders says that the training has helped the police to have a better understanding of how to work with individuals with a mental illness.
“There was a lot of energy after James Chasse died to increase capacity,” says Lynnae Berg, assistant chief of operations for the Portland Police Bureau.
“We really wanted to get away from the idea of us and them,” says Leisbeth Gerritson, the Portland Police’s CIT coordinator.
The program started in 1995, but was voluntary, and only a fraction of Portland’s police officers took it. Officers Christopher Humphreys and Kyle Nice, the two Portland officers who approached Chasse, did not have CIT training at the time of the incident, according to Gerritson.
As of August 2008, 554 officers have received the training, and all 612 officers will have received the training by December 2008.
With the CIT training, any officer has the knowledge to properly respond to a situation involving someone experiencing a mental health crisis.
“I think the police have been greatly educated by Project Respond over the years,” says Renaud. “How many other James Chasse’s have they intervened with and de-escalated? It’s in the thousands.”
Project Respond also funds an outreach program called Intensive Services, operated by Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare.
Partnering with law enforcement, the Intensive Services program provides outreach to homeless and housed individuals suffering from the most severe mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, thought disorders, and mental illnesses with psychotic features. The program is the only one to originate from Potter’s Task Force.
The program targets those who run afoul of law enforcement and who are “frequent users of the criminal justice system,” Borders says. “There are a lot of mentally ill folks who, because of their mental illness, come into frequent contact with the police.”
Those contacts can involve something as simple as public urination, but also petty crimes such as theft and shoplifting. But there are also times when the person is presenting a danger to himself and others.
The outreach workers work with mentally ill individuals in an effort to engage them with services that can help them receive benefits, housing, medication, and solutions other than long waits in the emergency room or short stints in the psychiatric ward.
Between the time the Intensive Services project began on April 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008, 80 individuals were served, including 35 individuals experiencing homelessness. Eight of those people were placed into housing, and three were placed into permanent housing.
On Sept. 3, City Council voted to continue funding the Intensive Services program and contracting with Cascadia.
But it raises questions as to why the city is continuing to contract with Cascadia, the state’s largest, and now discredited, mental health provider.
In April of this year, Cascadia went through a financial implosion when its bank, Capital Pacific, collected on a $2 million credit line, threatening the mental health provider with bankruptcy.
A $2.5 million loan from Multnomah County and the state’s Department of Human Services is keeping Cascadia’s doors open. Currently, other providers such as LifeWorks and Central City Concern are taking over some of Cascadia’s operations, and Multnomah County is working to create a viable future for Cascadia.
“I think our partners at the city and the county actually believe that Cascadia does excellent clinical work,” Borders says, and cites instead fiscal and administrative failings for Cascadia’s now tarnished reputation.
Having the funding and training to respond to someone in a mental health crisis, however, is not remotely close to a real solution to Portland and Multnomah County’s mental health woes.
“The answer isn’t Project Respond,” Renaud says.
State and county cuts in mental health care and Cascadia’s now wobbly existence lead Renaud to say that “the mental health system is far worse off today than it was two years ago.”
“Every other social safety net is gone, or underfunded,” Berg says. “More and more, officers are the ones who are having to respond to people in mental health crisis.”
Berg says what is needed is a mental health system more preventive in nature, allowing for intervention at an earlier point in a person’s mental illness. If people can be helped and medicated at an earlier point, Berg says, they would not enter a crisis.
“One of the biggest problems we see is that there is just a backlog,” Borders says. “We just need more of everything.”
“The sub-acute center is the big missing piece,” Renaud says, referring to an emergency psychiatric center that would be equipped to treat and house individuals experiencing a mental health crisis until they stabilized.
Creating such a facility was the number one recommendation of Potter’s Task Force, which released its recommendations in January 2007.
There was a time when such a center did exist — the Crisis Triage Center — but it was closed by the county in 2003 because of poor management. Had it existed two years ago, it could have been where police could have taken James Chasse for treatment.
Lately, there have been murmurs of such a center opening. The county is partnering with Central City Concern to build a facility that would provide mental health assessments, treatment, and evaluations at the current location of the David P. Hooper Detoxification Center in east Portland.
Funding from the county and the Portland Development Commission is set aside for the building of the center, but the money for operational costs — an estimated $3 million a year — has not yet been found.
“There’s no reason to think that it will be any time soon,” Renaud says.
I am skeptical as to the crisis intervention protocol helping in any true manner those existing stone cold police officers on our police force – who should never have been hired in the first place – and who cannot be expected to be somehow enlightened enough to suddenly treat mentally ill persons any differently. Really. Especially those like the two involved in James Chasse Jr. horrific death who had and continue to have ongoing issues with excessive force against citizens in this city – and yet Chief Sizer presumes officers like thos two just need 40 hours (and think about how little “time” 40 hours really is) of training in order to erradicate all that is wrong in their way of thinking and acting as “peace” officers who can and does act “excessively” time and time again – even to the extent as to that which wrongfully and horribly and visciously occured to James Chasse, Jr. at the hands of his “protectors”.
Skeptical. In the highest order. Not even close to enough. Until and if the ranks are purged of exceesive force abusers/thugs and their “excusers” – top to bottom.
Thanks Lorraine. Your comments efficiently collect what to us has been the major opinion of those who both have followed what happened to James closely and are not employed by the City or County.
No one is denying the necessity of police. But to manage police – or any group – it is essential to for a leader to be able to exclude individuals from the group. Potter and Sizer don’t have that power today. The obvious suggestion is that they get it, and the next opportunity to get it is by negotiating the police union contract.
You are telling me a “necessary” police in the year 2008 cannot be “policed” by its heads – the chief and/or the mayor as to purging its ranks of abusers like those two identified – who had multiple instances of exceesive abuse/use of force previous to ending wrongfully James Chasse’s life? Come on – the union can have any “opinion” they so desire as to what happened – but the “power” to act indeed does rest – today – with Chief Sizer and Mayor Potter actually acting – as they should have two years ago – by flat out firing these two. Wrong is wrong. Let the union be forewarned. WRONG is WRONG. And don’t even try – two years out – to continue to hide behind the truth. The truth “will out”….and for these two specific “officers” or any other active duty police officer in all of Portland to imagine them continuing to collect payments, pensions and benefits after what they deliberate chose to do – no way. No negotiation of future contracts will suffice as to serving justice to jim for the horrific, tortured death he endured two years ago – at the hands of his “protectors”. Until and if we close the book as to the past we cannot move forward with a new police chief, new mayor, new police union negotiated contract, and two new truly worthy police officers. “Until and if” this city stands still – and waits – and demands – JUSTICE.
Lorraine, I am not arguing with you. This is the problem of the moment.
In our discussions with police administrators, City Hall insiders, and outside attorneys, their legal opinion was uniform. The Mayor could fire the officers but unless they had broken a rule or committed a crime they, with the union, would appeal the decision and be back on the job within weeks.
We advocated, regardless of the appeal, that Potter and Wheeler fire the three officers. Potter, I think seeing a political opportunity, did fire Jeffery Kaer, who killed Dennis Young. Kaer is now back on duty.
It’s an open question whether the officers broke City or County rules – the internal investigation of what happened to James Chasse remains unfinished, and will, I have been told, remain unfinished until the family civil case is finalized. According to the attorneys in the civil case, this could take several more years. That investigation is the ONLY formal process within the union and city agreement to determine whether an officer has done something wrong.
Clearly this process violates public trust and confidence.
A grand jury did not bring criminal charges against the three officers. The district attorney also chose to not bring criminal charges against the officers. One of the many unanswered questions is, how is it that the Multnomah County District Attorney has never charged a police officer with excessive use of force?
No one ran against the current district attorney, who was elected to a, I think, fifth term this Spring.
So the political question is: who will be negotiating the police union contract in 2010, and what new facts can be on the table to influence the agreement?
Conduct unbecoming an officer – as a representative of this city is that not “evidence” enough to fire those two thugs who caused James Chasse, Jr. to no longer exist? Forget about all the “memory” details and the policy and procedure crap – when it comes down to it – supervising police entities – all up and down the governmental bureaucratic food chain have ALWAYS had before them – as to those “sworn” to uphold OUR laws and serve and protect a public entity – the base standards as to performing proficiently and honorably by their “conduct” the duties of a police officer – or not.
Simple question – was their conduct on that day – all of it – “becoming” of a Portland Police Officer on that day they both wore Portland Police uniforms and walked the streets of our city (and James’s)?
The actions – all of them – that the city of Portland’s total governmental bureaucracy, Chief Sizer, Mayor Potter, the city council, each and every legal citizen of Portland were – they “becoming”?
Come on – should have been fired the next day – if the pictures and eyewitness accounts as to when the public saw James hog tied on the street (after of course he had been approached, accosted and assaulted mortally for doing nothing wrong), when they witnessed him being denied medical treatment while they stood around drinking their drinks and making cell phone calls, and while James was heard by them to say (“James” of all innocent human beings) “what did I do wrong”? (and of course we all know he did nothing “wrong”). Perhaps his last words spoken on this earth – as they shoved him off the street on his final journey of neglect at their hands – to his subsequent wrongful, horrific death.
ALL OF IT – unbecoming. In the most gross manner. The stuff any police officer (and their union reps) should expect immediate firing from. Not two years of namby pamby (weak and indecisive) “what ifs” and scared to do the right thing “excuses” from every governmental bureaucrat in our publicly represented and publicly accountable, rights protecting AMERICAN city…
If not expressely because of what was wrongfully done to James Chasse, Jr. then why, how and why do we ever fire (and it will never suffice that another police officer being fired for seperate offenses mitigates down the need for those two officers who wrongfully killed James to be fired) – because James did not deserve any of it – to be wrongfully killed in the first place and nowm two years out, to be subsequently indifferently represented and referred to by all of us as to the most base level consequence for his completely and totally and horrificly caused death – that being the reluctance to rightfully permanently terminate two really eggregiously undeserving and totally “unbecoming” Portland Police Officers.
Come on. This never ends and/or has respectful closure until and if these unbecoming officers go away. So says the memory and the loss of precious, irreplaceable human life in total forevermore, James Chasse, Jr.