Flashback: 2013 Blog on Corrections

 In a 2013 blog post from almost eight years ago, I highlighted the a NY Times article on corrections funding versus police funding.  Many other countries spend significantly more on police than corrections. The article struck a chord with me back then as I believe the formula for successful policing is through the community policing philosophy.  Where many urban cities have gone wrong with community policing implementation is they often don't have sufficient staffing or leaders fail to recognize it is not being practiced at the street level due to internal department disconnects.  

Thursday, January 31, 2013 Chief Gordon Ramsay

Police Resources

The New York Times printed a great story on police and the impact we have on crime.  It also focused on spending for police versus the spending for incarceration.  In the story Lawrence W. Sherman,  an American criminologist on the faculties of the University of Maryland and Cambridge University in Britain is quoted saying “The United States today is the only country I know of that spends more on prisons than police."  “In England and Wales, the spending on police is twice as high as on corrections. In Australia it’s more than three times higher. In Japan it’s seven times higher. Only in the United States is it lower, and only in our recent history.”     The story goes on to focus on the relationship between more police on the street and lower crime rate.  Here's the link to the article http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/nyregion/police-have-done-more-than-prisons-to-cut-crime-in-new-york.html?hp&_r=3&pagewanted=all

The NY Times article's focus matches up with a news story by Duluth's ABC station on the additional police stationed in the area of the Last Place on Earth and how their presence is making a difference.  

So, how about cutting the Department of Corrections budget and giving that money to communities with higher crime areas to hire more police officers? 
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If I wrote this today, I would be more specific and stress with additional officers the focus must be on community policing (and as part of that - prevention through actively addressing factors that to lead crime).  For instance, we know if our youth stay in school and graduate from high school, their chances for success in life increase dramatically and their contact with the criminal justice system greatly diminishes.  What is one predictor of graduation rates?  We know if third and fourth graders read at grade level their chances of graduating greatly increases; so WPD officers go into schools and read to youth in an effort to get them interested in reading. Additionally, we have a formal mentoring program through Wichita Public Schools and Big Brothers/Big Sisters.  WPD actively takes a role in helping our youth graduate.

 Lastly, corrections is not correcting those in today's criminal justice system. I see too many parolee's released with no support and they quickly fall into their old ways.  Too many recent crimes in Wichita have been committed by parolees. Our recidivism rate is not discussed enough, but the numbers are a not a good return on our investment.

 

While some talk about police reform and police defunding we should look at our entire criminal justice system and what needs to be done to prevent crime and disorder in our cities in the first place.  

Properly funding police is key to the health of our cities.

Policing and Mental Illness Part 2

How did we get to the point where mental health care has become a police issue?  Over the last 28 years I have watched the government's response to mental illness shift from being a state issue - to being a police issue whereby too often when a person is having a mental health crisis, the police are called and sometimes the person in crisis enters the criminal justice system as a result. It has put our police and criminal justice system in a bad position and subjected our efforts to significant criticism and scorn. In turn, the narrative in 2020 has become, "the police are the problem."

In an article published on-line by Dr. Roy W. Menninger (History of the Mental Health Care System in Kansas), asylums began in the 19th Century with good intentions by volunteers; not the government.  As time went on asylums became "human warehouses." Beginning in the 1950's there became a growing focus on deinstitutionalization as the conditions in many of the state hospitals were facing increasing scrutiny of their conditions and treatment of patients.  

Menninger writes "Albert Deutsch published Shameof the States (1948), reflecting the horrors of state hospitals, primarily Byberry in Philadelphia: patients flung into misery and seemingly forgotten. But it was intended as a call for reform, not censure or closure. Further exposure of state hospital conditions in the movie of MJ Ward’s novel,“The Snake Pit,” (1949) starring Olivia de Havilland; on the cover of Time magazine."  At the height of the use of state hospitals, Menninger reports Kansas had approximately 5,000 beds.

The development and use of antipsychotic drugs also grew and the focus became "community based" mental health - that is, moving the patients from the institutions and back to their hometowns and closer to their families. Menninger goes further saying, "Deinstitutionalization was the true ‘shame of the states.’ One-third became homeless; many transferred to other institutions lacking treatment capabilities: nursing homes, boarding houses, etc. and especially jails. In short, it was transinstitutionalization, not deinstitutionalization."

As I worked the streets, the increase of those in a mental health crisis was significant.  Some of the mental illness was organic, some was from meth and other illegal drugs, and some was a combination of both. The more I worked to address repeat calls for service, the more I saw a significant percentage were driven by those in crisis and drug addiction. I began to work closer with social workers to obtain civil commitments with the goal of helping the individual in crisis and resolving on-going calls. While we increased our communication with our social workers, we still operated out of silos. As different social workers and supervisors came and went, we would undergo the time-consuming process of building relationships, understanding and work to solve problems. 

I had been gently pushing for social workers to be embedded in the police department since we were the first responders for those in crisis. We also had the database for those threatening suicide, attempting suicide, and those who were homeless and a danger to themselves and others. I wanted social workers to have access to our database and respond and address those in crisis using their knowledge and systems in order to effectively stabilize the individual. Despite a lot of conversations, we were unable to get the right people's attention to fund these positions.

  

Everything came to a head in 2013 or 2014 when an officer shot a suicidal male who was in a meth-induced psychosis and came at the officer with a butcher knife. Fortunately the male lived, but what we found when we completed a review of the incident showed significant gaps in our systems that needed addressing. If my memory serves me correctly, the male had been the subject of four police calls for threatening suicide. Each time officers responded they were able to get the male in for an evaluation without any problems. After the evaluation, the male was always released by a doctor as he agreed to attend a voluntary treatment program at a later date.  On the fifth suicide incident in a 10 day period, the male was shot by a police officer.  We found the paperwork completed by the treating physician had not yet made its way to the social workers for follow up.

  

It was clear to me that we needed to expedite our response. I approached several county commissioners and shared the details of what we found. I requested that they fund an embedded social worker to review all suicide and mental illness calls daily so we could respond more nimbly and quickly to someone in crisis needing immediate help. The commissioners bought into the idea and funded the first embedded social worker program in the state of Minnesota.  

In Wichita we collaborated to create ICT-1, which has shown significant success; you can read more about it here. We continue to build on the need for an integrated response to mental health in our community in an effort to move mental health crisis response away from only being a police issue.  In my next post I will write more about how we are evolving and making lives safer by collaborating with our community partners on this critical issue.

The Evolution of Mental Illness and Policing Part 1

 The Evolution of Mental Illness and Policing Part 1

Over the 27 years of serving as a police officer, I have seen the number of mental health calls for police skyrocket. In Minnesota mental health care went from being a State responsibility to that of police and the criminal justice system. Moose Lake State Hospital who served the severely mentally ill in our area Minnesota closed in 1995 and ironically enough, became a State prison (https://mn.gov/mnddc/past/pdf/00s/07/07-DHS-ENG.pdf).

My first foray as a police officer into the mental health world was in the mid- 90s after we continually received 911 calls on a severely mentally ill man who would self medicate with illegal drugs and alcohol. I had been a police officer a few years and was getting frustrated along with other cops and community members with habitual offenders - often with an increasing connection to mental illness.  I worked at the bottom of the chain and on the street, but I would frequently hear from administrators that State help for the number with mental illness had dried up.   

His name has faded from my memory, but I still remember his face and how he could stare right through me in an eerie way.  I once had memorized his full name and D.O.B. I can now only recall he had a “Z” in his name.  Rumor had it he had a twin brother who looked a lot like him and never had any problems.  As Z wandered around downtown he would generate a significant number of 911 calls as he would approach people in a threatening manner, grab at them, shout and swear; often with drool and mucus dripping down his face.  

Trying to move Z along and send him on his way was always fruitless as he stood his ground like a lion.  We tried every type of approach you could imagine; the best friend approach, the extremely polite approach, the kind and caring approach, the direct approach, the threaten-to- arrest approach, the threaten detox approach, and any other legal approach we could think of.  Hammering Z with detox, jail and tickets had only a temporary impact and felt like putting a bandaid on a gaping wound. 

During this time, we were also seeing more individuals downtown with mental health issues.  Complaints about people sleeping in the skywalks, panhandling, and being disorderly in areas around downtown were growing.  Further, Downtown businesses started expressing concerns about their patrons’ growing fear of crime.  

I had fought with the wiry Z many times while trying to take him into custody; he never went without a struggle.  We realized it was only a matter of time before he, an officer, or an innocent person was going to get injured. As a habitual problem solver I wanted to find a solution. Through our continued contact, we realized if we could stabilize Z’s mental health and get him drug and alcohol treatment, he would likely no longer be a problem. 

It seemed as if our systems were failing and it was up to the police to figure it out. While digging around for solutions, we learned there was a process County Social Services used that could commit an individual for treatment to get them the help they needed.  I reached out to the supervisor of the County unit and initially received a cold reception.  That same week we were dealing with Z repeatedly. It was that same week I hurt my arm while trying to arrest him.  

The next week I hit the Social Services supervisor up again and changed my tactic to that of concern for the welfare of police officers and Z himself.  I told her that an officer was going to get severely hurt or worse and Z was a danger to both us and him and that his case needed to be addressed.  Two weeks later Z was committed to treatment and I never saw or heard from him again. Finally, after years of repeated arrests hundreds of 911 calls, the system finally appeared to have worked. Z’s name would occasionally come up at shift briefings when officers would say, “remember when Z” did this or that, but less and less as time went on; today there are probably only a few officers who would remember him. 

I tell Z’s story to illustrate how mental health impacts policing and our communities.  Sadly, the issues around those in mental health crisis has worsened.  Many of us have been trying to bring attention to the over-reliance on police for social issues like this for several decades.  Maybe this year we have reached a point where there is recognition that resources are needed for those in crisis and suffering from addiction like they were decades ago……

Police did not receive training on mental illness in the 90's and before. My only education related to mental health was a college psychology class. Today, most officers received basic mental health training at the academy, but the civil commitment process or how to get an individual off of the streets beyond a short visit to the ER or crisis center for long term help is still a mystery for many officers.

In part 2, I will write more about this critical issue for our cities.