Mental Health Association of Portland

From The Guardian Wednesday 14 July 2010

People suffering mental health crises are too often subjected to brutality by poorly trained and frightened police officers.

In New York in April 2009, Indhira Reyes contacted a social worker to request an ambulance for her brother Gamalier Reyes. Gamalier, who has bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was “unusually disturbed” and Indhira was concerned for his safety. Eight NYPD officers responded and, according to the Reyes family, they proceeded to beat Gamalier so badly that he required reconstructive surgery for a skull fracture. Police claim that he was violent and needed to be subdued.

Every day in various American communities, people enter mental health crises and their friends and family members pick up the phone to call for help. Often, the first responders on the scene are police officers, and the resulting interaction does not go well. Poorly trained and frightened police officers may resort to excessive force, and sometimes this ends in death for a person who is guilty only of being in urgent need of psychiatric care.

This is a direct consequence of the erosion of community-based mental health services. In many areas, little to no support exists for people with mental illnesses. People in need of assistance may be denied when they seek it out themselves through self-referral, creating the very real risk of a serious mental health crisis as a consequence of untreated mental illness; and when friends and family members call for help, they get police, not mental health professionals. In some cases, people are actively encouraged to call the police for help because no other services are available.

Unfortunately, police officers are often provided with very poor training in dealing with mental health patients. When they arrive on the scene, they may have received garbled information through the dispatcher; parents reporting a child in a suicidal state may have become “someone is armed with a gun”, for example, and police are on high alert. Inadequate preparation for interacting with people in crisis results in an escalation of emergency situations that can quickly turn violent and ugly, especially when paired with poor communication.

Mental health patients are shot, Tasered and slammed against pavements hard enough to break their skulls. They are subjected to excessive force in hospitals, private homes and their own driveways. Often, they are unarmed – as in the case of Aaron Campbell, a black man who was shot in the back by a sniper while witnesses claim his hands were over his head. Horrified bystanders are powerless to intervene, and in some cases never even call the police in the first place.

To counter those horrific experiences, a radical restructuring of the way responses to mental health crises are handled is required. We are in urgent need of more community-based services for people who need mental health care, including counselling, outpatient clinics, education programmes for caregivers and better mental health interventions for at-risk individuals like homeless people.

These changes are a long time coming. In the short term, we must address the increasing criminalisation of mental illness and provide more complete training to police officers and mental health professionals. If community-based services are not going to be made available and we are going to persist in relying on police officers for mental health services, those police officers need the right training. Two days is not enough.

Several police departments have independently recognised this need and begun work on the development of task forces to address mental health issues, as seen in Portland, Oregon, where there have been several shootings of mentally ill people in the past year. This is good, but change is needed on a higher level. Nations need to be encouraged to change the standards for police training to provide officers with training in mental health interventions and an effective universal training programme needs to be developed to ensure that officers are provided with training they can actually use.

Teaching officers how to handle encounters with mentally ill individuals should include familiarisation with common mental health issues, training in non-lethal restraint as well as verbal negotiations with people in crisis, and the development of an action plan that includes emergency personnel like paramedics and firefighters as well as police. In many rural areas of the United States, for example, firefighters are increasingly first on the line during medical aid calls and they, too, need training in providing assistance to people in mental health crisis.

Dealing with individuals in crisis requires highly specialised training; there’s a reason that the mental health profession is so large and that training requirements for people offering mental health services are extensive. Throwing untrained personnel at people with mental illness has predictable, tragic and fully preventable consequences.

From the Portland Tribune, June 17, 2010

Portland police and other emergency service providers will have a new place to bring mentally ill people in crisis besides the county jail or local hospitals.

Multnomah County, the city of Portland and the nonprofit Central City Concern reached a final deal Thursday, June 17, to build and operate a mental health intake center above the Hooper “sobering center” east of the Burnside Bridge, 20 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

Groundbreaking for the new Crisis Assessment and Treatment Center is planned in August, with completion expected about six months later.

The $5.3 million facility will feature professional and peer counselors who can work with mentally ill people experiencing breakdowns or other crises, and 16 beds where they can be lodged in a safe, dormitory-style setting.

Officials have talked about the need for such a center for years. But the need became more urgent in the aftermath of the September 2006 death of James Chasse Jr., a schizophrenic, who died in police custody from serious injuries suffered when he was tackled during his arrest. Two others – the Jan. 29 shooting of Aaron Campbell at a Sandy Boulevard apartment complex, and the May 12 shooting of Keaton Dupree Otis in the Lloyd District – also involved people who were said to suffer from various mental illnesses.

Emergency services providers often lack the skills to identify and handle mentally ill people undergoing episodes or outbreaks, and the results can sometimes be tragic.

“This helps fill a very important gap in our mental health system,” said County Chair Jeff Cogen, after the cooperative agreement was finalized with the city and Central City Concern, which operates the Hooper center. The complex agreement, in the works more than two years, called for Central City Concern to relocate its Hooper Detox Center to a renovated facility at a former Ramada Inn, at North Williams Avenue and Weidler Street near the Rose Quarter.

Drunks picked up by police or other authorities are brought to the sobering center for medical treatment until they sober up, and then moved to the detox center, a residential program that allows them to continue to receive substance abuse treatment.

The new mental health intake center was seen as a good fit for the sobering center on the ground floor.

The new facility isn’t going to solve all the problems with the mental health system in the city and the county, said Central City Concern Executive Director Ed Blackburn. But “not a week goes by” when there isn’t a need for such a facility, he said.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams helped expedite the allocation of $2 million in promised city urban renewal funds to speed up development of the intake center. The state provided $1 million, the county put up $842,000 and $1.4 million came from New Market tax credits.

Operating the center will require more than $3 million a year, most of it from federal and state Medicaid funds. The city and county agreed to split the remaining costs, which are estimated at $550,000 a year for each entity, said Dave Austin, a county spokesman for human services programs.

Multnomah County will seek bids from an outside entity to operate the new Crisis Assessment and Treatment Center, Austin said.

Central City Concern could be one of the nonprofit or other groups bidding to run the program.

Keaton Otis was just 25 years old when he died on May 12, shot by police after a routine traffic stop in Northeast Portland.

He was the third victim of a police shooting in Portland this year. In the latest tragedy, Officer Christopher Burley was wounded. Thankfully, he is expected to return to work next week. Keaton Otis was not so fortunate.

Otis had a mental illness. So did the other two people killed by police in the first half of 2010. So did most of the individuals who have died at the hands of Portland police over the last several years.

Portland Tragedies Mount

Otis’s death came only a day after the city agreed to pay $1.6 million to the family of James Chasse, a Portland man with a diagnosis of schizophrenia who was beaten to death by police in 2006. It came less than a week before a memorial service for Jack Dale Collins, who also lived with mental health challenges and was shot to death by police on March 22. It was just months after Aaron Campbell was shot in the back by police responding to a crisis call. And it followed a series of similar deaths, including those of Deontae Keller, Richard “Dickie” Dow, Jose Meija Poot, Kendra James, and James Jahar Perez.

Some Portlanders were stunned. “We lost another? So soon?”

Others think it’s only a matter of time before it happens again.

Traffic Stop Turns Deadly

On May 12 around 6:20 p.m., gang-enforcement officers headed out after a break to patrol the streets. Officer Ryan Foote spotted Keaton Otis driving a silver Toyota Corolla on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. He noticed that Otis was a young African American man, wearing a hoodie and slouched in the driver’s seat.

Otis had not broken any laws at that point, but Foote thought he looked “kind of” like a gangster and decided to check his license plates – even over the objection of his partner, Officer James Defrain, who asked, “Are you seriously going to run that plate?”

From that point things went crashing downhill.

Escalating Response

Officers saw Otis changing lanes without signaling, and they turned on their lights, sirens and air horns. Otis, however, did not immediately pull over. Police Chief Mike Reese later said this “heightened officers’ concern.”

The situation escalated when Otis twice pulled over, then drove away again. Police called for cover and four police cars boxed in Otis’ vehicle. Officers ordered Otis out of the car, but he became angry, swearing at them. Police suspected – correctly, it turned out – that he had a weapon.

Officers grabbed at Otis, clamped his wrist in a pain-compliance hold, and fired their Tasers and stun guns. Otis, however, managed to remove a gun from his glove compartment, and shot Officer Burley between the legs. Police opened fire. They kept shooting, firing so many rounds that another officer said it “sounded like World War III.” They shot 32 times. Twenty-three of the bullets hit their mark.

Parents Were Desperate

Keaton’s mother and stepfather, Felesia and Joseph Otis, told detectives their son was diagnosed with a mood disorder, but had stopped taking his medication. They tried and failed to get their son treatment. In desperation, they even turned to extremes, trying to have Keaton committed to the hospital.

Will Hall, a Portland therapist and mental health advocate, understands how parents feel when their child is in trouble. However, he cautions against the assumption that forced treatment is the solution.

“The Otis family is right,” Hall says. “More services and support are needed for families and individuals. The mistake here is to view this as either do nothing or force people into the hospital.

“Reaching for expanded commitment looks like a quick fix, but it isn’t. Rounding people up in mental hospitals is not a magic solution; forced commitment can traumatize people – I know, it traumatized me. It can drive people away from care, lead to a revolving door and create worse problems in the long run.

“We need good holistic and community-controlled voluntary services for families and individuals in distress, to support people before they reach the crisis point. We don’t need a return to the asylum mentality of the 1950s.”

Another Loss

Yesterday at a press conference, Chief Reese defended officers’ actions, including the 32 gunshots. A grand jury found that the police had not exceeded their authority. There was no criminal liability.

But a family lost a son.

In a city where police seem almost casual with their use of deadly force, people with mental illness or in crisis are most at risk.

And to many Portland mental health advocates, it feels like they barely get the chance to bury one of their brothers or sisters before it’s time to close the casket on the next.

By Jenny Westberg, guest column in The Oregonian, May 14, 2010

In her column this week, The Oregonian’s Anna Griffin notes that any time James P. Chasse Jr.’s name is in the news, she gets the same phone call: “Why won’t this story go away? It’s been four years. He was nobody. Why do you think anyone still cares?”

Those are good questions, and the caller probably speaks for many Portlanders. Each point deserves a response.

“He was nobody.”

What do we know about this “nobody”? James Chasse was a writer, artist, poet and musician. He had many friends and a loving family: a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, a niece. Friends and strangers knew of his gentle spirit. Yes, he happened to have a serious mental illness. He struggled more than most of us. But we also know he put effort into getting well. We know he was not drinking or using drugs. We know he made art and music. We know he touched many lives.

What did Jesse Jackson tell us? “I am somebody.” James Chasse was somebody. He mattered. He was loved. He is still remembered.

“It’s been four years.”

That’s true. And the city should be ashamed. An investigation that should have happened immediately took three years. In fact it was delayed so long that the city must now pay an outside firm to investigate the investigation.

If city government had done its job in the first place, we wouldn’t be dealing with it more than three years later. Taxpayers could have avoided paying lawyers to defend the city, the county and police, racking up billable hours to devise legal strategies that offend the conscience, such as the suggestion that Chasse was responsible for his own death.

If officials had taken immediate and forceful action, we might not have witnessed this week’s city government shakeup, with Mayor Sam Adams removing the Police Bureau from under Commissioner Dan Saltzman and telling Police Chief Rosie Sizer to clean out her desk.

There’s not a single good reason this case needed to last this long, cost millions of dollars and cause immeasurable damage to the public trust.

“Why won’t this story go away?”

Maybe some Portlanders would like to forget about James Chasse. Certainly city leaders would be relieved if the whole thing quietly slipped away. But the case lives on, in part due to the appalling number of insults that kept getting heaped onto the original injury.

When the officers involved in Chasse’s death went undisciplined, it was an insult. When Saltzman announced token disciplinary action, then obediently withdrew it when police objected, it was an insult. When years went by without an investigatory report, it was an insult.

Prior to Chasse’s death, we had heard about other people with mental illness or in crisis who had been killed at the hands of police. Deontae Keller. Richard “Dickie” Dow. Jose Meija Poot. Kendra James. James Jahar Perez. And the deaths didn’t stop. Aaron Campbell was shot in the back and killed on Jan. 29. Jack Dale Collins was shot and killed on March 22.

Tragic occurrences all. But tragedies no longer seen as mere “accidents,” but as “normal,” predictable and all too frequent.

We learned more about the officers involved in Chasse’s death. On Nov. 14, 2009, Officer Chris Humphreys shot a 12-year-old girl with a beanbag gun. On April 7, 2010, Officer Kyle Nice pulled his gun on a civilian in a road-rage incident. Two more insults. As the final Chasse lawsuit approached, city attorneys added another to the pile: They would try to pin Chasse’s death on Chasse himself.

Portland has been battered by these insults. The story won’t go away as long as the wounds keep getting ripped back open.

“Why do you think anyone still cares?”

Unpackaged, this question speaks to injustice, to impunity, to authoritarian rule. It asks the community to ignore unreasonable police brutality. It asks for the issues around mental illness to be ignored, forgotten, for those persons with unsolvable problems to vanish.

The question expresses fear, ignorance, shame and disgrace.

We care about the person and the facts. James Chasse was brutally killed. He did not commit a crime. He was defenseless. He died in fear and agony, in the custody of those we expect to “protect and serve.”

If compassion and facts don’t move us, infuriate us and make us wonder what’s happening to our city, what would it take?

Yes, we still care, because we, like James Chasse, are human beings. He didn’t deserve to die. This must never happen again.

Jenny Westberg is a board member of the Mental Health Association of Portland.

Column by Steve Duin, from The Oregonian, May 12, 2010

On his 497th day spent cowering in the mayor’s office, Sam Adams finally took command of the place Wednesday, cashiering Police Chief Rosie Sizer and taking control of her “demonized” police bureau.

Still steamed about Sizer’s public criticism of his 2010-11 budget, Adams kicked her to the curb. That petulant but long overdue smackdown capped an eventful week in which the city finally settled the James Chasse Jr. case, the lasting epitaph on Sizer’s 49 months in the penthouse suite of the Justice Center.

To the bitter end, Sizer acted as if the cops were the real victims in the brutal death of Chasse, pile-driven to the sidewalk by Portland’s finest. She was so cavalier about the interminable delays in the internal affairs investigation into Chasse’s death — “Absolutely intolerable,” Adams said — that the citizenry’s anger was still mounting when the $1.6 million settlement was announced.

But Sizer was cavalier and defensive about so many things. The police, she argued in February, couldn’t be blamed for the Aaron Campbell shooting, not when the city refused to fund a regional training center so the cops could target unarmed suspects in a “realistic setting.”

The bureau’s resident thugs, Officer Chris Humphreys and Sgt. Kyle Nice, shouldn’t be “demonized” or disciplined for that “horrible accident” in the Pearl District, Sizer insisted, no matter what her boss, Commissioner Dan Saltzman, said.

And Sizer was so unimpressed — or unintimidated — by Adams’ power and privilege that she marched out of budget negotiations and into a news conference Monday to announce that the mayor’s proposed budget would sideline 25 police officers.

“That,” Adams said, “was a moment of supreme frustration,” and the final insult for the mayor. While serving as Vera Katz’s chief of staff, Adams learned the importance of working the building and the bureau heads until he could take a balanced budget out for public display.

He was convinced that both Sizer and Saltzman had signed off on the Police Bureau budget, and he considered the press conference obnoxious and insubordinate.

With a decisiveness we haven’t seen since we were introduced to Beau Breedlove, Adams chopped them both off at the knees, booting Sizer two months before her planned retirement and stripping Saltzman of the bureau at the end of his re-election campaign.

Adams would not own up to unnecessary petulance or vindictiveness. Too many of the positive changes in the bureau on Sizer and Saltzman’s watch, he said, have been “in response to crisis, to failure. I want there to be a cultural change. There are wide swaths of our community that look to the Police Bureau in fear, not in safety.

“I thought it was time to be more proactive.”

You think? On Day 497 on the job?

Adams said he conferred with no other commissioner before offering the chief’s job to Mike Reese, who would seem married to the very culture Adams wants to change.

It was Reese, after all, who transferred Officer Tom Brennan to the property evidence warehouse after Brennan complained about the street tactics of Kyle Nice. Brennan filed a tort claim against the city in January, claiming the bureau was retaliating for his speaking out.

Asked about Reese’s selection, Adams said, “For the Police Bureau, this has been a rough two or three years. I had to weigh stability over inclusion.”

Adams waited far too long to take command of the bureau, jettison Sizer and remember who won the 2008 election. That he finally has suggests Adams trusts he has put scandal behind him, but it is no guarantee of stability ahead.

From The Olympian / AP, May 12, 2010

Portland Mayor Sam Adams fired the city’s police chief Wednesday, a day after the city agreed to pay $1.6 million to settle a lawsuit over the death of a mentally ill man in police custody.

Adams said at a City Hall news conference the factors that went into his decision were “cumulative” but that he made up his mind Tuesday night and met with Police Chief Rosie Sizer on Wednesday morning.

He praised Sizer for her four years as chief, saying she “has accomplished some remarkable reforms” at the Portland Police Bureau.

But the mayor added: “Too often though, the reforms have come after, or in reaction to, failures at the bureau. I want to put the bureau on a more proactive reform path.”

Adams named Mike Reese, the Central Precinct commander, as the new chief, effective with the announcement.

Adams said Sizer would take her remaining vacation time until she can officially retire on July 15 to preserve her full benefits.

Sizer could not immediately be reached for comment following the announcement.

The mayor also said he would take over immediately as police commissioner, a traditional role for the Portland mayor but one that Adams had delegated to City Commissioner Dan Saltzman.

On Monday, Sizer criticized the mayor’s proposed budget, and was joined by Saltzman. Adams said Wednesday the dispute over the budget “forced the timeline” of his decision to fire Sizer and take over as police commissioner. He did not elaborate.

Adams also said budget cuts in many social service agencies are forcing Portland police officers to act as social workers, and they will have to take on more of that role as a practical matter.

“We are overwhelmed with the demand for services,” Adams said. “That’s the reality. They are the first responders. And with $2.8 billion in anticipated additional cuts from the state budget, I wish I could say that’s going to change, but it’s not.”

Jason Renaud, co-founder of the Mental Health Association of Portland, said police in Portland are following a national trend.

“Cops are social workers,” Renaud said. “They manage people with mental illness and addiction problems every day. They don’t bring down bank robbers and murderers every day.”

On Tuesday, Saltzman announced the $1.6 million settlement in the police custody death lawsuit and made a public apology to the family of James Chasse Jr., who died in September 2006 after he was tackled by officers on a street corner, breaking 16 ribs and puncturing his lung.

Chasse, 42, suffered from schizophrenia, and his family sued the city, Multnomah County and an ambulance company. The county settled for $925,000, and American Medical Response settled for a reported $600,000.

Two Portland officers involved in the arrest were disciplined, and Sizer launched a reform program for dealing with the mentally ill that includes 40 hours of crisis intervention training for all officers.

Sizer also has had to deal with the fallout from the death of an unarmed young black man who was shot in the back by a Portland officer with a rifle during a standoff in late January.

Aaron Campbell’s death sparked a protest march on City Hall and a confrontation with Adams by leaders of Portland’s black community, followed by a visit from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who called the police shooting “an execution.”

Reviews are under way by the U.S. Department of Justice and the police bureau.

Adams said Wednesday he wants to improve relationships between police and the entire community, but especially minorities.

According to reporting in the May 8 The Oregonian newspaper, staffers in the office of the Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schrunk plan to cease representing persons brought to mental health court or civil commitment proceedings if the District Attorney’s budget is reduced, as planned by interim county chair Jeff Cogen.

Cogen is running for the county chairmanship; the election will be decided May 18.

In a letter from Schrunk to Cogen referenced in The Oregonian, Schrunk also “says he would stop prosecuting prostitution, trespassing, minor drug offenses and other misdemeanors if forced to make budget cuts…”

This mid-May strategy has been used by Schrunk in prior budget seasons; he has been in office for over 30 years.

Mental health courts help the judicial system acknowledge persons with a diagnosis of mental illness who are charged with misdemeanors can be more effectively and inexpensively adjudicated in a “boutique court” with attorneys, judges and staff who understand the medical and sociological interests at stake.

Schrunk endorsed a mental health courts in meetings with mental health advocates in 1999 and then delayed opening the present court until 2008. The court sees a minor fraction of persons with a diagnosis of mental illness charged with a crime, and has limited resources to offer them.

READ – Trial Effort- Portland to Get Pilot Mental Health Court, Portland Mercury, May 1, 2008

Civil commitment court is an informal but legal determination of whether a person is actively dangerous to themselves or others. It is the primary access point for persons with a diagnosis of mental illness in Multnomah County to the Oregon State Hospital.

READ – Too Crazy To Be Roaming The Streets?—The Mercury’s Guide To Civil Commitment, Portland Mercury, February 9, 2008

Schrunk’s plan holds persons with a diagnosis of mental illness, their friends, family members, neighbors and caregivers hostage within a battered service system, and exploits the attention brought to the mental health services crisis by the shortcomings of his past administration, including failure to prosecute any police officer for any use-of-force crime, including the homicides of James Chasse, Aaron Campbell and Jack Collins.

READ – Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schrunk warns that crimes will go unpunished under budget cuts, The Oregonian, May 7, 2010

From the Portland Tribune, April 21, 2010

For years, community activists have pressured the Portland City Council to reduce violent confrontations between the police and the mentally ill.

But while police have been placed under the public spotlight as a result of these confrontations, the mental health system doesn’t get the same level of scrutiny. And some activists say that state and federal privacy laws make it impossible to know whether the mental health system should be held accountable along with law enforcement officers.

“It’s a huge issue,” admits Jason Renaud of the Mental Health Association of Portland, who has been one of the most vocal police critics. “Right now, we have no way of knowing whether the mentally ill are receiving the best possible treatment.”

Pressure on the council began to mount more than three years ago when James Chasse, a diagnosed schizophrenic, died after fighting with several Portland police officers and Multnomah County sheriff’s deputies. It increased this year when Portland police killed Aaron Campbell, who was suicidal, and Jack Collins, a transient who had cut his throat with a utility knife.

Multnomah County grand juries cleared the police of criminal wrongdoing in all three cases, helping to fuel anger among the activists. But all police records have been released in the three cases. Grand jury transcripts from the Campbell and Collins cases also have been released, allowing the public to judge the actions of the police leading up to the deaths.

But the mental health files in the three cases remain secret – even though police records indicate Chasse and Campbell were treated by mental health professional before their deaths. Collins may also have been in contact with such professionals, too. Because these records are not made public, however, citizens have no way to determine what efforts were made to help the three men lead normal lives, why those efforts failed and what lessons have been learned from their deaths.

The files are restricted because state and federal laws guarantee the privacy of medical records, including those related to mental health and addiction treatment. The privacy laws even apply to internal reviews conducted by public agencies who fund such services.

Renaud says such privacy laws are essential to encourage mentally ill and addicted people to seek treatment without fear of exposure. At the same time, he acknowledges that the restrictions prevent the public from learning whether everything possible is being done to prevent such tragedies.

“There’s no way to measure the effectiveness of the mental health system,” says Renaud, a candidate for City Council who is not running an active campaign.

And the transparency gap between the local law enforcement and mental health systems is growing even larger. In the wake of the three deaths, the council increased public oversight of the Portland Police Bureau. On March 31, it unanimously voted to strengthen the role of the Independent Police Review Division of the City Auditor’s Office in alleged police misconduct cases.

Yet none of these reforms apply to the mental health system.

Laws keep records sealed

Mental health services are provided by a range of licensed professionals, including psychiatrists, psychologists and addiction counselors. In Multnomah County, the publicly funded mental health system is overseen by the Mental Health and Addiction Services Division of the Department of County Human Services. It contracts with numerous nonprofit organizations to provide a range of services to those who cannot afford private care. The organizations include Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, Central City Concern and Outside In. The current budget is around $78 million. County-funded programs assessed and served around 45,000 people last year.

The privacy of everyone who receives such services is protected through federal and state laws. The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 includes privacy provisions covering all medical records. Oregon laws also guarantee that alcohol and drug treatment records are private.

“People have the right to expect that their medical records are confidential, and that includes mental health and addiction-treatment records,” says Christina Gardner, the division’s HIPAA compliance officer.

Even law enforcement officials are prevented from accessing a person’s medical records. This means that when police encounter people who appear to be mentally ill, they cannot easily learn whether they are under someone’s care.

In most cases, Gardner says, this is not a serious problem. If police are worried enough, they can contact the Mental Health Call Center operated by the county or Project Respond, a mobile mental health crisis response team operated by Cascadia on behalf of the county.

In both cases, mental health workers will be dispatched to the scene with access to a database of everyone in the county mental health system. If the person is in crisis, the mental health workers are allowed to provide the police general information about the individual’s condition to help resolve the situation.

But this did not happen with Chasse, Campbell or Collins – primarily because the confrontations that led to the deaths escalated too rapidly or unfolded differently than expected.
Numerous contacts with system

Because of the privacy laws, county officials cannot disclose or discuss whether Chasse, Campbell or Collins ever received mental heath or addiction treatment. However, police records released after their deaths indicate that they did.

Chasse died after being chased and fighting with police on Sept, 17, 2006. One month before his death, according to police documents, caseworkers were concerned Chasse had stopped taking his medication and needed to be hospitalized. Two days before his death, a mental health worker and police officer went to see Chasse at his apartment, but he ran away.

Campbell was shot and killed by Portland police after an hourlong standoff on Jan. 29. When police were called to the apartment complex where Campbell was staying, they were told that he was suicidal and had a gun. After his death, Campbell’s girlfriend told police that he had spent time in a “mental hospital” after trying to kill himself a year early. She said Campbell received psychiatric medicine from the hospital but had stopped taking it “because of his ulcers.”

Collins was shot and killed on March 22 after charging an officer with a utility knife. He was a longtime alcoholic who had lived on the streets for years. During that time, Collins was repeatedly cited for drinking in public, suggesting he may have also visited or been taken to the Hooper Detoxification Center, which is operated by Central City Concern.

Eleven days before his death, Collins walked into Central Precinct and asked for mental health treatment. He was directed to Cascadia, but there is no way to know whether he showed up because any record of his visit would be confidential.

“The mental health system is supposed to be accountable internally, but there’s no way for the public to learn the results,” Renaud says.

First call shouldn’t always be to police

In the wake of the controversial police shooting of Aaron Campbell, the Skanner newspaper published an editorial urging its readers not to call 911 if they were in an emergency situation.

“The fact is, we at The Skanner News simply have to warn our readers away from calling the police when they are in a crisis situation,” wrote the paper, which is primarily aimed at African-Americans in North and Northeast Portland.

The Feb. 15 editorial has repeatedly been cited as proof that Portlanders no longer trust the police. But some points in the editorial happen to be directly in line with what authorities recommend. When someone is facing a mental health crisis, there may be a better option – 503-988-4888, the number of the Mental Health Call Center operated by Multnomah County. It also can be reached at 1-800-716-9769.

According to county spokes-person David Austin, the call center is “the hub” of the mental health system. It is operated by professionals who are trained to quickly understand whether the crisis is so serious that the police must respond. If not, the operators can instead dispatch mental health workers to the scene.

“The call center is not as well known as 911, but in many cases involving the mentally ill, it is a better option,” Austin says.

The privacy of all crisis calls to the center are guaranteed by state and federal laws. It received over 45,000 calls in 2009, the most recent full year for which figures are available.

By Casadi Marino, LCSW, board member, Mental Health America of Oregon. Also published in The Oregonian.

I have been waiting for another man to die. I’ve asked what could be done to prevent another loss. I can look to what has taken place so far but I don’t find any answers.

A man with schizophrenia by the name of James Chasse dies from many blows by a number of officers. He committed no known crime. He tried to run away and lost his life. Aaron Campbell, a grief stricken black man who talked about suicide, is shot in the back and left to die in the street. Jack Collins, a homeless man with a mental illness and a drinking problem, is shot four times and killed after cutting on himself and refusing to drop the x-acto knife. They are referred to by labels and diagnoses: schizophrenic, a drunk, a transient, the homeless mentally ill. Their stories are not told, their lives are not prized, they are not seen in the context of their friends, family, and community. The gifts each had to share are not featured in the headline when another man is gone. Other highly aggressive actions are taken by officers such as shooting a twelve-year-old girl with a bean bag gun and jumping on some young people of color who were walking in the street.

The city is sued for Mr. Chasse’s death and plans a defense in which he is held responsible for his death given his mental health condition and how he got scared and tried to run away. Jason Renaud, a mental health advocate, decides to run for city commissioner to try to address the police issues. Jessie Jackson comes to town and the Albina Ministerial Alliance becomes active. People are cautioned not to call the police given what is likely to happen. Mr. Collins’ street friends talk about what a sweet person he was. Police leaders and spokespeople justify officer actions. They were doing what they were called upon to do. They had to kill those people as they didn’t do as they were ordered. They were scared. They protected the citizenry. Citizens express fear of a police department some refer to as a militia. Citizens begin to protest and some riot. Some more money is found for the mental health system, including a pilot police officer and mental health professional team. It seems a little too little and a little too late. There are many media reports and opinion pieces. There are community gatherings. There is frustration, anger, fear, blame, tears, and hopelessness. There are memorials.

I’ve listened to the police talk about how the populace doesn’t understand the situations and demands they face and how the mental health system does not work with them. I’ve listened to my fellow advocates and recognized the great responsibility they feel. It pains them greatly when someone they regard as one of their people is killed. I’ve listened to mental health consumers cry because they are scared. I’m scared. I’ve heard the name calling, the yelling, and the protests. It’s ugly and antagonized. People are being dehumanized. Nothing is being mended. No one is being heard. No one is being respected. No one knows what to do. Everyone is saying he doesn’t want this trauma. Everyone in some ways begins to look and sound the same.

We all wish to be safe.

We all need to be valued.

We all need to be heard.

We cannot afford to go on like this.

We are just waiting for another man to die.

Editorial column by Matt Davis, Portland Mercury, April 15, 2010

Oh, black bloc protesters. How I pity you. Once again last Thursday evening, April 8, you staged a woefully limp protest at the corner of NW 13th and Everett, the street corner where James Chasse Jr. was beaten by Portland cops in 2006. This followed your effort on March 29, to riot by… throwing a brick through the window of the Bank of America building. Black bloc? More like “bland crock.”

Granted, that insult was a long walk. But at the same time, it was wittier than most of your efforts to call for police reform. Turning dumpsters over in the street? Ooooh. And screaming at a KOIN TV reporter, “You’re a media whore!”

James Chasse, as well as being a man suffering with schizophrenia who was beaten to death by Portland police, was a poet and a musician. So if you’re going to protest in his name, at least be a little more original about it. You’re just giving anarchy a bad name, and I doubt he’d be proud of your efforts.

Having said all that, I was impressed with one thing y’all did last week: Painting over the sign for 13th Avenue with the words “James Ave.” Now that’s a good idea: City code says any individual or organization—even the black bloc, presumably—may apply to the city to rename a city street. City streets may only be renamed after a prominent person who has been dead for at least five years. Chasse died on September 17, 2006—so we’re on course for a rename to occur next September.

Prominence occurs as a result of a person’s “significant, positive contribution to the United States of America, and/or the local community.” Well, in Chasse’s case I would argue that his contribution to the local community has been made by dying at the hands of a broken mental health system, and highlighting just how broken that system has become.

“No crisis has focused my administration more than the death of James Chasse,” said former Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler in his address to City Club on February 12.

I rest my case. And since we still seem to be doing such a terrible job of addressing the root causes of Chasse’s death, I think the very least we can do is honor him by renaming a street until we can summon the political backbone to make funding mental health a priority.

Anyone can call the city auditor’s office to get this ball rolling: 503-823-6964. You’re welcome.

Here some of our suggestions to improve trust and respect between the Portland police and persons with a diagnosis of mental illness and / or addiction from over the past year.

Testimony at City Council – November 2009
Op Ed in The Oregonian – November 2009
Take the police out of crisis intervention business – March 2010

The newly proposed recommendations, as outlined, make no substantial changes by the police bureau, but instead ask for additional services from an underfunded mental health system, and for persons with a diagnosis of mental illness to show trust for officers and invite them to socialize.

Saltzman, Fritz and Sizer developed the proposed recommendations in a vacuum, behind closed doors, with selected friendly conversations, often with agencies and individuals who sought and gained financial favors. The closed-door decision-making shows the meek political softness of those who are making the proposal.

Substantial immediate change is within our grasp

1. The five necessary changes as defined by the AMA Coalition for Justice & Police Reform need to be implemented.

2. New leadership at police commissioner and police chief should be dedicated to changing the culture of the Portland Police Bureau.

3. Changing the culture happens through new recruitment and training strategies which value interpersonal skills over firearms solutions.

4. Changing the culture happens by giving the chief the capacity to terminate an individual officer’s employment at will. We are all human so immaculate contracts represent a cynical illusion of perfection.

5. Create a Mental Health and Addiction Roundtable, akin to the Sexual Minorities Roundtable, to create public relationships and public rapport between those who care for the welfare of persons with diagnosis of mental illness and addiction and the police bureau.

The proposed recommendations from Police Chief Sizer and Police Commissioner Saltzman lack dedicated funding, a time-line for implementation, responsible parties, and accountability benchmarks. Without these defining qualities, the proposal is bureaucratic smoke which obscures political weakness.

Recommendations from the Sizer / Saltzman / Fritz report include:

1. Increase outreach between law enforcement officers and mental health professionals, advocates and patients, many of whom have feared turning to police since Chasse’s death. Officers should participate in small-group discussions in places where those with mental illnesses feel comfortable, rather than expecting community members to attend city events.

Our comment – Rather than trying to teach cat to dance, and instead of relying on litigation and self-interested insurance policies, the city should create a set-aside fund to pay for the damage its police officers do to citizens. A step toward regaining trust is admitting failure and not repeating the same mistake.

The city should also institute community policing approaches. Officers should get to know the individuals in their areas who are involved in mental health services as providers and especially as consumers to better understand the issues and develop relationships. Officers should process with individuals involved in mental health crises after the incidents to further understand what took place, how matters might be better addressed, and to reestablish the relationships.

2. Strengthen the Crisis Intervention Advisory Council, which is made up of mental health professionals who advise the Police Bureau. Council members should be involved in suggesting policy and training for situations when police might encounter individuals in crisis. They also should provide feedback in a “non-disciplinary context” to officers after such interactions.

Our comment – The Portland Police Bureau and its sister organization the Portland Police Association have arrogantly asserted police policy trumps human and civil rights. Advisement won’t impact people who are adamant about not listening. This suggestion puts the burden of trust on those who don’t have reason to trust.

Create a non-crisis-driven Mental Health and Addiction Roundtable, akin to the Sexual Minorities Roundtable, which meets monthly to create public relationships and public rapport between those who care for the welfare of persons with diagnosis of mental illness and addiction and the police bureau.

3. Partner mental health workers with police officers to respond to mental health crisis calls. The team response would free uniformed officers to return to patrol duties and help deal with those who have repeatedly required police intervention.

Our comment – This idea seeks to further justify police officers being essential to the solution. Why not partner mental health outreach workers with more mental health outreach workers and let cops do something else? (You can hire / equip / training / supervise three mental health outreach workers for the price of one police officer).

Too many 911 calls are triaged to police officers. We need additional options for crisis intervention within the mental health community such as socializing opportunities, employment and employment training, and clinical outreach. A mental health crisis is not the same thing as a crime. A hammer always seeks to nail something.

4. Expand the role of the city’s crisis intervention training coordinator to become the Police Bureau’s contact for mental health workers after incidents involving people with mental illnesses.

Our comment – No thanks. This is personnel patchwork at its worst. The current training coordinator is well liked. The last one was terrible. This bureaucratic fix relies on the current coordinator staying in place forever and gives her implicit responsibly but no power to make change.

It’s the role of the police commissioner to speak to the public, to all persons, not just “mental health workers,” about the actions of the police bureau. We want access and answers from elected persons with both the responsibility and the power to cause accountability, not a mid-level training manager.

5. Investigate voluntary sharing of information among the city, county and mental health providers to ensure that people with chronic mental illnesses receive support.

Our comment – Investigate is a soft word when it bumps into the legal realities of the Health Information Privacy and Protections Act. Persons with diagnosis of mental illness and addiction do not want their private and protected health care information shared involuntarily with criminal justice agencies.

6. Reaffirm the city’s support for funding for a crisis assessment and treatment center. Former Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler and Portland Mayor Sam Adams had committed to open a 16-bed facility offering short-term mental health stabilization to 600 to 800 people each year.

The County and City aren’t currently funding the 16 beds they’ve already built – see Amanda Waldroupe’s story, Minds Willing but Budgets Weak

Progress on the sub-acute facility has occurring behind closed doors, without the participation of the community of persons who might use the facility. The design of any facility needs to be patient-centered, not vendor-centered. Prospective vendors are the ones who have been invited to design the facility. The Crisis Triage Center was closed in 2001 because it failed to meet community expectations – the County is making same planning mistake a decade later.

It’s not accurate to conclude a sub-acute facility would have impact on the police use of force against James Chasse, Kendra James, Jose Mejia Poot, James Jahar Perez, Dickie Dow, Aaron Campbell, or Jack Collins. The deaths of these people are examples of how CIT and the status quo haven’t solved the problem.

7. Use the city’s Government Relations Office to work for state and federal funding for mental health services.

Our comment – Good. We agree. We’ve been saying the same thing. We hope you know how to follow through.

Joe Anybody’s made a good documentary video about the Albina Ministerial Alliance’s rally about the shooting of Aaron Campbell, from February 17, 2010

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Despite a recent warning in The Skanner, Derald Walker, CEO of Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, thinks Portlanders can, and should, call 911 in crisis, if needed. It’s appropriate, Walker said, and can connect people with resources.

The Skanner’s warning came after the shooting death of Aaron Campbell on Jan. 29. Campbell was, according to The Oregonian, “an unarmed African American guilty of nothing except being suicidal and distraught.” Rev. Jesse Jackson called the death an “execution.”

Walker said he realizes that people have concerns and fears, which he called unfortunate, but, to some extent, understandable.

He added, “I think the Portland city police are trying to handle a lot of things on the streets that, quite frankly, if mental health services were more available, they probably wouldn’t be confronted with.”

Resources Needed

Walker believes that Portland police are trying to reduce the number of bad outcomes. The bureau has adopted crisis intervention training, which is now required for all officers.

But additional resources are needed, said Walker.

“We need more housing for people with mental illness, more after-hours service for people with mental illness – for everybody. And people aren’t always eligible for treatment. If you’re not on the Oregon Health Plan, you may not have access to mental health treatment; we need universal funding for mental health services. Funding is just not adequate at this point.”

Build Networks

Dan Handelman, of Portland Copwatch, said that police shootings are actually down in recent years.

Still, in the past five years, at least five people with mental illness, or in crisis, have been killed by Portland police:

Aaron Campbell, 2010
James Chasse, Jr., 2006
Jerry Goins, 2006
Tim Grant, 2006
Raymond Gwerder, 2005

Handelman points out that it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact number of cases, since mental illness is not always reported, and “crisis” is open to interpretation.

Asked whether people should call 911 in crisis, Handelman said ideally, people wouldn’t have to.

“In my opinion, people should build networks with family, friends, coworkers and neighbors so that, to the extent possible and reasonable, there is no need to call police. I also believe that a person should be able to call 911 and explain they have a mental health crisis situation and that should be able to be resolved without an armed police presence.

“People need to make up their own minds about what to do, but certainly given the possible outcomes I hope that more community building and less reliance on armed intervention is in this city’s future.”

A comprehensive record of media items and public documents about what happened to Aaron Campbell is available at http://www.mentalhealthportland.org/?page_id=4359 or click on the Aaron Campbell button above.


If you have items to add to this page, email them to info@mentalhealthportland.org.


If you would like to volunteer to help maintain and protect this archive send a message to info@mentalhealthportland.org. You must have a good working understanding of Wordpress to help with this task.


The Mental Health Association of Portland has no relationship with the Campbell or Davis families or with their legal representatives. We cannot put you in contact with them or forward messages to them for you.

About 100 people gathered this morning on the steps of the Downtown Justice Center in Portland to issue a call for justice in the Aaron Campbell shooting, a botched effort at crisis response that ended up taking a young man’s life.

The rally was organized by the Mental Health Association of Portland and the Albina Ministerial Alliance to draw attention to the police shooting of Campbell, 25.

Supporters called for a public inquest into the death, and the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into excessive use of force by Portland Police.

Dr. LeRoy Haynes, of the Albina Ministerial Alliance, said that, although the community had been disappointed by a grand jury’s refusal to indict Officer Ronald Frashour in the death, they will continue to struggle.

“We will continue to knock on the doors of City Hall and the criminal justice system for justice,” said Dr. Haynes.

Read more