Will They Ever Learn? Report on Cop Shooting Investigations Finds “Room for Improvement”

The day after the city released an outside analysis of seven police shootings since 2004—a report that raised significant concerns about the Portland Police Bureau’s ability to learn from its mistakes—the bureau’s official response didn’t inspire much confidence.

Instead of acknowledging the basic theme of the report—that “there is still room for improvement” in how the bureau trains its officers to avoid shootings, and then in how it analyzes shootings when they inevitably happen — Chief Mike Reese‘s office sent out a news release with a congratulatory headline.

It said, simply, “PPB Superior.” And it was an attempt to spin attention toward one of the report’s few pure compliments: that the bureau is better than most when it comes to reviewing errors. But after a detailed review of the 90-plus-page report, prepared by the Los Angeles County Office of Independent Review (OIR), a far bleaker picture emerges.

READ – Report to the City of Portland on Portland Police Bureau Officer-Involved Shootings – First Report ◦ May 2012

While the bureau might be trying to improve, communication lapses at shooting scenes, training issues, investigative shortfalls, and long delays in interviewing officers involved in shootings remain very real problems that have yet to be adequately addressed.

“Many of these events raise questions about officers’ ability to communicate with each other at the scene of critical incidents, to consider alternative plans, and to respond quickly and effectively when a subject has been downed by police gunfire,” the report’s authors write. “In some cases, [the bureau's] evolution is notable and commendable. Others lead us—and members of the public—to question why the bureau had not learned more from its prior shooting incidents.”

The OIR report, expected to be the first in a series, focuses on seven shootings from 2004 through 2010, most of which involved someone enduring a mental health crisis: James Jahar Perez in 2004; Raymond Gwerder, 2005; Jerry Goins, 2006; Lesley Stewart, 2007; Jason Spoor, 2008; Aaron Campbell, 2010; and Jack Dale Collins, 2010.

OIR lays out a series of recommendations meant to address its concerns, with some more controversial than others.

High on that list is a call to stop giving officers 48 hours after a shooting before internal affairs investigators can sit down with them. That change would require renegotiating labor contracts with the city’s two police unions, the Portland Police Association (PPA) and the Portland Police Commanding Officers Association (PPCOA).

While that wouldn’t affect the cops who actually fire shots—as criminal suspects, they’d still be able to claim Fifth Amendment protection to get out of an internal affairs interview—it would affect all the other officers on scene at a shooting and defuse any concerns about cops getting together to get their stories straight.

“This circumstance is unfortunate,” the report says of the delay. “Public confidence in internal police investigations would be enhanced if involved officers would agree to be interviewed on the date of the incident.”

Both union contracts come up for renewal next year—and, significantly, both of Portland’s mayoral candidates tell the Mercury that if they win the job, and become police commissioner, they’d be willing to consider the change.

“The 48-hour rule is one of the most obvious changes I’m interested in making,” says former City Commissioner Charlie Hales. “I have not heard and have difficulty imagining an argument for why [the delay] is a good idea.”

State Representative Jefferson Smith, who’s been endorsed by the PPA and received, as of last month, $10,000 from the PPA’s political action committee, was more nuanced.

“It should be a matter for negotiation,” says Smith, who also wants to look at what other cities are doing. “I want to be tutored less by politics and more by the facts.”

Later, the report rips the bureau over “a central shortcoming” in its post-shooting reviews: “the reluctance” by its training division “to second guess an officer’s split-second decisions in the field.” The report says the bureau considered whether it was even okay to use deadly force just once, in the Campbell shooting.

“To decline to delve into the possible reasons why an officer mistook one action for another is to turn away from this subject matter when its examination is most vital,” the report says.

Other recommendations include adding explicit limits on officers’ use of Tasers and, because “the bureau continues to be stymied” by communication gaffes, a call to train all officers on “critical incident” management.

But not all accountability advocates are bullish on the findings.

“Our people paid a high premium for a mix of public relations advice and common sense,” says Jason Renaud of the Mental Health Association of Portland. “There’s no recommendation that would have stopped Jack Collins or Raymond Gwerder or Aaron Campbell from being killed.”

From the Oregonian, May 31, 2012

READ – Report to the City of Portland on Portland Police Bureau Officer-Involved Shootings – First Report ◦ May 2012

Outside consultants who reviewed seven Portland officer-involved shootings between 2004 and 2010 found many of the same tactical and communication problems that have plagued local police for more than a decade.

The California-based consultants from the Office of Independent Review Group identified communication gaps among officers at the scene, excessive delays in getting medical care to wounded suspects, the failure of AR-15 rifle operators to use earpieces to monitor radio talk, long waits to interview involved officers and a reluctance by the training division to second-guess officers’ actions.

The consultants called on the Portland Police Bureau to end a 48-hour rule now in place with the union that allows officers to wait two days before answering investigators’ questions. Over the past 20 years, no Portland officer who has used deadly force has ever agreed to give a voluntary statement on the day of the shooting.

“This circumstance is unfortunate,” the consultants wrote. “We believe that 48 hours is too long to wait for a statement from involved personnel and advocate for a restructuring of the labor agreements mandating the 48-hour delay.”

The consultants reviewed the shootings of James Jahar Perez, March 2004; Raymond Gwerder, November 2005; Jerry Goins, July 2006; Lesley Stewart, August 2007; Jason Spoor, May 2008; Aaron Campbell, January 2010; and Jack Dale Collins, March 2010.

Jerry Goins, for example, was shot by police as he walked up to his ex-girlfriend’s job with a gun, but then-Acting Sgt. Rich Steinbronn wasn’t interviewed until seven days after he shot Goins. The reason given at the time: His lawyer wasn’t available, the report shows.

The Police Bureau is seeking a compromise, moving to have officers provide an on-scene “public safety statement” that would give supervisors crucial details on who was injured, whether any suspects are at large and where bullets went. But the consultants said that wouldn’t rectify the problem because such statements don’t provide full accounts of what happened.

The consultants, hired by the city, also found the bureau has failed to learn from past mistakes.

Communication failures led to Officer Leo Besner‘s 2005 fatal sniper shooting of Raymond Gwerder, who was hit in the back while still on the phone with police hostage negotiators. After the shooting, the bureau — as well as independent reviewers — instructed AR-15 rifle operators to wear a radio earpiece to ensure they kept up with developing information at the scene.

Yet two years later, Officer Stephanie Rabey didn’t have her earpiece in when she fired one round from her AR-15 through the open bedroom window of Lesley Stewart’s house, injuring him with shattered bullet fragments. She also failed to communicate to other officers that she felt they were in a vulnerable position and she’d have to use deadly force if the suspect inside had a gun, the report found. Rabey told investigators she believed Stewart was reaching for a weapon in his bedroom closet. Police later found a gun in a car associated with him outside the house.

More recently, in the January 2010 shooting of Aaron Campbell, Officer Ronald Frashour wasn’t wearing his earpiece when he fired a single round from his AR-15 rifle, striking Campbell in the back and killing him.

The consultants also reported significant delays in police providing medical care to people wounded by officers.

They faulted the bureau for not following one of its own recommendations after the May 13, 2008, shooting of Jason Spoor, who came out of a Northeast Glisan Street house with a gun and refused orders to drop it. Spoor died from a single gunshot to the head after Officers Timothy Bacon and Scott McCollister fired at him.

Police reached Spoor within 15 minutes of the shooting, by taking what some officers “considered to be an unnecessarily high level of risk” because they didn’t know if he was dead, the report said. A Use of Force Review Board at the time of the 2008 shooting recommended the bureau place ballistic shields in supervisors’ cars to allow officers to safely approach a wounded suspect.

The Los Angeles-based Police Assessment Resource Center, which reviewed Portland police shootings between 2002 and 2005, also “repeatedly expressed concerns” about such delays.

But the bureau didn’t address those concerns until after the fatal Campbell shooting two years ago. Officers waited 38 minutes to check Campbell’s vital signs even though police at the scene had noticed no movement by Campbell after he was shot and a police dog bit him.

Within a month of the Campbell shooting, all sergeants’ cars were equipped with ballistic shields, and within three months, all officers received four hours of training on how to safely approach injured suspects who may be armed.

“This is a positive development, but it is fair to question why this incident sparked change when so many prior ones did not,” the new report said.

In the Goins’ case, for example, it took officers 35 minutes to check on his injuries after police shot him in the abdomen and Goins then shot himself in the head. He died at the scene.

The consultants echoed a past PARC review recommendation that the bureau limit its use of the east Multnomah County major crimes task force to help in the investigation of Portland police-involved shootings.

The task force officers who come from other police agencies aren’t familiar with Portland police policies, and training, and are “ill-equipped” to participate, the consultants said. In the James Jahar Perez shooting, east county investigators seemed to be reading from a script or used leading questions, the report said.

In the Campbell shooting, some task force members “lacked familiarity with the incident and the location in a way that impacted the quality of the interviews,” the consultants said.

While the consultants applauded an internal police review of the Campbell shooting that led to Frashour’s firing, they cited an overall “reluctance to second guess an officer’s split-second decisions in the field” in the analyses of shootings by the bureau’s training division.

They cited cases that revealed a “marked reluctance to examine the fundamental question of when to use deadly force and whether alternative tactical choices might have avoided deadly force.”

The consultants will present their findings and recommendations to City Council at 2:45 p.m. next Wednesday in the second-floor auditorium of the Portland Building.

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City Releases Outside Report on Police Shootings

From The Portland Mercury, May 30, 2012

The city auditor’s office this afternoon released the first in what’s expected to be a series of reports, by Los Angeles County’s Office of Independent Review (OIR), looking at Portland police shootings dating all the way back to 2004.

The city gave OIR, a respected police watchdog that previously reviewed the beating death of James Chasse Jr., a three-year contract last spring.

The inaugural report focuses on seven shootings so far, all of them involving someone in a mental health crisis: James Jahar Perez — March 2004; Raymond Gwerder — November 2005; Jerry Goins — July 2006; Lesley Stewart — August 2007; Jason Spoor — May 2008; Aaron Campbell — January 2010; Jack Dale Collins — March 2010.

And one headline?

Many of these events raise questions about officers’ ability to communicate with each other at the scene of critical incidents, to consider alternative plans, and to respond quickly and effectively when a subject has been downed by police gunfire. The benefit of reviewing multiple incidents occurring over time is that it provides a snapshot of the Portland Police Bureau’s (PPB) policies and training as they evolved in response to each incident. In some cases, this evolution is notable and commendable. Others lead us—and members of the public—to question why the Bureau had not learned more from its prior shooting incidents.

I’ll have more to say about the 90-plus-page report in awhile, but go ahead and read the findings here.

Here’s the rest of what sticks out after a quick scan: One finding is that while our police bureau is “superior” to most when it comes to learning from mistakes and enduring outside review—something I don’t think we should lose sight of—”there is still room for improvement.”

As such, the report contains a series of recommendations on improving cops’ training and tactics, some of which we’ve heard in various other reports and reviews: giving all officers access to “critical incident” teaching, restricting use of Tasers, expanding the reach of the bureau’s mobile crisis unit, and filtering decisions on discipline through the lens of the “crisis intervention training” all officers receive.

Other suggestions would tighten up post-shooting investigations: getting the city’s two police unions to stop demanding 48 hours of delay before detectives can interview officers in a shooting, and maybe reconsidering the bureau’s work with an outside law enforcement group, the East County Major Crimes Task Force, on internal shooting investigations.

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Below is the definition of cherry-picking.

PORTLAND POLICE BUREAU NEWS RELEASE
OIR Report: "PPB Superior"
City of Portland Auditor Report:

PPB Superior to Most Comparable Law Enforcement Agencies in Reviewing of Critical Incidents

On Wednesday, May 30, 2012, the Portland City Auditor’s Office released a report written by a California-based group, OIR, which reviewed seven Portland Police officer-involved shootings from March 2004 to March 2010. This is the sixth review by the Auditor’s Office of Police Bureau officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths. This particular review evaluated cases where there was a mental health crisis or communication issue on scene.

The use of deadly force is the most important decision a police officer can make, and the subsequent investigation process is critical to providing the community with needed answers and transparency. These reviews also help police improve tactics and training. The Portland Police Bureau has made significant changes in policy and training in regard to deadly force incidents, beginning with changes dating back to the Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC) recommendations in 2003.

In the current report, the OIR Group said the Bureau has been responsive to reviews and: “we find the PPB to be superior to most comparable law enforcement agencies in the way in which it reviews critical incidents.” OIR also stated that “the Bureau’s history of opening itself to outside review and acceptance of recommendations from independent sources likewise sets it apart from many agencies.”

Because this report centered on deadly force incidents involving people in mental crisis, the report evaluated the Portland Police Bureau’s mental health training. The report says the Bureau has been “innovative and proactive in training its officers and partnering with the mental health care community in efforts to improve its service to the mentally ill.” It also commended the Bureau’s Mobile Crisis Unit as “an innovative development.”

The report made 13 recommendations; Chief Michael Reese responded to each recommendation, either agreeing with it or stating that it has already been implemented.

“We appreciate the work of the OIR group,” said Chief Reese. “While we are pleased to be recognized for the significant work that has been done over the years by the Bureau, there is always room for improvement or enhancements.”

The OIR Group will present the findings and recommendations to the City Council at 2:45 p.m., Wednesday, June 6, 2012 in the second-floor auditorium of the Portland Building, 1120 S.W. Fifth Avenue.

To read the complete report: http://www.portlandonline.com/auditor/index.cfm?c=52199&a=399048

###PPB##
+++

Public Information Officer: Lt. Robert King
Robert.King@portlandoregon.gov
Desk: 503-823-0010
Pager: 503-790-1779
Alt Public Information Officer: Sgt. Pete Simpson
Peter.Simpson@portlandoregon.gov
Desk: 503-823-0830
Pager: 503-790-1779

Press Release Link: http://bit.ly/KYfcX4
+++
Website: PortlandPolice.com
PIO Twitter: @PPBPIO
Facebook: /PortlandPolice

Australian TV news aired a 20 minute story on Tasers, highlighting Portland, Oregon as a community where Tasers have been in use. There is interest in Oz to have their cops use Tasers as an alternative to pistols, rifles, shotguns, cudgels, fists and feet.

Journalist Nick Lazaredes talked with ACLU Oregon’s David Fidanque, Dan Halsted who won a $258,040 judgement against the City of Portland in 2008 for being Taser’ed by officer Benjamin Davidson – it was a case of mistaken identity, and Portland police officer Brett Burton, who Taser’ed James Chasse, in a vicious beating resulting in James’ death and a settlement award against the City of Portland. Portland Copwatch is also mentioned in the text of the story. (Lazaredes contacted the MHAP for comment but did not follow up.)

READ – Taser Troubles

This is the most disappointing news from Afghanistan in a dozen years.

From the New York Times, May 27, 2012

KABUL, Afghanistan — For years, American officials have struggled to curb Afghanistan’s opium industry, rewriting strategy every few seasons and pouring in more than $6 billion over the past decade to combat the poppies that help finance the insurgency and fuel corruption.

SEE – The Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics
READ – Still Wrong in Afghanistan, op ed by Richard Holbrooke, Washington Post, January 23, 2008
READ – Afghanistan: The Long Road Ahead, op ed by Richard Holbrooke, Washington Post, April 2, 2006

It is a measure of the problem’s complexity that officials can find little comfort even in the news this month that blight and bad weather are slashing this year’s poppy harvest in the south. They know from past seasons that blight years lead to skyrocketing opium prices and even greater planting efforts to come.

An Army officer walking through a poppy field while on patrol in Afghanistan last month.

“Now I am desperate, what can I do?” said Mohammed Amin, a poppy farmer in Tirin Kot in Oruzgan Province, who harvested only one kilogram of opium poppy this year compared with 15 last year. “I don’t have any cash now to start another business, and if I grow any other crops, I cannot make a profit.”

The seemingly unbreakable allure of poppy profits — for producers and traffickers, government officials and Taliban commanders alike — has kept fighting opium at the heart of efforts to improve security. It drove Richard C. Holbrooke, later the special envoy to Afghanistan, to write in 2008: “Breaking the narco-state in Afghanistan is essential, or all else will fail.”

That concern is no less serious today, on the eve of the departure of thousands of American troops. But even as American leaders continue to emphasize the importance of the anti-opium effort, some officials are privately conceding that there is little chance for its large-scale success before the end of the NATO military mission in 2014.

The withdrawal is one worry. As the money from the Western military and civilian aid programs dwindles, the relative importance of opium to the economy is likely only to increase, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan.

“Some money is available through the licit economy, but less than in the past as the Western contracts dry up, and so the importance of the illicit, informal economy will increase: human trafficking, gems, timber and weapons smuggling, and of course narcotics is a huge chunk of it,” he said, adding: “The prognosis post-2014 is not a positive one.”

Opium poppy, much like the coca grown in Colombia and Peru, poses a number of problems because there is so much money to be made that powerful political players, from police chiefs to governors, inevitably want a cut. The Taliban also support the drug trade, directly by protecting opium farmers, and indirectly by shielding traffickers, who pay off everybody in order to move their products quickly to the borders, according to narcotics experts at the United Nations and the Afghan government.

“Drugs are not the only priority issue for Afghanistan,” said William R. Brownfield, the State Department’s assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement, in an interview this month. “But by the same token, if you do not address the drug issue you will not succeed in the other security, stability, democracy, prosperity objectives you are aiming for.”

Despite all the effort, there are many troubling indicators. Nationwide, the number of poppy-free provinces, which reached a high of 20 in 2010, has now dropped to at least 17 and could be found to be still lower once researchers finish surveying remote provinces. Overall acres under poppy cultivation began rising again in 2009 after a significant drop the year before, and the total has grown slowly but steadily since.

Interdiction, while somewhat improved under new Afghan counternarcotics leadership, nets only about 3.5 percent of the 375 tons of heroin that leaves the country every year, according to the United Nations.

Even the success stories are unlikely to be sustainable, officials say. The prime example is the combined American and British counternarcotics campaign in the Helmand River Valley, in the heart of the province that produces nearly half of Afghanistan’s opium. Since its start in 2009, the military mission has coincided with a 33 percent decrease in opium poppy cultivation in the area, and concurrent programs to create alternative jobs and crops have had a significant effect there.

But the troops are leaving — as many as 14,000 American Marines could depart Helmand by the end of the year — and many of the incentive programs are closing down unless Afghanistan’s counternarcotics minister can persuade the West to renew them.

“We have to watch the answer develop over the next 6 to 12 months,” Mr. Brownfield said, speaking of the effects of the military withdrawal. “That’s what transition is all about — we’re changing from a known to an unknown.”

This year’s low opium harvest has thrown another element of unpredictability into the picture. It has already driven a few farmers to commit suicide and others to flee because they feared retribution from creditors, according to the governor’s office in Helmand. But rather than serving as a disincentive, the poor crop is more likely to prompt many to plant even more poppy next year to make up for this year’s losses. That was the pattern in previous blight seasons, like 2010.

Mr. Amin, the poppy farmer in Tirin Kot, says that despite the risks, there is nothing to replace opium: “The poppy is always good, you can sell it at any time. It is like gold, you can sell it whenever and get cash.”

In the meantime, the price for opium at the farm gate has soared — up more than 50 percent from a month ago and now selling for more than $320 per kilogram — another factor likely to spur more planting, Mr. Lemahieu said. Traffickers, who stockpile opium from year to year, are making a killing, he said.

On the Afghan side, the minister for counternarcotics, Zarar Ahmad Muqbel Osmani, has increased poppy eradication efforts in areas where farmers can grow other crops and is lobbying to expand the alternative crop program. But he remains deeply frustrated with the overall lack of law enforcement. Asked what it would take to affect the country’s drug problem, he answered tersely, “Political will.”

Among the continuing problems with corruption: information leaks that scuttle potential drug raids; political pressure that results in the release of major traffickers; and local politicians and police officers who participate in the poppy trade and use eradication programs to attack their rivals.

The deputy interior minister for counternarcotics, Lt. Gen. Baaz Mohammed Ahmadi, said his specialized force must still answer to local police officials.

“Because they are dependent on the regular force for everything, for gas for their vehicles and for the vehicles, even a very junior fuel dispatcher will know about the details of our operations,” he said. “And when we plan an operation, we have to have approval of the local police chief or his deputy or the zone police chief, and if one of those people is corrupt or linked to a big trafficker, it leaks.”

The Americans have taken at least three different tacks to fighting opium poppy cultivation.

In the early days after the 2001 invasion, a little more than half the current acreage was under cultivation, a legacy in part from the Taliban’s ban on opium, which they ignored selectively. The Western emphasis was on driving the remaining Taliban fighters from the country, and with that in mind the Americans made allies of many of the old warlords who were also involved in the drug trade, entrenching a culture of impunity.

In 2005, British forces found nearly 20,000 pounds of opium in the office of the Helmand governor, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, an ally of President Hamid Karzai. He was forced out at the behest of the British, but was later named to the Senate.

In 2006, as Americans began promoting eradication by specially trained Afghan forces, heroin was found in a car belonging Hajji Zaher Qadir, whom Mr. Karzai had been considering to lead the border police force. That appointment was scrapped, but Mr. Qadir is now one of the leaders in the lower house of Parliament. Many of the northern power brokers are also believed to be involved in the drug trade.

In 2007, as poppy growth reached a record-high 477,000 acres, the new American ambassador, William B. Wood, began to lobby for aerial eradication of the kind that had been undertaken in Colombia.

Mr. Wood became such a vocal proponent that he was known in the British press as “Chemical Bill.” He once even tried to overcome President Karzai’s skepticism about spraying by offering to publicly sit in a vat of pesticide clad only in a Speedo bathing suit to prove the chemicals were safe, said a Western official familiar with the discussions at the time.

Strenuous opposition from Mr. Karzai, European diplomats and some American policy makers stopped the program from getting off the ground. They feared it would backfire by reminding impoverished Afghans of Soviet-era spraying and would push them further into poverty, and into the arms of the Taliban.

In 2009, with the arrival of President Obama’s team, including Mr. Holbrooke, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and later Gen. David H. Petraeus, the focus turned toward a counterinsurgency strategy that hinged on gaining acceptance from local Afghans.

Aware of how eradication deeply alienated rural Afghans who depended on opium for their families’ subsistence, the American military distanced itself as much as possible from destroying poppy crops, instead supporting alternative crops and livelihoods. The State Department paid provincial governors to use Afghan forces to eradicate.

At the same time, officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department mentored the Afghan police in interdiction and Afghan lawyers and judges in prosecuting narcotics cases.

The efforts have led to two perceived success stories: new drug courts, and the alternative crops and jobs effort in Helmand Province. Both initiatives have taken several years to mature. The drug courts, in particular, are widely viewed as largely insulated from corruption and are efficient, handling 635 cases in 2011. A few of them involved government employees, including police officers who were smuggling heroin. In the vast majority, the prosecutors obtained convictions.

Still, for many Afghans in the poppy belt, the idea of placing a bet on the government’s future by cultivating anything other than poppy seems like one of the longest of shots.

“It is not an easy choice to grow poppies,” said Tahir Khan, a local village leader in Khogyani district in the Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan. “We know the danger and threat from the government and it is difficult, it needs hard work to recoup our investment. But the people are poor, they have no choice.”

From The Oregonian, May 26, 2012

The Psychiatric Security Review Board is fairly modest about its existence. There’s little useful information provided in a obvious place on the web – so we created this web site to list the staff contact information and relevant statutes.

Filling in for a co-worker on the weekend shift, Jennifer Warren stepped into Brent Redd‘s home last Sunday morning to deliver his anti-psychotic medication.

Doctors, though, were reducing Redd’s dosage in preparation for a medical procedure. Committed to the Oregon State Hospital five years ago for trying to murder his mother, Redd had been released to living semi-independently in a St. Helens duplex. The 30-year-old was stable, even holding down a job at a thrift store.

But he was worried about being taken off his drug therapy.

“He was scared,” said his mother, Debbie Redd, who lives in The Dalles. “Those meds are what regulate him every day.”

Later Sunday, Redd was arrested in Warren’s fatal stabbing. Redd reportedly called 911, and St. Helens Police Chief Steve Salle said police recovered a kitchen knife as evidence. Prosecutors charged Redd Thursday with Warren’s murder.

The St. Helens homicide is in many ways unusual. Redd was under the supervision of the Psychiatric Security Review Board. The homicide is the program’s first in about 30 years, but it raises troubling questions about safety and protocols:

Should caseworkers travel in pairs and take precautions when medications are changed? Who makes the rules? Does the state do enough to protect health care providers, the community and the patients themselves?

Many questions can’t be answered until the investigation is complete. Dr. Joseph Bloom, former head of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, said officials should determine whether a solo visit by Warren was appropriate considering Redd’s dosing. “I would expect that the programs involved would do a lot to understand what happened.”

LITTLE-KNOWN PROGRAM

The psychiatric board supervises criminal defendants judged guilty except for insanity in felony cases, roughly 600 in Oregon.

Many were convicted of murder or attempted murder like Redd, while other charges include arson and sex abuse. Currently, 183 are in the Oregon State Hospital and 413 are on conditional release.

Two dozen locked facilities around the state house 76 of those on conditional release, while 175 are in residential treatment centers or supervised adult foster homes. About 64 live semi-independently, in housing where a staff member lives, and the rest live on their own.

The psychiatric board’s five members, appointed by the governor, act as judge and parole office. For each felon judged guilty except for insanity, the board is advised by mental health professionals and county officials and decides:

• Whether patients can be released from the state hospital. For Redd, found guilty except for insanity in the attempted murder of his mother in 2007, a judge decided on 20 years of supervision. The psychiatric board sent Redd to the state hospital and, in its 2009 review, kept him there.
• Where they can be released. The psychiatric board in September 2010 released Redd to a residential treatment center in St. Helens. In May 2011, it approved his transfer to a duplex supervised by Columbia Community Mental Health, the nonprofit that provided his day-to-day therapy and monitoring.
• Conditions of release. Redd took random weekly drug tests, attended group therapy sessions five times a week, saw his therapist weekly and his caseworker checked in twice a day. He attended three substance abuse meetings a week and passed random drug tests weekly. He had to stay at home between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. and swallow medication in front of a caseworker.

Mary Claire Buckley, executive director of the psychiatric board, said monthly reports indicated Redd was doing well.

The psychiatric board has been under fire for years by lawmakers and mental health advocates saying it is too strict. In the last 15 years, of more than 1,600 people released from the hospital, 15 people have committed felonies while under board supervision, including three since 2009.

Clackamas County District Attorney John Foote says the tragedy shows public safety should be the priority when it comes to people with a history of violence.

“I hope this is a wake-up call,” he said.

Bob Joondeph of Disability Rights Oregon, sees it differently: “We think it’s very important to understand what happened here, but not to jump the gun and not to paint everyone with the same brush.”

LOCAL AUTONOMY

Oregon spends about $400 million a year on mental health, about half on local programs like the one Redd was in, Columbia Community Mental Health, which receives more than $3 million yearly. The state inspects nonprofits every three years.

Columbia Community Mental Health, which employed Warren, declined to be interviewed. But according to state and other county officials, providers are directed to set their own safety policies.

The state requires crisis response training for caseworkers. They don’t carry defensive weapons such as pepper spray due to legal issues, mental health officials said.

“You have to have training — you can harm people,” said Schneider.

There is no standard policy on when a solo visit is appropriate.

It’s not uncommon for caseworkers to visit patients individually, but they need to be cautious, said Greg Schneider of Lifeworks, which provides mental health services in Malheur and Umatilla counties. “If that person had anything happen in their life recently or had any mental health deterioration, then you may not want to go out alone,” he said.

NO SIGNS OF TROUBLE

In April, Redd’s mother said he was being weaned off anti-psychotic medication for Hepatitis C treatment. It had taken years to find the right medication to keep his paranoia and schizophrenia at bay. She asked him if it was a good idea, and recalls his response:

“They told me it’s going to be OK,” he told her. “They told me that I will know. That I’ll see signs” if there are problems.

Redd’s caregivers knew about the medication change, said Gina Nikkel, a consultant with Warren’s employer, Columbia County Mental Health, adding that it’s too early to draw conclusions.

“People feel that he was not a risk,” she said. “Columbia mental health staff were doing everything in accord with the protocols that have been used for a long time.”

Redd’s roommate also said there was no sign of trouble. “He was being double and tripled monitored. How on earth could they have known that this would have happened?”

The state is reviewing whether state and county rules and provider policies are adequate.

On Thursday, Linda Hammond, interim director of the state Addictions and Mental Health Division, met with county mental health directors from around the state.

A parallel state investigation is looking at the care Redd received, while the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division is examining whether Warren’s death was preventable.

After his arrest, Redd was taken to Legacy Emanuel Hospital & Medical Center to treat wounds that were apparently self-inflicted. He’s expected to be arraigned soon in Columbia County.

A makeshift memorial to Warren, a 39-year-old single mother, has sprung up on the front lawn of Redd’s unit, one of four in two ranch-style buildings situated on a corner.

READ – Suspect in St. Helens stabbing had change in meds, AP.com
READ – Stabbing shows how mental health workers are at risk, opinion editoral from the Salem Statesman Journal, May 27, 2012

Her funeral is scheduled for June 3 at 1 p.m. at St. Helens High School.

Editorial column by Steve Duin, published in The Oregonian, May 24, 2012

In the brave new world of mental health, the Jennifer Warrens of the world confront many of the same people and phobias that confound your local police bureau.

Yet they do so without the sidearm.

Without the Kevlar vest.

Without partners or essential backup.

And without the grand jury’s permission to unholster their trusty taser the moment they feel threatened.

In the last of 10 editorials that rebuilt the Oregon State Hospital, refocused the Legislature and won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize, The Oregonian’s Rick Attig and Doug Bates argued, “Oregon has started down the long road to a better, more compassionate system of mental health care.”

Individualized care — rather than warehousing the mentally ill in 19th-century squalor — is a feature of that empathetic journey. But that care, Warren’s death reminds us, is often provided by an isolated caseworker or medication tech at a small community organization who is in no position to ask for help.

Warren, 39, was stabbed to death Sunday when she delivered medication to the St. Helens apartment of Brent K. Redd Jr.

Redd was committed to the state hospital in 2007 after attempting to strangle his mother, and released by the Psychiatric Security Review Board in 2010.

Warren understood personal trauma — she survived methamphetamine addiction and losing three sons to adoption — and was drawn to assist those who were dealing with it. She probably had no idea of the potential danger she faced on her Sunday morning rounds for Columbia County Mental Health.

“When you’re in the trenches of mental health staffing, you assume the people paid to assess risk know what they’re doing,” said Lynn Davenport, even though the licensed professionals “rarely smell the clients.”

Davenport made hundreds of unaccompanied visits to clients in the corrections, mental health and child-welfare system during the course of 20 years. The most devoted caregivers, she noted, are the least likely to complain about the bite marks and the death threats.

“If I talk about the trouble I’m having, it means that I’m not good at my job,” Davenport said. “As opposed to I’ve been given an impossible job. That means you’ll work crazy shifts and hours, you’re sick and tired, when people are acting up. You won’t complain or raise concerns when you feel unsafe.”

Corina Fesler, who worked with Warren, quit Columbia Community Mental Health immediately after Warren’s death, telling The Oregonian’s Maxine Bernstein: “There’s been concerns all along that we go out and do this by ourselves. It just makes me sick, because it didn’t have to happen this way. If someone else could have been there, at least (Warren) would have had backup.”

In the brave new world of mental health, there are rarely partners or panic buttons. And too many Jennifer Warrens venture into the lion’s den, trusting that good intentions are all the body armor they need.

I don’t know that we can stop them. They are the best of Samaritans. Forgetting prisoners or neglecting strangers isn’t in them.

And that’s precisely why we need to work so much harder to protect them.

READ – Jennifer Warren’s obituary.

From the Portland Tribune, May 24, 2012

Eric Hossack is trying to regain the inner strength to live on his own again, and cope with a mental illness that led him to heroin addiction, homelessness and multiple suicide attempts.

But recovery isn’t so easy living at Harriet Court.

Sean M., a resident at Cascadia Housing's Harriet Court apartments for mentally ill tenants, in Southeast Portland, says fellow residents are running wild, with minimal oversight from Cascadia since Nancy Wagoner (right) left her post with the mental health nonprofit last fall.

The 16-unit apartment building near Southeast Portland’s Mt. Scott Community Center is reserved for mentally ill tenants who are transitioning to independent living. It’s one of 20 such apartment buildings in the county operated by Cascadia Housing, and one of two where the mental health nonprofit places sex offenders.

Hossack, who has borderline personality disorder but is not a sex offender, says nobody told him before he moved in that four sex offenders were living at Harriet Court. He installed a camera outside his dorm room to guard against a neighbor who he says is a rapist and a crackhead.

“People are going off their meds to the point where they are going crazy,” says Harriet Court resident P. Dawson, who is bipolar with post-traumatic stress disorder and personality disorder. Dawson estimates there are five drug addicts at Harriet Court — at least two of them openly selling illegal drugs — making her often scared to leave her room.

Fistfights and shouting matches are common in the hallways, says Sean M., who calls himself a high-functioning schizoaffective. “A lot of these people just kind of run wild,” he says.

The three residents say Cascadia Housing, an arm of mental health nonprofit Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, has sharply reduced staff visits to Harriet Court since last fall, largely leaving tenants to manage themselves.

Come nighttime, Harriet Court can seem like “Lord of the Flies” meets “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Cascadia officials say they lack funding to hire social workers or mental health professionals to make regular visits to Harriet Court and 10 of its other properties for mentally ill people living independently, which collectively house 130 tenants.

The dearth of residential services for these people on the bumpy road to recovery is just one of many holes in Oregon’s tattered mental health system.

To stretch its funds, Cascadia is relying more on its apartment property managers to address issues involving mentally ill tenants, says Jim Hlava, vice president of Cascadia Housing.

Hlava says he’d like to have a full-time mental health professional who could be a floater to visit the underserved sites and serve as “kind of a safety net.”

But Cascadia doesn’t have the money.

Hlava says he recently asked a property manager at another Cascadia apartment building to drop by regularly at Harriet Court, and he’s trying to do the same at other underserved properties.

Off-site services not enough

Eric Hossack, a mentally ill tenant at Harriet Court, says recovery is harder when illegal drug use, prostitution and violent behavior by fellow residents is tolerated at the Cascadia Housing project.

Nancy Wagoner, a former Cascadia case manager and alcohol and drug counselor, used to visit Harriet Court a few times a week to check in on tenants, along with other Cascadia properties. Wagoner, who left her post last September, says the nonprofit has since eliminated the service she provided, though she deems it critical.

“It’s setting people up for failure if you don’t provide the support,” Wagoner says.

Cascadia tenants in independent apartment units still can visit doctors or mental health clinics in the community. But a lot of mentally ill people are prone to stop taking their meds or halt visits to therapists, Wagoner says, which can send them into a tailspin. “They can’t get it together to get to a clinic, so it’s much easier to go to where they live,” Wagoner says. “If someone’s coming there regularly, they’re going to notice.”

With little on-site supervision, Wagoner says, less-assertive residents — many of them recovering drug addicts — can fall prey to drug dealers, addicts or other aggressive residents in their midst.

Jason Renaud, long-time mental health advocate with the Mental Health Association of Portland, says well-managed apartments for mentally ill tenants often are more civil than regular apartment buildings. But “buildings go bad” sometimes, says Renaud, who worked for Cascadia a decade ago. “There are times when management needs to be turned over, and there are times when resources need to be applied to get them back to civility.”

Cascadia houses 594 mentally ill people in 43 facilities. Those include: locked treatment centers; less-restrictive state-licensed facilities offering on-site mental health care; supported housing, which offers fewer on-site services; and independent housing, the final transition before people, ideally, move on their own.

By law, Cascadia can’t force the 321 people in its 20 independent living apartments to seek therapy or take prescribed medicines, Hlava says, and it’s not required to provide them any on-site human services.

Housing mentally ill people in independent living apartments is cost-effective and a good model for transitioning them to the outside world, says Bob Joondeph, executive director of Disability Rights Oregon. But the model works best when residents retain individualized treatment plans and feel physically secure where they live, Joondeph says.

Providing housing for such people, absent other services, is far better than allowing them to become homeless, he says.

But some might benefit from residential professional services, he says.

State of neglect

Lori Bouferrache, a mentally ill tenant at Cascadia's Lone Pine Apartments in Gresham's Rockwood neighborhood, says some tenants need more oversight where they live.

Wagoner recently paid visits, with a reporter, to tenants in three Cascadia properties, and several greeted her like a long-lost friend, saying they haven’t heard much from Cascadia since she stopped making the rounds eight months ago.

Harriet Court has been neglected since she left, Hossack says, and hasn’t been cleaned regularly.

Hossack, who says he’s been off heroin for nine years, says his neighbor had a hooker at his room on April 14. “You could smell the crank coming out of his room,” he says. Hossack says he’s contacted Cascadia, but “they don’t call you back any more.”

Dawson says she’s only seen the new Cascadia property manager twice in seven months, and didn’t get a satisfactory response when Dawson complained about all the “mayhem” at Harriet Court. “She said, ‘I’m not trained in mental health, so I can’t help you with your problems,’ ” Dawson says.

Harriet Court has become a “party place,” Dawson says. “It was a lot better when we had a manager who came here on a regular basis.”

Sean M. concurs. “I don’t see them unless there’s a serious problem. In typical Cascadia fashion, they sweep things under the rug.”

Relying on property managers

Hlava says his property managers have been regularly visiting Harriet Court and other independent housing, but residents may not be aware of their presence or efforts to weed out problems.

Cascadia recognizes the benefit of sending trained professionals to visit tenants at its independent apartments, and patches together different approaches depending on available funding, Hlava says.

The agency obtained outside grants to pay for the equivalent of 2.5 residential service coordinators, who spend about 10 hours a week each at nine of Cascadia’s independent living apartments, Hlava says.

“Their job is to help people connect to needed resources in the community and to problem-solve them to be good tenants,” Hlava says.

At six other Cascadia independent housing apartments, the agency collects enough rent to have live-in property managers, who function much like regular apartment managers. Cascadia gives them a discount on their rent to oversee the properties, and hopes they’ll identify problems emerging with tenants, Hlava says.

Harriet Court is the largest of Cascadia’s five independent housing apartments that don’t have either on-site property managers or regular visits from people with human services training.

Hlava says all his property managers are compassionate people. However, they may be gone much of the time at work or elsewhere, and paid to be on site for only a limited number of hours each week. It’s unclear if property managers are equipped to deal with the unique needs of the mentally ill, many of whom have histories of substance abuse or criminality.

At Cascadia’s 17-unit Lone Pine Apartments in Gresham’s Rockwood neighborhood, there’s one tenant “who needs help really bad,” says Lori Bouferrache, a resident who is bipolar and has depression, panic attacks, and hears voices. She says the elderly man doesn’t appear to bathe or ever clean his room, which emits a pungent odor into the hallway when his door is opened. Paramedics recently called to his room refused to enter because there was so much trash on the floor, and Bouferrache says she had to help get him dressed and into his wheelchair.

“If we had people checking on these people, there wouldn’t be that,” she says.

Leland Hale, a retired Cascadia maintenance worker who has lived at Lone Pine since 1995, says Cascadia’s attitude toward residents has changed. “They always seemed to care more about the clients,” Hale says. “Today it just seems like it’s about money.”

His wife, the on-site property manager, hasn’t even met Cascadia’s asset manager named to replace Wagoner last fall, Hale says.

Wagoner says she often lobbied Cascadia managers to provide more residential services. She recalls showing them evidence that Cascadia was violating a management agreement with the state agency that funded one of its buildings and obligated Cascadia to provide on-site services. The building is the 31-unit Lafayette Court apartments near Powell Boulevard and Southeast 87th Avenue.

Karen Tolvstad, policy and communications manager for the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department, confirmed that a 1991 management agreement required on-site services. “They have to provide psychiatric rehabilitation services to their residents,” Tolvstad says.

Hlava says he doesn’t recall any such meetings, and that Lafayette Court tenants can obtain services as needed at community-based clinics.

Following the money

Oregon’s mental health funding woes led to Cascadia’s founding a decade ago, as a super-sized agency formed from the merger of several financially strapped programs. By 2008, it was the dominant mental health provider in Multnomah County, with 23,000 clients and a $60 million budget.

It nearly went bankrupt that year and was bailed out by the state and county, with some programs parceled off to healthier nonprofits. Now Cascadia has a $42 million budget and serves 12,000 clients a year, providing mental health clinics, group and individual counseling, outpatient services, and housing.

Before the 2008 financial implosion, Cascadia had a different approach to housing management, Hlava says. It employed people with human services backgrounds, like Wagoner, to regularly check in with residents in a portfolio of properties. During the meltdown it became clear the nonprofit was lax about maintaining its buildings and complying with federal, state and local regulatory agencies, Hlava says.

“Not getting that stuff done put us on ‘watch lists’ by our regulators and our bankers,” says Hlava, who moved over from the human services side four years ago to manage Cascadia Housing.

He began hiring professional real estate asset managers to oversee the properties. Hlava says he hopes to inculcate skills among those asset managers to work well with the mentally ill when they make site visits.

Now the properties are in better shape physically and financially, he says, and Cascadia Housing is in compliance with regulations.

Recent visits to three Cascadia properties showed all were attractively landscaped and well-maintained structurally.

Many Cascadia tenants are doing “fabulously” without any on-site services, Hlava says, which he sees as evidence the independent housing model is working. “People do find ways to take care of themselves,” he says.

But he acknowledges that funding is the reason tenants in some independent living units get residential services from social workers while others get little to none.

In today’s arcane, underfunded world, mental health services are provided where grants or other government funding is available. Lafayette Court once offered regular group therapy sessions on site. But Medicaid stopped reimbursing for that, Hlava says, so the program ended. When that site opened in the 1990s, there was a full-time staffer on site. Residents could buy into a low-cost meal program on site, and were taken on trips to the grocery store. Other facilities had half-time staff.

Those on-site staff are long gone, Hlava says, and that was a different era for mental health funding.

From the Oregonian, May 21, 2012

A preschool teacher first told Marne Maykowskyj Nordean that her son Henry might have a developmental disorder.

“He was disruptive,” says the Portland mother of three. “Most kids would do what they were told. Henry just never saw anything that way. His thoughts move in a cyclone instead of in a line. Teachers found it so easy to blame him for everything.”

It took years for a proper diagnosis: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There is no simple test to find out if a child has ADHD, and the symptoms can look quite different from case to case. Even with a quick diagnosis, treatment remains a challenge. There’s no way to predict whether any of the available medications are likely to improve symptoms, or cause intolerable side effects.

Researchers have come to realize that ADHD may not be a single disorder. It’s starting to look like a group of related disorders, each potentially arising from different environmental and genetic factors and perhaps requiring a different treatment approach.

Last year, the Nordeans joined a clinical trial at Oregon Health & Science University that is starting to unlock some of the secrets of the disorder. The latest findings suggest ADHD may have five or more distinct subtypes. Knowing these subtypes seems to make it easier to accurately diagnose children. Eventually, the work could point to more tailored treatments.

“We have treatments that work, in the sense that most children will see some benefit,” says Joel T. Nigg, a professor of psychology at OHSU. “The big problem is, if you take the treatment away the problem returns. You have not cured it, you’ve just contained it.”

Nigg and colleagues are studying genes and brain changes of hundreds of children diagnosed with ADHD that might correlate with symptoms. They are carefully tracking the children’s development over several years with repeated tests of behavior and mental processing skills. They’ve amassed one of the world’s largest compilations of data on kids with ADHD.

Experts have long divided cases into three types: those dominated by attention problems, those dominated by hyperactivity, and those with high levels of both. In recent years, however, it’s become clear that these categories aren’t stable; one child’s dominant symptoms can shift over time. A four-year-old’s overwhelming attention problems, for instance, might give way to more prominent hyperactivity by age 10.

The OHSU researchers developed a better way to zero-in on sub-types.

It involves a field of mathematics known as graph theory. It’s easiest to picture as a way to group people in space based on how alike they are on a multitude of tests of thinking and behavior. The researchers focused on self-control, attention, speed of mental processing, working memory and several other attributes. They tested the method on 285 children with ADHD.

The kids sorted into six groups, each characterized by distinct strengths and weaknesses in attention, memory, self-control and other tested areas. No group was better or worse in IQ testing or overall severity of ADHD symptoms.

“These are different neuropsychological profiles,” says Nigg. “They all have ADHD, but perhaps all for a different reason.”

When the researchers tested typically developing children, they also found great variability, enough to classify four distinct neuropsychological profiles. By taking this normal variation into account, the researchers found they could diagnose ADHD more accurately using behavioral test results.

Dr. Margaret Danielle Weiss, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, who is not involved in the research, says it demonstrates children with ADHD actually may have different types of impairment. But she says the study leaves important questions unanswered.

“Further research in this area will have to account for the fact that typically developing normal children also demonstrate well characterized differences in their skills,” she says.

Damien Fair, lead study author and an assistant professor of behavioral neuroscience and psychiatry at OHSU, says ADHD may prove to have more than six subtypes. Other methods that integrate brain imaging and genetic testing, might prove most effective at categorizing the disorder. The long-term goal, he says, is to find a way to individualize treatment.

“We probably need to target our treatment strategies based on fine-tuned personalized differences,” he says, “rather than treating everybody as one homogeneous group.”

Relying on trial-and-error, doctors prescribed a series of medications for Nordean’s son Henry, now 9.

“It was a nightmare,” Nordean says. “His heart was racing. He was hallucinating at one point. He was depressed and miserable. We tried four different medicines.” She says a non-stimulant medication eventually proved to work best. An unusually supportive teacher this year has also made a difference.

“He’s doing fantastic with a teacher who lets him blossom,” Nordean says.

Recently released mental health reports give glimpse into life, mind of accused murderer

From the The South County Spotlight, May 16, 2012

By many accounts, Daniel Butts is troubled.

But the question remains: Is the murder suspect mentally fit to face his charges in court? Butts’ competency to “aid and assist” in his defense – a legal requirement for trial proceedings to continue – will be determined by a judge following continuing evaluations at the state mental hospital.

Butts faces 24 charges, including aggravated murder – a crime that could carry the death penalty if convicted – for his alleged slaying of Rainier Police Chief Ralph Painter outside a car stereo shop on Jan. 5, 2011.

Recently released mental health reports give the most detailed public look yet at the 22-year-old Kalama, Wash., man.

The reports – based on numerous evaluations from mental health professionals in 2011 – were revealed April 30, nearly one year after lawyers for The Oregonian newspaper filed motions for the documents to be made available. Entire sections of the 74 pages of reports were redacted before entering the public record.

Because of Butts’ refusal to speak during multiple interviews with psychologists, much of the information contained in the reports is based on interviews with his family and others close to him.

The following are details revealed in numerous mental health evaluation reports from 2011:

Family history

* Butts was raised mostly by his biological father Mikel Butts in Washington, along with a younger sister, 18, and older brother, 26. He also reportedly has four half-siblings. In a Jan. 9, 2011, hospital interview video, mental health professionals used to gather information, Butts said his father and biological mother, who separated when he was 7, “don’t get along too well.” Mikel had full custody of the children while his mother provided child support.

* Butts’ mother told psychologists her family has a history of drug addiction, alcoholism and various mental disorders. She said she was diagnosed with manic depression in 1988. Two of her other sons – Butts’ stepbrothers – had experienced psychotic episodes and also “auditory hallucinations of ‘heaven and hell,’” she said. Neither she, nor Mikel Butts, said they knew where those two sons were at the time.

* During an October 2011 interview with Butts’ mother, psychiatrist Jerry Larsen noted the woman lived in a house without running water, heat or an indoor toilet. The outside of the property was apparently cluttered, as was the interior, with “books, magazines, a variety of articles piled floor to ceiling, leaving only a U-shaped path through the room.”

* Butts and his father also reportedly would wrestle to the point of causing noticeable injury to them both. Mikel Butts said his son was prone to anger and aggression just like him. “Like father, like son,” he said. Mikel Butts was reportedly court-ordered to participate in domestic violence treatment for undocumented reasons.

The months before

* Butts’ parents said their son had been exhibiting unusual behavior in the months leading to his arrest. His father said his son had difficulty obtaining employment after quitting his prior job when he was denied a raise. Butts also called his father “Mike” instead of the usual “Dad.” Mikel Butts said his son began to be “withdrawn and depressed.” The father also noted that Butts would need reminders to bathe and would lie “horizontal for days.” When Butts made a slight misjudgment while fixing a damaged headlight, Mikel Butts said his son began crying. At other times, Butts’ father said his son was laughing “too hard for the moment.”

* In mid- to late-December, Butts reportedly hit the family dog over the head with a splitting maul, causing lacerations, because, as his father recounts his son saying, “She was looking at me.”

* Butts’ mother said her son was disoriented and appeared to be under the influence of drugs in the short time before his arrest. After his arrest, Butts’ blood and urine were tested for drugs, but the results were negative. Numerous accounts indicate Butts was a marijuana user, and one of his Kalama friends told The Spotlight in early 2011 she did not believe he used harder drugs.

* Two days before the shooting, Butts reportedly entered his mother’s rural home near Rainier uninvited, taking off his clothes, lying down on her bed and beginning to masturbate, saying, “Mom, you want some of this?”

* Butts’ sister said while her brother was usually helpful, in 2010 he changed, refusing to assist her in changing a tire, for instance. During that time she said she told him she loved him, but the sister said he replied, “No you don’t.” She said her entire family recognized something was wrong with Butts in the months before the shooting, encouraging him to seek help, which he refused. She said he did confide to her that “something is wrong,” as he held his head in his hands.

* Mikel Butts said his son asked about taking ownership of the father’s ranch in late December 2010, as outlined in Mikel’s will. Mikel told interviewers he joked with his son that, “I’m not dead, yet.” Mikel said he felt threatened when Butts replied, “I should just kill you then.” The father said he removed him from that portion of the will the next day.

* Oregon State Hospital psychologist Brooke Howard said in a report – based on in-person observations of Butts, two interviews and reviews of recordings – she does not believe Butts was experiencing significant psychiatric symptoms in the weeks to months before his Jan. 5, 2011, arrest. She said it did appear he was “facing financial stressors, showing some erratic behaviors at times and distress after learning his former girlfriend was getting married.” She wrote he may have some biological predisposition to a “mood or psychotic disorder,” but there is not enough evidence to show he has a major mental illness in either the recent or * Psychiatrist Larsen disagrees, saying in his report “with reasonable medical certainty, Daniel Butts suffers from a serious mental illness, psychotic in nature, likely schizophrenic in type.”

After the arrest

* Butts appeared to be cooperative in the first few weeks after his incarceration, according to testimony. But following an arraignment on Jan. 26, 2011, he reportedly became oppositional and troublesome.

* That February, jail staff said Butts went on a brief hunger strike. During that time he also mostly stopped verbally communicating.

* In April 2011, Howard reported that Butts appeared to be adapting better to life in jail, with improved cooperation, compliance and demeanor. The psychologist pointed out those presumed improvements occurred without mental health services or psychotropic medications.

* Before his arrest, Butts was clean shaven and slender, but now sports an unkempt beard, long hair and appears much heavier.

* A female Columbia County Jail officer reported Butts put his penis through a slot on his cell door as she was serving breakfast.

* Butts developed an infection after he was found to be stabbing himself repeatedly in the head and neck with a pencil on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Painter’s slaying. Jail staff said he continually refused treatment for his lingering head wound. He also reportedly refused to take his prescribed psychotropic medication.

* For most of the last year, Butts’ attorneys said he repeatedly refused to interact with them. At his Feb. 8, 2012, court proceeding, Butts sat silent with his head facing the ground, refusing to respond when Judge Ted Grove asked for his plea. His attorneys pleaded “not guilty” on his behalf.