From the Oregonian, October 30 2008

Portland Police Chief Rosie Sizer has asked internal affairs investigators who reviewed the Sept. 17, 2006 death of James P. Chasse Jr. to go back and examine a newly-released and enhanced jailhouse video that captures officers’ earliest statements about what occurred.

The video, released by Chasse’s family attorney and shared with the city, appears to contradict at least one Portland officer’s earlier account.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5514445339177721643&hl=en]

“I have asked the Internal Affairs Division to review all statements made by every member of the Police Bureau to determine if it would be appropriate to open a new investigation,” Sizer said in a written statement. “If appropriate I will do so.”

There’s no doubt police knocked Chasse, a 42-year-old man suffering from schizophrenia, to the ground that night, and later struggled with him before he died in police custody.

But did officers involve “tackle” him in a “bear hug” as several witnesses, including one Portland sergeant, originally reported, or did one of the officers shove him and then fall onto the sidewalk without landing on top of him as that officer had told investigating detectives?

The newly released videotape of officers talking at the jail after they carried Chasse in that night captures Portland Officer Christopher Humphreys telling a sheriff’s deputy that “we tackled him” and Chasse landed “hard,” according to the video released Thursday by Portland Attorney Tom Steeson, the Chasse family attorney, and first made public by the Portland Tribune.

Humphreys’ statements at the jail, coming within an hour of the police confrontation with Chasse, appear to contradict the account Humphreys gave to Portland detectives in the police investigation three days later. Humphreys told Portland detectives he shoved Chasse down with both his forearms against Chasse’s back, adding “which, it says we trained to do on foot pursuits. ” Humphreys said he fell onto the sidewalk, past Chasse, according to police transcripts.

As Humphreys is heard talking to jail intake staff in the video, his partner, Deputy Bret Burton is seen illustrating a “bear-hug” stance, which is not how police are trained, and mimics the sound heard when Chasse’s body landed on pavement. In the jailhouse video, the two officers also can be heard telling the jail staff how the whole incident occurred in front of Blue Hour patrons, conjecturing while some were eating their steaks.

The 13-minute video ends with police and jail sheriff’s deputies hauling Chasse out of jail. Chasse can be heard loudly moaning with a so-called jail spitsock over his head. Chasse died as police were driving him to a hospital. He sustained 26 fractures early in his encounter with police and died from broad-based blunt force trauma to his chest, according to the state medical examiner’s office.

The video, which was enhanced by professionals to make the dialogue intelligible, likely will play a role in the pending federal civil rights lawsuit the Chasse family has filed against the city, police and county.

Jason Renaud, who knew Chasse and is a volunteer with the Mental Health Association of Portland, called the video “horrible.”

“It shows the callous and sarcastic character of the people in the video,” Renaud said. “It shows Jim in a lot of distress…He’s still hog-tied, with that degrading spitsock over his face, shrieking in pain and in fear. This looks just terrible for the city.”

Renaud said Humphreys shouldn’t be an officer.

A version of the jailhouse videotape had been examined during the police internal affairs investigation. Steenson had obtained that videotape from the county shortly after Chasse’s death through a public information request. But his office paid out-of-state professionals to enhance the audio and reduce the background noise so the dialogue between officers and jailhouse deputies could be audible. The city, during the course of the pending civil litigation, also had made video enhancements, but Steenson made further enhancements, and released the outcome to the media and the city this week.

“Our system of justice depends on a careful and complete presentation of the evidence before an unbiased jury,” City Attorney Linda Meng said, in a statement issued today. “We believe that selective release of potential evidence before trial is not consistent with this principle.”

A Multnomah County grand jury found no criminal wrongdoing in the case. The police internal investigation to determine whether or not the officers acted according to policy went before a bureau use of force review board earlier this month, more than two years after Chasse’s death. The board’s recommendations have been sent to the police chief, who has not issued any decision.

Burton, who worked as a deputy for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office at the time of the incident, was since hired by Portland police.

Humphrey’s initial and informal jailhouse account of what occurred supports witness statements provided early in the investigation.

The criminal investigation by Portland detectives also had revealed conflicting stories by the three officers involved.

Based on interview transcripts, Sgt. Kyle Nice told detectives he saw Humphreys grab Chasse in a “bear-hug-type” hold and tackle him to the ground, which is not what Portland police train officers to do. He said Humphreys fell on top of Chasse in the midback area. Burton told detectives he saw Chasse and Humphreys collide but wasn’t sure how they landed.

EXTRA – Video Adds New Wrinkle To The Case Of James Chasse, OPB.com
EXTRA – Video offers different take on Portland arrest, AP

From the Portland Mercury, October 30 2008

Earlier today I linked to Nick Budnick’s Tribune story about the release of new video footage showing the cops who arrested James Chasse, in the jail booking area, talking about how they tackled him to the ground. Now, Police Chief Rosie Sizer and the City Attorney, Linda Meng, have put out a statement:

It’s interesting to note the city attorney attacking the Chasse family’s lawyers for releasing the video. They don’t explain why the internal affairs investigation into the officers’ behavior, relating to the death, remains incomplete more than two years after the fact. Where’s the fairness in that, I wonder?

The statement also appears to contradict public relations wisdom, which is: Don’t attack the distributor of the message, attack the message itself. Or stay silent. Attacking the lawyers for releasing the video to the press is likely to leave the public asking, “is that all you got?” It’s Palin school…almost comes across as haughty. Very strange.

Maxine Bernstein has more coverage at the Oregonian.

From KPTV.com, October 30, 2008

A video obtained by FOX 12 and the Portland Tribune may shed new light on the arrest of James Chasse, who died in police custody in 2006.

Cop in video: ‘We tackled’ Chasse – Officer’s early account of fracas at odds with official statement

From the Portland Tribune, October 29 2008

WATCH – Full 13 minute video of James Chasse being ‘booked’ at the Multnomah County Detention Center on September 17 2006.

As Police Chief Rosie Sizer continues to weigh possible discipline for officers involved in the controversial 2006 death of James Chasse Jr., a jail video obtained by the Portland Tribune raises the question of whether Portland Police officer Christopher Humphreys was truthful with investigators in the case.

On Sept. 17, 2006, Humphreys, Sgt. Kyle Nice and Sheriff’s Deputy Bret Burton gave chase to Chasse, whom they suspected of having been urinating in public in Northwest Portland near the Bluehour restaurant.

The officers subdued Chasse — who resisted furiously, according to eye witnesses — and took him to jail. Nurses there refused to accept him due to the extent of his injuries. The officers then took him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:04 p.m.

A medical examiner the next day conducted an autopsy and found that Chasse, a paranoid schizophrenic, died of “blunt force trauma.” The 42-year-old, 145-pound man suffered at least 26 broken and shattered bones in his rib cage and a punctured left lung.

The fact that no Portland officers personally admitted exerting enough force to cause so many injuries has led to continuing questions about how Chasse died.

However, the video — recorded in the booking area of the jail after Chasse was put in solitary confinement but before he died— appears to shed light on that mystery. That’s because Humphreys admits in it that “we tackled” Chasse to subdue him before the arrest —which appears to significantly contradict what Humphreys told criminal detectives three days later.

According to a transcript of his Sept. 20, 2006, interview with Detective Lynn Courtney, Humphreys said that he “shoved” Chasse and fell past him to land squarely onto the sidewalk, as opposed to falling on top of Chasse while tackling him. Also, Humphreys — who outweighed Chasse by about 100 pounds — claimed he did not recall how Chasse fell, on his face or otherwise.

Humphreys’ account to the detective — provided while accompanied by a criminal defense lawyer, Steve Myers — would appear to exonerate the officer of culpability in Chasse’s death.

Video gives another story

However, a Portland Tribune review of the jail video shows that on the night in question, less than an hour after the initial 5:18 p.m. police contact with Chasse, Humphreys gave a significantly different version to jail deputies in the booking area.

“He fell hard,” Humphreys said at 6:14 p.m. to two jail deputies, according to the video. “… we tackled him.”

As Humphreys spoke, Sheriff’s Deputy Bret Burton, while standing next to him in the booking area, held his arms in a huglike motion while leaning forward, apparently providing color for Humphreys’ account. Then Burton appeared to simulate the impact of Chasse hitting the ground: “Doofh!” he said.

While Humphreys’ account to jail deputies seems at odds with what he later told detectives, the initial version is consistent with eyewitness accounts.

“A straight bearhug-type tackle” is how Nice described Humphrey’s takedown of Chasse to detectives, echoing other witnesses.

Besides shedding light on the lingering questions around Chasse’s death, the new information is significant because an officer who is found to have lied in an official investigation can be disciplined and even terminated.

Moreover, the contrasting statements by Humphreys could become a factor in the Chasse family’s wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Portland.
Bureau, police union mum

The Tribune obtained the video recording from the family’s lawyer, Tom Steenson, who obtained it through a public records request. Steenson hired a consulting firm founded by two former FBI agents to reduce the recording’s background noise.

“It’s basically getting rid of static,” Steenson said of the consulting firm’s services. He declined to otherwise comment.

Portland Police spokesman Sgt. Brian Schmautz declined to comment on the discrepancy between what Humphreys says on the video and what he told detectives.

Schmautz said Chief Sizer could not comment on the pending case either. No current officers would comment on the record about the discrepancy when contacted by the Portland Tribune, and Portland Police Association President Robert King did not respond to voice-mails.

However, when told of the discrepancy between Humphreys’ accounts, retired Portland officer Tom Mack, a frequent critic of police bureau administration, said,“I don’t necessarily have a problem with police tackling people. But I do believe that when asked, you should say what you did and how you did it.” Of the city attorneys handling the case, he added, “Clearly they have a problem.”

City Commissioner Randy Leonard, who has followed the case in the news, and who has been critical of Sizer, said that any conflict in Humphreys’ statements should be investigated. “If there are misleading statements, if there are omissions that have impact, (they) should result in severe consequences.”

The Portland Police Bureau no longer trains its officers to tackle subjects, due to the possibility of injury. Rather, they are trained to push suspects near the shoulder blades in an attempt to push them over.

According to Schmautz, the city was unable to enhance the video sufficiently to understand Humphreys’ statements.

Retired Capt. C.W. Jensen formerly headed the bureau’s internal affairs unit that investigates alleged officer misconduct. Contacted by the Tribune, he said that while he thinks Humphreys’ comments are open to interpretation, the video should have been enhanced properly by the city.

“This isn’t 1960. That technology is available,” he said.

This is not the first time a recording has become an issue in an arrest by Humphreys.

In 2000, based on a recording of a Humphreys’ arrest that was made without his knowledge, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office referred the arrest to the U.S. Attorney’s office for possible federal criminal charges against the police officer, documents show.

In the case in question, a man pulled over by Humphreys was charged with possession of a controlled substance after Humphreys found drugs in his car. Humphreys said the driver, Gary Prein, gave his consent to the search which produced the drugs.

However, the defendant’s lawyer claimed Humphreys never obtained his client’s consent before searching the vehicle. He submitted a video to prosecutors from a camera that Prein had turned on during the arrest.

While the video did not pick up anything, its audio microphone caught parts of Prein’s interaction with Humphreys. On the recording, Prein cannot be heard giving his consent, according to the prosecutors who reviewed the recording.

+++

Mark McDonnell, the prosecutor in that case, told the Portland Tribune that while the recording and questions raised were sufficient to cause him to halt his prosecution of Prein, it was not clear enough to prove Humphreys had lied.

McDonnell’s account is substantiated by an Oct. 12, 2000, letter to John Bradley, a top assistant to Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schrunk. In it, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Peifer wrote that based on interviewing Prein and reviewing the recording, his office would be unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Humpheys had lied.

McDonnell told the Tribune that after the Prein case was dropped, he tracked Humphreys’ cases, and did not see any further evidence of untruthfulness.

For a local prosecutor to refer a police officer to the U.S. Attorney for possible criminal charges is unusual. However, Bradley said the referral may have been because Oregon law barred his office from using a recording made without Humphreys’ consent, while federal authorities did not face the same prohibition.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5514445339177721643&hl=en]
This video is from a security camera in the booking area of the Multnomah County Detention Center, managed by the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department. The video was made on September 17 2008 and shows James Chasse, mortally wounded by a beating from two Portland police officers and a Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputy, hogtied and hauled into the booking area. Officers have put a ’spit sock’ over James’ head.

James Chasse’s autopsy shows he died from ‘blunt force trauma’ which included 26 breaks to his ribs and a punctured lung. County Medical Examiner Karen Gunson described Chasse’s death as ‘accidental.’

From this location, the arresting officers tried to drive James Chasse in a squad car to a psychiatric hospital over 100 blocks away. Two trauma hospitals and four hospitals with ready emergency rooms seem to have not been considered.

Chasse died enroute.

The Chasse family attorney, supported by a second autopsy done at the family’s request, opined James would have likely survived if taken immediately to the nearest hospital.

From the Portland Tribune, October 20 2008 (scroll to the bottom of the page)

Excerpts from a Portland Police Bureau transcript of the Sept. 20, 2006, interview of officer Christopher Humphreys by police homicide Detective Lynn Courtney.

Humphreys: … I catch up to him and I basically just, uh, as I’m kinda matching his speed, I gave him a really hard shove with my forearms on his back. Um, and uh, which, it, it says we trained to do on foot pursuits.

You know, you either run up behind ’em and hit ’em in the back to kinda trip up their steps, break the rhythm of their steps and that’s exactly what it did. I mean, it tripped up his rhythm, uh, I think maybe he took one step after I hit him and he went down and I went right past him about one step. Because basically what I’d done was tripped up my rhythm too when I hit ’em and I got maybe one step and then I just went boom, down right on the ground.

Um, and I, I actually Iremember was just goin’ down I thought, ‘Boy this is gonna hurt, um, on the pavement.’ And I, I land on the pavement …

Courtney: So when you fell, um, after you pushed him and got tripped up. Did you fall on the sidewalk, did you say not on him?

Humphreys: Yeah, I fell on the sidewalk. I went right, right over and past him.

(Later in the conversation)

Courtney: And how did he fall? Did he fall face first, on his side, do you recall?

Humphreys: I, you know what, I don’t even recall. Um, I mean I went right over and did this shoulder roll land and flipped right back on my, or I landed basically on my back …

Courtney: … So, you roll over and you don’t actually land on him in any way.

Humphreys: No.

Courtney: When you uh, stumble and fall too.

Humphreys: No.

Big cover story in the Portland Tribune today about a security camera video of the Multnomah County Jail on September 17 2006.

The story describes how in the video officer Christopher Humphrey and deputy Bret Burton contradict their sworn testimony later given to homicide detective Lynn Courtney. The video also shows in detail the deputies reaction to James as he is brought into the booking area, mortally wounded and hogtied.

The story by Nick Budnick is well worth reading. The video below, deep on the Tribune web site, is chilling.

EXTRA – Chasse Booking Video – 13 minutes

EXTRA – Cop in video: ‘We tackled’ Chasse

EXTRA – Tribune: Chasse homicide transcript conflicts with videotape

Richard Harris takes on Oregon’s Mental Health and Addictions Division

Interview by Amanda Waldroupe, published by Street Roots, October 24 2008

The Oregon office of Addictions and Mental Health Division is moving and shaking.

On September 12, it was announced that Richard Harris, 68, the retiring executive director of Central City Concern, would replace Bob Nikkel and serve as interim director of the division.

Tapping Harris to head the Addictions and Mental Health office, which is a division within the state’s Department of Human Services, is nothing short of bold: His admirers say Harris is perhaps the only person in the state who has the integrity and experience to tackle the challenges facing Oregon’s mental health and drug treatment systems.

Some of those challenges include a dilapidated state hospital that was taken through the wringer by an investigation conducted by the Department of Justice released in January of this year, determining the future of Cascadia after its April financial implosion, bolstering the state’s community health systems, and all in times of scarce financial resources.

Harris has a solution, one that he has found working for Central City Concern for 29 years. The social service agency’s nationally recognized way of providing alcohol, addiction and mental health services—combining supportive services with housing in a supportive community—is a model he hopes to begin replicating at the state level.

Harris started the job on Monday, September 29. In an interview with Street Roots, Harris talked about his plans for being interim director and some of the challenges he faces.

Amanda Waldroupe: Why are you coming out of retirement to be the interim director of Addictions and Mental Health Division?

Richard Harris: I was on the track to retire. I had a series of meetings with Bruce Goldberg (Director of the Oregon Department of Human Services). After one of those meetings, he asked me if I would consider coming to AMH on an interim basis while the department did a national search. I wrestled with that about a month, trying to understand what it really meant. Bruce and I had several conversations. I think we came to the understanding that we had a mutual interest. My interest was in preparing the AMH in adopting an integrated model or approach to the problems of addiction and mental health. That means combining health, housing, employment services, and drug services in a more coordinated and integrated fashion. I think that’s Bruce’s dream, and I think that’s my dream.

A.W. What is important about an integrated approach? Why is it needed?

R.H. My experience on the ground here, operating programs over the last 25 to 29 years, has been a gradual understanding of how powerful housing combined with services becomes if you’re trying to intervene with problems like homelessness, addiction, and mental health.

The synergy that comes from housing combined with services is pretty amazing. When we started, we thought were just trying to get people into addiction and drug treatment services. Only later when we started combining the services did we understand why services were more effective when people are in more stable housing. And housing worked better for people if they had adequate services. This integrated service model is not easy to do. It’s very challenging. We see the outcomes. Since the state of Oregon is not organized, it requires working with all levels to find common ground here. That is the dialog I want to see get started.

We’ve learned a lot about how we make alcohol and drug services effective. I think we have (Central City Concern) about the most effective alcohol and drug treatment program certainly amongst any alcohol and drug programs I know of. A lot of it has to do with providing housing, and providing recovery mentors, on top of what we might call normal outpatient services. If you’re dealing with a late stage alcoholic population, getting people to live in sober environments is huge. If you put the right pieces in place, you get much better results. What we’ve learned is that we get very good outcomes with serious heroin addicts when we provide mentors, acupuncture, health care, alcohol and drug treatment and housing. If you took any of those elements out, you get less outcomes.

A.W. What works and what doesn’t work?

R.H. Housing is critical to the issue. Not only does it meet a basic need that people have, but we’ve come to see housing as a place and environment where not only healing takes place but positive relationship building. 8 NW 8th is more about a supportive based community. You build self-esteem and it comes from other people. Personal relationships are what matters. People will stay clean and sober because they’ve incorporated it into their lives. People who want to stay clean and sober will do it better when they have support from their peers. Housing creates a sense of community for someone. Their thinking is not all jumbled up with drugs. Housing does two things: creates a supportive community, and it does put a sense of security in your life. All of those are elemental.

I have learned so much from people in recovery. We need to make sure part of who we’re listening to is people effected by services. It’s inspirational, motivational, but because of experience, they have a unique view of how to deliver services. I intend to listen to and rely on a lot of people who have been through these issues.

A.W. You believe the Oregon Health Plan (OHP) should be playing a larger role in helping individuals dealing with a mental health problem. What would you like to see change with OHP?

R.H. I think the Oregon Health Plan was a bold move to advance this type of health insurance program, and we’ve just backed off of it by chopping it down. It’s cost us more money to leave uninsured people on the streets.

One of the things I want to look at is adding people back into the plan, particularly people who have alcohol, drug, and mental health issues. What are the cost drivers in our criminal justice system, in our mental health system? Ultimately, what you come down to is if you don’t treat addictions, you do it in the jails. Over 70% of people in prison are there as a result of addiction or a drug related crime.

A.W. How does spending money on policies like mandatory minimums affect Oregon’s ability to provide adequate mental health care?

R.H. We’re in a situation where if you spend money on jails and prisons you’re not going to spend it on health care and mental health. The two ballot measures (Measures 57 and 61) are likely to have a huge financial impact. It’s a problem.

I’m very much interested in how our next Attorney General (John Kroger) is going to take this on, because he clearly understands if you don’t do something about addiction issues, you can’t get a hold of criminality issues. The most effective way to reduce crime is to get addicts off the street. But where is he going to get the money? If you’re spending resources on more prisons, it’s less money in the zero sum game we have in the state budget.

A.W. What do you think is the single biggest challenge for Oregon’s mental health system?

R. H. I’m not sure. I’m an outsider. I don’t spend my everyday thinking about what the biggest challenges are to the mental health system. I think there are a lot of challenges. I do believe that people will probably agree that there are a lack of resources to deliver the quality of services that people deserve. It goes without saying that it’s under funded. The question is how you focus and prioritize resources, and how you make services more effective.

A.W. Since Cascadia defaulted on a 2.5 million dollar credit line, the county, state and service agencies have stepped up to continue funding Cascadia or taking over some of its services. What if Cascadia, Oregon’s largest mental health provider, fails or gets so small that it cannot offer the same services to its clients?

R. H. We’ve downsized it so far and that seems to be working. That means there’s far less pressure on Cascadia. It’s down to a manageable size. They’ll be more focused. That probably will work. If it doesn’t, it means another agency may need to consider taking on some of the services Cascadia provides. Cascadia needs to be successful. This is a complicated population of people to serve. I’m fairly optimistic that (the actions taken) will help them stay solvent.

A.W. The Department of Justice investigation on the conditions and practices of the Oregon State Hospital (OSH), released in January of 2008, concluded that “numerous conditions and practices at OSH violate the constitutional and statutory rights of its residents.” What do you think are appropriate responses to improving the conditions at the Oregon State Hospital?

R. H. It’s not an area I’m particularly knowledgeable about, but ultimately, someone else is responsible for that. The thing I would say about the State Hospital…is that they are necessary services for some, and that they should be seen as they typically are, as services of last resort. You enhance state hospital programs by providing effective community health services. Funding adequately that kind of community mental health structure has never really happened in Oregon. We have been struggling with this issue for a long time.

A.W. The big missing lynchpin of Multnomah County’s mental health system is a sub acute center. There have been movements lately to get one started. What can the state do to help the county achieve this?

R.H. That’s a really good question. I’m not sure if I know enough about the way state resources can be directed to counties for certain things. That’s something I need to learn more about. It’s going to take some assistance from the state to create the services.

A.W. The anniversary of James Chasse’s death recently passed (on September 17). What do you think of the strides Multnomah County and Portland have made since his death?

R.H. My understanding is that there’s been some additional training for the police and added resources. Is that enough? I think you have to look at what kind of services you’re going to provide and whether they’re going to be adequate. Because he (Chasse) was involved in services. He had housing. I’m not sure that this won’t repeat.

Utne Reader has an interesting overview of recent magazine news stories about the criminalization of mental illness in it’s November – December 2008 issue.

It’s become a well-paying career for thousands of writers, actors, journalists, commentators, musicians – artists and creative people of all sorts – to portray persons with mental illness as dangerous and violent.

“The fact is that the mentally ill are rarely violent and contribute very little to overall violence in the United States,” writes psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman in “The Politics of Mental Illness,” an outstanding 24-page special report in the July-August issue of the American Prospect. But it’s easy to see why this myth needs dispelling: Friedman points to a 2005 study of 70 major newspapers that found that 39 percent of stories about mentally ill people “focused on dangerousness.”

Even the Portland Mercury makes the cut with a brief quote from a spokesperson for the Mental Health Association of Portland.

In Portland, Oregon, mental health advocates eagerly await the start of their own [mental health court] pilot project, says the Portland Mercury (May 1, 2008). “If we actually provided effective, outcome-based treatment on demand for mental health clients in Oregon,” mental health advocate Jason Renaud told the Mercury, “you could probably shut down one hospital and two prisons within two years.”

To: All DHS employees
From: Bruce Goldberg, M.D., director
Subject: Our clients’ voices
Date: October 24, 2008

“We are not the worst moments of our lives.”
~Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

Recently I participated in a panel discussion about community treatment facilities for people with mental illness. It was clear from some of the questions to the panel that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about mental illness in our society. And, unfortunately, that misunderstanding can breed fear. I also was struck by something else as I sat in the front of the room next to several public officials: There was no one on the panel speaking from the perspective of a person who is living with mental illness.

The lack of that perspective in these types of forums is a mistake, because it allows people to marginalize, stigmatize and fear mental illness, and that creates barriers that prevent successful mental health treatment.

The reality is that people with mental illness live independently, hold down jobs and do quite well on their own. Others need more supervision for their illness, just as people with other illnesses do. Some people need intensive treatment in the hospital. Others move in and out of the hospital. And some individuals have committed crimes as a result of their mental illness.

One of those people is Ashleigh Brenton, who spoke last month in front of the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners at a public meeting about a community treatment facility in Milwaukie. She said that people who meet her are surprised to learn about her criminal record and that at one point she was a danger to herself and others, which led her to spend time in the Oregon State Hospital. People are surprised because today she is a student at Portland State University who looks more like a kindergarten teacher than the stereotype of someone with mental illness.

“Mental illness is a chemical imbalance for the most part and it can be treatable and people can live very productive lives and give back to society,” Brenton told the county commissioners.

Brenton’s story is particularly important today because it’s also an example of why community treatment facilities are so important. Her treatment was completed, she was stable and ready to be discharged from the hospital, but there were no openings in a community treatment facility for her, so her discharge was delayed. She said she wanted to speak out because she believes that stigmas against mental illness can contribute to lack of community support for local treatment options.

“Our community members are just too afraid of what they don’t understand,” she said.

Brenton is one of the nearly 400 people in Oregon who are living examples of the state’s safe and successful program for integrating people who committed crimes as a result of mental illness back into the community. There are people like her in nearly every county in the state. Approximately 25 percent live independently — on their own or with their families. Another 25 percent live in a treatment facility. The rest are clients who live in a range of supported housing.

The fact is, people with mental illness who require treatment have been successfully living in your neighborhoods, in my neighborhood, for decades. The safety record of this program is stellar, with a recividism rate of just 2.2 percent compared to more than 30 percent for people coming out of the prison system.

Community placement is so successful that it is the cornerstone of the modern mental health treatment system we are building for all our clients — both forensic and civilly committed. It is part of the continuum of care that starts and ends locally so that everyone in Oregon can get treatment that may help prevent their illness from requiring hospitalization and also get the support they need when their time in the hospital is finished.

In order to succeed we must work together to overcome the stigma of mental illness that results in fear and prejudice. And we must listen to people like Ashleigh Brenton when they tell us their stories.

Thanks to DAWG Oregon for bringing this note to our attention.

OUR COMMENT – Presenting this message prior to the cavalcade of fear surrounding the Columbia Care Services project in Clackamas County – which started in JANUARY – would have shown the county commissioners outside expertise instead of accepting a default mode, which has been to agree with whoever is in the room at the moment. Outside expertise, a voice of authority, is one of the few useful assets the state DHS leadership can provide locally.

Wonder why Dr. Goldberg decided to wait eleven months before speaking up?

By not being a active advocate for persons with mental illness and for the law, and by not supporting independent mental health advocates, Dr. Goldberg undermined the Columbia Care Services project and allowed neighborhood activists to use fear and stigma to characterize the discussion.

Our suggestion – Dr. Goldberg needs to put the welfare of persons with mental illness and addiction at the forefront of his workload and DHS needs to provide support for community mental health advocates who have been shouldering this load to date.

Joe Robertson
OHSU President
Sent by email 10 24 2008

Dear Joe,

I was contacted yesterday by a colleague, a mental health advocate, who asked for advice about an OHSU survey about giving your security guards pistols and rifles.

For your reference I have been an active advocate here in Portland for persons with mental illness and addiction for over 20 years. I serve as secretary to the board of the Mental Health Association of Portland and act as it’s spokesperson. For more information about our organization, see our web site at www.mentalhealthportland.org. Because we do our business in public, I’ve shared this letter on our web site.

Arming hospital security guards with deadly force poses an immediate and active threat to persons with mental illness, and also to persons who are confused, drunk, disoriented, demented or strange.

OHSU is an emergency hospital and a trauma hospital. It has a large, active psychiatric ward. Hundreds of persons of all sorts and with all sorts of disorders which make communication with authorities difficult come to this hospital every day for help.

And predictably persons seeking treatments from hospitals like OHSU have often waited longer than they should and therefore are in more distress. This economic fact can be anticipated and responded to with compassion, with understanding, and with tactics.

Hospitals need to be a haven of hope, of serenity, of change and of peace for just these kind of people. You have a choice: anticipate distress and respond with compassion – or with gunfire. Which choice matches the mission of your hospital?

From our perspective, adding guns to this situation is never a good idea. It never leads to safety or security. It always leads to a patient or prospective patient getting shot. It always leads to a false sense of security. And security guards requesting pistols and rifles is always the result of under-training and under-management.

The Portland Police Bureau’s policy is officers cannot bring guns into hospitals unless there is a emergency call. This policy is the result of three Portland officers shooting and killing a patient at a psychiatric hospital in 2003.

For the Portland Police Bureau – guns and hospitals don’t mix. OHSU should be no different.

If OHSU does change it’s policy to allow officers to use pistols and rifles while on duty, it is only a matter of time before one of our friends or family members is killed. Our organization would ask our supporters and allies to consider OHSU a dangerous place to seek help and a shameful place to work.

The request by your security guards for weaponry is revealing. It suggests OHSU doesn’t now have sufficient training for it’s security guards and ancillary staff, so they are less fearful of your patients, so they can anticipate problems with difficult or disoriented persons, and so they can respond with better communication or by calling for help rather than shooting one our friends or family members. If this is true, it seems exceptionally risky in our litigious world.

If OHSU wants to provide the best training security guards we suggest you consult with an expert at the Portland Police Bureau who train officers to better manage crisis, including persons with acute mental illness. They have fully implemented and improved the national model program for police management of persons in crisis.

Thanks!

Jason Renaud
Mental Health Association of Portland

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Dr. Robertson responds,

Dear Jason,

I very much appreciate your input. The matter of armed officers is a very serious one. I honestly do not know what the best solution is. OHSU is isolated and the literature clearly shows that if there is a shooter on campus a delay in response costs lives. There are also those on campus such as emergency personnel whose role places them at statistically significant increased risk for armed attack. On the other hand we do not want to become an armed camp nor do we want to put any innocent individuals at unnecessary or inappropriate risk. I personally do not know how to best balance these sometimes conflicting goals and that is why I have appointed a commission with considerable expertise and diverse representation to study the matter.

Your input will be relayed to them and I can assure you that it will be seriously considered by the commission and by me.

Thanks again for taking the time to express your opinion and concerns.

Joe

EXTRA – Oregon Health & Science University considers arming security guards, KGW.com
EXTRA – Public Hearing to Discuss Having Armed Officers on OHSU Campus, OHSU.edu

History detectives searching through 100-year-old newspaper clippings, cemetery maps and records from Oregon’s first insane asylum think patients are buried under a parking lot at Portland’s Lone Fir Cemetery.

Records show that at least 140 indigent patients are buried at the cemetery, and most are probably near or under the lot at Southeast Morrison and 21st.

Now advocates including Friends of Lone Fir and Metro, which manages the historic cemetery, are working to make sure the forgotten residents — along with turn-of-the century Chinese workers buried nearby — are remembered in a memorial garden on the site.

Dr. J.C. Hawthorne’s Oregon Hospital for the Insane, founded in 1861, occupied 75 acres between what are now Ninth and 12th avenues and Hawthorne Boulevard and Belmont Street, according to a July report commissioned by Metro. The grounds of the Greek revival building included a dairy, produce garden and wood lot.

Patients were expected to work the farm. Manual labor was a cornerstone of the progressive and compassionate routine Hawthorne gave patients — called moral treatment and based on practices developed by the Quakers, says Grace Heckenberg, a Portland mental health activist.

The bell in the tower tolled the hour, giving the day’s rhythm. It was probably rung when a patient escaped, too. The bell, all that remains of the asylum, is housed at Oregon Health & Science University. Some envision it being returned to become part of the memorial.

“Can you imagine how wonderful it would be to hear that bell toll as you’re walking through the cemetery?” Mary Miller asks on a recent tour of the site. Miller is president of Friends of Lone Fir, which is planning a fundraising campaign to help pay for the memorial garden.

After Metro decided to expand plans for a garden to include the mental patients, the agency reached out to the mental health community this fall for ideas on how best to honor them.

Janet Bebb, principal regional planner at Metro, says many felt strongly that the patients’ names should be inscribed in the garden and that the emphasis should be on the patients, not the asylum’s founder. Jason Renaud, a longtime mental health activist and volunteer at the Mental Health Association of Portland, says listing patients’ names would grant them their personhood at last.

Fountains, roses and inscriptions all cost money, and Bebb says Metro would like to secure public funding for the memorials and then use those to attract private funding.

For now, Miller hopes a new CD featuring local musicians and original songs about Lone Fir’s more prominent residents raises money and engage an audience that typically might not take much interest in the cemetery.

The CD features Storm Large and her song about Charity Lamb, Oregon’s first convicted murderess and one of Hawthorne’s patients. Lamb is buried in an unknown grave at Lone Fir.

Jane Hansen of landscape design firm Lango Hansen hopes to have preliminary drawings of the memorial garden, with an area for asylum patients and one for the Chinese workers, in a few weeks. Miller and Bebb estimate that it will be take a couple of years to raise enough money.

From KATU.com, October 20 2008

Thanks to the Oregon State legislature, no psychiatric treatment has been available since 1993 for persons identified as sex offenders in Oregon’s prison system, according to this report from KATU.com.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERJqBQL7jZ4]

OUR COMMENT – It’s dangerous and naive for the criminal justice system to define mental illness as a “sex offense”. This is equal to providing a treatment for a fist instead of the person who threw the punch. The result of this misnaming is no resolution can be certain – and men and women who have committed these crimes remain likely to re-offend – terrifying themselves and others. Who is advantaged by this language crime? The criminal justice system, police, courts, jails, prisons, and all salaried people and contracted people associated with them.

From the Oregonian, October 21 2008

More than 500 mental-health patients will have to go elsewhere for service after a fire destroyed part of a Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare clinic in Northeast Portland last night.

No one was injured by the blaze at Cascadia’s Garlington Center on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., but authorities say it appears to have “suspicious” origins. The cause of the fire that officials say began sometime before 9:52 p.m. is under investigation.

“It’s very important that we get it back up and running,” said Cascadia chief executive Derald Walker. “A lot of the people we serve live in this general area.”

An outcry of public support helped keep the center’s doors open after it nearly shut down this year in the face of severe financial problems at Cascadia.

The center had staff on hand today to help people who showed up for services, and telephoned other patients sending them to Cascadia Plaza about four miles away, Walker said. The Garlington Center served 525 clients, he said.

When the center will again be able to serve patients is unknown. Walker said officials today were still assessing the extent of the damage.

Fire officials estimate $200,000 worth of damage to the structure and an additional $400,000 to the building’s contents.

Walker said that as much as one-third of the building was badly burned, and that smoke damaged other areas. The fire destroyed Cascadia’s main computer, housed at the Garlington Center, but Walker said patient records weren’t lost because the hard copies survived. With the server destroyed, Cascadia cannot use its electronic medical records system and automated billing system until the arrival of a replacement that Walker expected by the week’s end.

The clerical area received the brunt of the damage, Walker said, with computers, copy machines and other business equipment burned in the flames.

“We will take precautions to make sure anyone connected to the Garlington Center who needs services will have a way to get them until it can be repaired,” Multnomah County Board Chairman Ted Wheeler said in a statement. “Given the economic crisis, these are anxious times for everyone. We will make every effort to make sure clients don’t fall through the cracks. Services will not be interrupted.”

EXTRA – NE Portland mental health center fire called ’suspicious’, from KGW.com

How does a community measure the success of a mental health system? Is it a number of clients seen, a number of pills dispensed? Or is it a sense when walking through downtown the number of insane people is lower than the number of tourists?

A sunny day, streets filled with shoppers, up and down I counted over one hundred people in distress. Drunk, loaded, deranged, psychotic, self-abusive – all clearly a danger to themselves and unable to care for themselves because of their mental illness. Almost two years after Mayor Potter’s Public Safety and Mental Health Task Force, there is still no day center, still an insufficient amount of intervention, still no solution.

The Hudnall brothers were in full volume, shrieking up and down the block, full regalia with posse attending. As young teens in the mid-eighties the twins from Albany turned tricks to buy lottery tickets. Now after twenty years of addiction and jails they still dress like children, but are well known to every cop at the bureau as menaces.

This poor devil below has been wandering the bus mall for over a year. He eats and drinks from garbage cans. His madness causes others to avert their eyes, to pretend he does not exist.

Below, Larry Broomnal’s endurance is amazing. He’s psychotic for the most part of the past 15 years, wandering the streets, disheveled, filthy, carrying his sleeping bag, muttering to the voices in his head.

How we choose to care for others is the measure of our society. Portland – liberal, affluent, influential, articulate – could, if it chose to, do something. Do something compassionate, something forthright, something preventative. Ask the skilled social worker; they’ll tell you yes, there are many successful methods for helping. Are they expensive to provide? No. Are they important to our political leaders? No.

The quality of life for these people is the measure of a mental health system. Their lives are horrible and their ongoing misery is entirely avoidable. But a choice has been made – and their lot in life is to suffer.