Mental Health Association of Portland

Created by Commissioner Dan Saltzman, Commissioner Amanda Fritz, Chief Rosie Sizer – distributed April 8, 2010

DISCUSSION PROCESS

Commissioner Dan Saltzman, Commissioner Amanda Fritz, Chief Rosie Sizer, staff from the Commissioners’ offices, representatives from the Office of Human Relations, and Portland Police Bureau staff participated in a series of discussions with members of the mental health and developmental disabilities communities, including mental health professionals, advocates, consumers and family members. A complete list of the discussion participants is included at the end of these recommendations.

The discussions focused on how the Portland Police Bureau is doing in its work to improve its interactions with people with mental illness or developmental disabilities, following the tragic death of Mr. James Chasse. Ideas were generated regarding how the Portland Police Bureau and the City of Portland should continue to improve both interactions and relationships with the community. This report summarizes the discussions and recommendations.

The consumers, mental health professionals, and family members of consumers who participated in the discussions were very clear that since the death of James Chasse, there is an increasing hesitance and increased fear of police in the mental health community. This fear may have been exacerbated by the recent shooting deaths of Aaron Campbell and Jack Collins, which happened after our conversations.

Most of the participants felt there is a significant disconnect between the culture of law enforcement in Portland, and the culture of those in the mental health and cognitive disabilities communities. All participants agreed that meaningful two-way and multi-way communication could help bridge this divide and lead to greater understanding by all parties.

During the discussions, Chief Sizer presented information about the many changes that the Portland Police Bureau has made as a direct result of the tragic death of James Chasse. Although not directly related, the Bureau has also made significant changes to its Use of Force policy since that time. A complete list of all changes made since Mr. Chasse’s death accompanies this document.

One of the most important changes discussed at length was the Bureau’s Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Training. Many participants expressed their appreciation of the CIT training the police has required of all of its street officers since the death of Mr. Chasse. They noted that they had seen a positive difference in the interactions between the police and those with mental illness, and they commended the Bureau for undertaking this training. Other participants were unaware that the Bureau has made these changes. Prior to Mr. Chasse’s death, the Portland Police Bureau used a voluntary model of Crisis Intervention Training. This meant the Bureau trained only a fraction of street officers who volunteered for the training. Upon reflection, however, it is clear that all police officers routinely deal with people in crisis. After analyzing what could have improved the interactions with Mr. Chasse, the Bureau mandated CIT Training for all of its uniformed officers and sergeants working the streets, to teach them more skills in de-escalating potentially volatile situations. As of December of 2008, the Bureau had trained 540 employees, as well as Multnomah County deputies and some Gresham officers. The Bureau hired a mental health professional in the role of CIT Coordinator. This role was previously held by a sworn Portland Police Bureau member.

Currently, the Portland Police Bureau provides CIT training for every officer in the Bureau’s Advanced Academy training. This training builds on the crisis training that all Oregon law enforcement personnel receive at the state’s basic academy held in Salem. Officers in Portland’s CIT training receive information on specific mental illnesses, and how people’s ability to communicate is affected by their mental status and/or cognitive abilities. Trainers help officers understand the disenfranchisement of people with disabilities, and how that impacts the choices they have available to them. Issues regarding housing, medication, lack of insurance and the complications of co-occurring disorders are emphasized, in order to change traditional thinking on crime and punishment. The Portland Police Bureau is one of only a few police departments in the country to mandate this training for all front-line officers.

The CIT Training provides a history of the mental health system from a national and local perspective, the challenges and barriers to seeking help, and the effects of stigma. Officers hear directly from mental health care service consumers, as well as from officers who have mentally ill or developmentally disabled family members. Information regarding systems issues concerning the jails, emergency departments and local community resources is discussed.

Trainers present a review of state statutes concerning the civil commitment process, along with a discussion on the criteria to determine “danger to self or others”. Officers practice communication and de-escalation techniques in both classroom and field scenarios. Trainers for the CIT program make every effort not only to provide relevant information, but also to give recruits a deeper empathetic understanding of the experience of being marginalized and how that might affect a person’s state of mind and actions during a crisis.

In addition, Chief Sizer presented information on an upcoming collaboration, the Bazelon Project. The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is conducting a national pilot in five cities including Portland, using performance improvement strategies to reduce crisis contacts between people with mental illness and the police. The pilot works from the hypothesis that if the mental health system is working optimally, there will naturally be less interface between police and persons with symptoms of mental illness. Portland has been selected as one of a handful of cities to participate in this pilot. Partners are Cascadia, Multnomah County, Consumer Advocates, Portland Police Bureau and Office of Human Relations, and other key stakeholders. All participants in the conversations believe that this project is very promising.

The Portland Police Bureau has also implemented a Community Partnership program in which new police recruits prior to entering the police academy assist community-based programs for three to five weeks. New officers have participated with Project Respond, Central City Concern, Self Enhancement, Inc., NAYA, and El Programo Hispano / Catholic Charities among others. The Bureau has also been a collaborative partner with the Human Rights Commission and its Community and Police Relations Committee. The Bureau has provided overviews of various trainings including the Crisis Intervention Training program and Changing Perspectives training which focuses on reducing the unintended impact of police practices and the history of the African American community and the police. The Committee has been able to provide meaningful input to the Bureau as it develops and implements its trainings and will continue to serve in a collaborative advisory role.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION

Based on these discussions, Commissioners Saltzman, Commissioner Fritz and Chief Rosie Sizer make the following recommendations for immediate action:

Police Outreach to Mental Health Community

Many participants noted that there appears to be a cultural divide between the mental health community and the Portland Police Bureau, and that there is a great need to bridge this gap. Many felt that persons with mental illness or developmental disabilities, instead of feeling like they can go to police for protection, hold an ongoing a fear of police since the death of James Chasse.

Recommendation: The Portland Police should work to increase trusting relationships by participating in small group discussions with mental health consumers, advocates, and family members to foster a relationship of mutual trust and understanding, with the intent to humanize all parties. The Portland Police should seek help from the Office of Human Relations, the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, and organizations such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Police officers should go to meetings in the community at places where people experiencing mental illnesses feel comfortable, rather than expecting community members to come to City events.

Recommendation: The Portland Police should participate in mental health community activities and events. The Portland Police Bureau will:

1) Sponsor the NAMI Walk in 2010. We recommend that this become an ongoing annual sponsorship. Commissioner Fritz is the 2010 Honorary NAMI Walk Chair. Police Officers will be encouraged to participate in the walk with their families, the Chief will walk, and Commissioners Fritz and Saltzman will encourage their staff to participate. The goal is to demonstrate support for community mental health services, and to allow consumers and providers to interact with officers as fellow human beings who care about each other.

2) Find additional ways for police officers to engage with the mental health community on meaningful levels, in partnership with local and statewide NAMI organizations, Central City Concern, the City’s Office of Human Relations and Office of Neighborhood Involvement, and multiple community organizations and advocacy groups. Examples may include visits by Community Policing. Officers at meetings of mental health consumers, similar to visits at Neighborhood Associations; dialogues between police and mental health consumers and community advocates under the programs of the Office of Human Relations and the Human Rights Commission; Restorative Listening Project events under the Office of Neighborhood Involvement; and other such partnerships.

Recommendation: Revitalize Crisis Intervention Advisory Council. The Portland Police Bureau is currently advised by a Crisis Intervention Advisory Council. The Advisory Council is made up of consumers, advocates, mental health professionals and family members. The role and mission of the Advisory Council should be strengthened and clarified. Moreover, a member of the Chief’s staff should participate in meetings in addition to the CIT Coordinator.

Recommendation: Revitalize the Crisis Intervention Advisory Committee. The role and mission of the Advisory Council should be strengthened and clarified. The Advisory Council should help oversee the project delineated below, partnering mental health professionals and police officers. A liaison from the Human Rights Commission and one from the Commission on Disability should be invited to participate. Moreover, a member of the Chief’s staff, upon request of the Council should participate in meetings in addition to the CIT Coordinator.

Recommendation: The Advisory Council should be utilized to suggest and review policy and training pertaining to individuals who are in crisis, have mental health issues or developmental disabilities.

Recommendation: The Crisis Intervention Advisory Committee should also be charged with providing feedback on interactions with the police officers and those experiencing mental illness or those with developmental disabilities. The feedback provided should then be used to provide ongoing performance improvement advice in a non-disciplinary context to officers in the field and/or to inform future training where appropriate.

Recommendation: Improve Ongoing Communications with Mental Health Professionals. The Portland Police Bureau employs an experienced mental health professional as its CIT Coordinator. The Coordinator has improved and expanded communication between mental health professionals and the police, and should continue to do so. Consumers and/or their caseworkers would like to improve communication soon after an incident with the police, similar to routine debriefing/patient care conferences held by inpatient mental health providers following an incident in the hospital. The aim of this communication should be to provide timely feedback to officers to improve their interactions with those with mental illness or developmental disabilities, and to allow for a two-way dialogue as well as sharing of concerns and experiences by officers. There is a formal and independent complaint system, the Independent Police Review division of the Auditor’s Office, which consumers or their caseworkers may choose to use. It is desirable to have a non-complaint-driven, regular mechanism of communication between citizens and officers, and between officers and their supervisors. The goal is continuous improvement in interactions with people experiencing mental illness, and to foster greater understanding between officers and those they serve.

Recommendation: Further expand the role of the Portland Police Bureau CIT Coordinator as the Portland Police Bureau’s contact for mental health workers and consumers. The CIT Coordinator will create mechanisms for ongoing communication, including input from mental health providers, users, and their caseworkers.

Recommendation: The City of Portland, Multnomah County, and community mental health care providers and consumers should investigate voluntary sharing of information aimed at ensuring that people experiencing chronic mental illnesses receive ongoing support in the community.

Recommendation: Restructure Relationship with Project Respond: Partnering Mental Health Workers & Police Officers in Tandem Service. Due to reduced funding for community based mental health, law enforcement agencies across the county have played an increasingly important role in the management of persons who are experiencing psychiatric crises. The police are very often the first to be called to deal with persons with mental health emergencies.

Currently the Portland Police’s primary source of mental health assistance is Project Respond. Project Respond is the mobile mental health crisis response team for Multnomah County. Project Respond is accessed through the Multnomah County Crisis Line and provides crisis assessment to individuals and families within the county experiencing a mental health emergency. Project Respond is a vital partner of the Portland Police Bureau. Many participants in the conversations noted that this relationship could provide even greater care to those the police encounter in crisis.

Recommendation: Build upon best-practice models in North America to define a system in which partner police officers and mental health professionals work in tandem to respond to calls and/or conduct outreach together. The Police-Project Respond team would respond to mental health crisis calls, respond to field officers’ requests for assistance with persons in apparent mental health crisis, return uniformed officers to patrol duties as quickly as possible when called for assistance with people experiencing mental health crises, and conduct proactive and follow-up investigations on individuals who repeatedly require police intervention, working to help break the cycle of crisis and continued need for police assistance.

These teams have been shown to be effective in resolving emergency situations in the community involving persons with mental illness, and in diverting them to the mental health system rather than to the criminal justice system.

The Police-Project Respond teams identified above also offer the unique benefit of having access to information not usually available when the police respond to individuals in mental health crisis alone, and thus the team may be in a better position to make an accurate evaluation of those individuals. If the team takes the person to a hospital, the mental health professional will have more relevant information to give to clinicians at the emergency department than the police alone would have, which may allow appropriate and effective treatment to be initiated earlier.

Recommendation: Crisis Assessment & Treatment Center: Re-affirm the City’s Support for Initial Capital Funding and Support Ongoing Operational Funding. Currently, Multnomah County lacks a sub-acute mental health facility – a facility that would serve individuals experiencing a mental health crisis who cannot manage their symptoms on their own yet do not require a hospital stay to become stable. Former County Chair Ted Wheeler and Mayor Sam Adams jointly committed to the funding necessary to provide the capital resources needed to open the center. The center will be a 16-bed facility offering short-term mental health stabilization treatment in a secure environment. Approximately 600 to 800 individuals could be served each year, with an average length of stay from 4 to 14 days. Admission to the facility will be coordinated through the County’s

Mental Health Call Center, which will work with police and local hospitals to triage the individuals most clinically appropriate for admittance to the center. The County has identified $2.1M of annual operating revenue from federal and state sources to fund the Center. $1.1M annually still needs to be secured for operation of this vital community resource.

Recommendation: The City should partner with Multnomah County to fill the funding gap identified to open and operate the Crisis Assessment & Treatment Center. The City should continue to engage in the planning of the Center and its operations, to ensure the Center complements the services of the Portland Police Bureau. Commissioners Saltzman and Fritz recommend that operating expense gap should be shared evenly by the City and the County, to meet both social service and community public safety needs.

Support Additional State & Federal Mental Health Funding Due to a reduced lack of funding from state and federal partners, law enforcement agencies are playing an increasing role in the management of persons who are experiencing mental health crises. The police are often the system of last resort for people who fall through the cracks in the mental health system. To affect real change in our mental health system and in interactions between those with mental illness and police, community and hospital mental health services need adequate funding.

Recommendation: The City of Portland should use its Office of Government Relations Office and the advocacy of its elected officials to advocate on the state and federal level for stable and adequate funding for mental health services. We should join with our community partners and county partners in advocating for these resources. This must become part of the City’s legislative platform and become a priority for the City, if the interactions with police and those in mental health crisis are to improve.

Increase Interaction with Multnomah County Crisis Line and 911. When an individual in crisis calls 911, a Portland Bureau of Emergency Communications call-taker should sometimes connect the individual with the Multnomah County Crisis Line, a 24 hour-a-day phone based mental health triage service, rather than the police. Currently, it is the standard protocol for the 911 call center to send Portland Police Bureau officers to respond to mental health crisis calls.

Recommendation: The Portland Bureau of Emergency Communications and the Portland Police Bureau should work with the Multnomah County Crisis Call Center to increase their interaction when a call regarding a mental health crisis comes in to 911 – examining and defining situations, where appropriate, when a caller or person in crisis should interact directly with the Crisis Call Center and not have a uniformed police officer sent out.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ADDITIONAL FOLLOW-UP

In addition to the immediate action item recommendations, Commissioners Saltzman, Commissioner Fritz and Chief Rosie Sizer make the following recommendations for additional follow-up:

Peer-to-Peer Mental Health Drop-in Centers A great need for peer-to-peer mental health drop-in centers was identified in the discussions. A peer-to-peer drop in center would provide a program of support and opportunities for people with severe and persistent mental illnesses. In contrast to traditional day-treatment and other professional day program models, Clubhouse participants and their restorative activities focus on strengths and abilities, rather than illness. The Clubhouse is unique in that it is not a clinical program, meaning there are no therapists or psychiatrists on staff. Services are provided by peers. Clinical aspects of traditional programs have been removed so as to focus on the strengths of the individual, rather than their illness. All participation in a Clubhouse is strictly on a voluntary basis. The Clubhouse provides a safe and supportive place for individuals experiencing mental illness to spend time, possibly lessening interactions with law enforcement and more expensive medical treatment options. Multnomah County will be considering a budget request in the 2010/2011 fiscal year to open such a Clubhouse. The City of Portland and Portland Police Bureau should examine potential partnerships with Multnomah County and the Clubhouse, if it does open.

Improve Emergency Room Experiences for those with Mental Illness, Law Enforcement Personnel, and Hospital Staff Currently, the police do not have adequate or appropriate places to take those suffering from mental illness. The options are usually either jail or the Emergency Room. Jail is not the appropriate place to take a person in mental health crisis. An Emergency Room visit may not result in the person receiving treatment. This is an untenable situation for the person experiencing mental illness as well as the police officers and medical practitioners. If the person is not admitted to the hospital, the police may re-encounter the individual a short time later, often in an even worse state of mental distress. While the Crisis Triage Center may alleviate this problem to some extent, it will not solve the problem.

Commissioners Fritz and Saltzman intend to continue to explore improving the Police Bureau’s relationship with hospital Emergency Rooms and improving outcomes for those with mental illness. This is an extremely complicated issue. There is more work to be done with our hospital partners before considering specific action items. To that end, the Commissioners will invite our hospital partners to begin dialogues aimed at improving the Emergency Room experience for those with mental illness, law enforcement officers, and hospital staff.

CONCLUSION

Commissioners Saltzman, Commissioner Fritz, Chief Sizer and the Portland Police Bureau share many community concerns regarding care of people experiencing mental illness. We commit to: Improve community care and support systems for assisting people experiencing mental illness;

Reduce unfavorable interactions between police officers and people experiencing mental illness, and increase positive outcomes in such interactions;

Develop meaningful, constructive partnerships between police officers, City and County bureaus/agencies and support services, hospitals, community organizations, and mental health care consumers; and Work to secure funding for necessary system improvements.

LIST OF DISCUSSION PARTICIPANTS

Beckie Child, Mental Health American of Oregon
Chris Bouneff, NAMI Oregon
Angela Kimball, NAMI Oregon
Ron Lagergren, Multnomah County
Sylvia Zingeser, NAMI Multnomah County
Terri Walker, NAMI Multnomah County
Doris Cameron-Minard, NAMI Multnomah County
David Austin, Multnomah County
Jackie Strong
Ron Sarna, NAMI Multnomah County
Jennifer Sroufe, Multnomah County
Alex Bassos, Metropolitan P.D.
Greg Borders, Cascadia
Jan Friedman, Disability Rights Oregon
Richard Harris, State of Oregon
Joanne Fuller, Multnomah County
Bob Joondeph, Disability Rights Oregon
Terri Walker, NAMI
Sylvia Zingeser, NAMI
Margaret Brauden, NAMI
Greg Borders
Daniel Cameron-Minard
Daryl Walker, CEO Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare
Maggie Bennington-David M.D., Medical Director, Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare
Mary Monet, CEO, Lifeworks
Tim Hartnett, CEO, C.O.D.A.
Ed Blackburn, Central City Concern
Karl Brimner, Multnomah County Mental Health
David Hidalgo, Multnomah County Mental Health
Howard Spanbock, CEO, Luk-Dorf Inc.
Commissioner Amanda Fritz, City of Portland
Commissioner Dan Saltzman, City of Portland
Chief Rosie Sizer, Portland Police Bureau
Liesbeth Gerritsen, Portland Police Bureau
Maria Lisa Johnson, Office of Human Relations
Koffi Dessou, Office of Human Relations
Judith Mowry, Office of Neighborhood Involvement
Sara Hussein, Commissioner Fritz’s Office
Dora Perry, Commissioner Fritz’s Office
Brendan Finn, Commissioner Saltzman’s Office
Shannon Callahan, Commissioner Saltzman’s Office

From the Portland Mercury, September 30, 2009

The Portland Police Association has hired the same public relations firm as Merritt Paulson did for Major League Soccer, just in time to deal with the fallout from the inquiry into James Chasse Jr’s death. Greg Peden and Shannon Berg from Gallatin Public Affairs were in council this morning with PPA boss Scott Westerman to listen to Jason Renaud from the Mental Health Association of Portland accuse the city of “impunity” related to Chasse’s death in police custody back in 2006. Gallatin worked with former mayor of Portland, Vera Katz, on the MLS deal, and Westerman said he would consult with Peden and Berg before commenting on Renaud’s remarks. We’ll update you as soon as we have a comment from the PPA.

Update, 12:51: Westerman says the PPA “wholeheartedly agrees” with Renaud’s request for better collaboration and dialog between the mental health community and the Portland Police Bureau. “It would be beneficial for all involved.”

“The issue that the PPA has with Renaud’s seven requests is that he is specifically focusing on the three officers. If they’re going to pull those three officers from patrol, the city may as well pull all police officers from the street,” Westerman says. “Because any officer on the Portland Police Bureau that was present in that situation would have likely had the same same outcome. The officers followed the bureau’s policy and procedures. The simple fact is that the three officers are being singled out in this tragic situation.”

Original post:“I’m not surprised the PPA has hired a public relations firm,” says Renaud, in response. “I think they’re in trouble. They’ve made an enormous public relations mistake by siding with three guys against 900. They’ve lost the media, they’ve lost the public trust, and even the commenters on the Portland Tribune’s website have turned against them.”

Renaud called on city council to remove the three Police officers involved in Chasse’s death from active duty this morning, along with six other actions to restore public trust. “The majority of police officers are well trained, and do an excellent job,” he said. “They do not make mistakes like these officers did.”

“Our organization and thousands of people in Portland believe injustice has prevailed, that a fair hearing on what happened to James Chasse has not occurred,” Renaud said to council this morning. “The final opportunity for intervention was a internal review of the officer’s actions, and a decision whether those actions were within the policy of the police bureau. After three years the bureau distributed a press release citing reasons their review was late. A minor technicality was found, so minor punishment may occur.”

“What’s occurred is impunity,” he continued. “The message delivered is a brutal beating and death of a person with a mental illness, even one with caregivers, friends, family, a home, a clean record, is acceptable within the Portland Police Bureau.”

Renaud called on council this morning to:

1.Release the full internal investigation of what happened to James Chasse – not a press release;
2. Move the three officers involved with the death of James Chasse – Humphreys, Nice and Burton - off patrol duty;
3. Make a goal to reducing the use of Tasers on persons with mental illness by 50% per year for the next five years;
4. Reopen the Chief’s Forum;
5. Form a joint effort by local governments and local police bureaus with mental health advocates to seek full funding for mental health services from the state legislature;
6. Open a sincere, staffed and ongoing public meeting between police senior staff and persons with mental illness;
7. Release the Crisis Intervention Team curriculum to public inspection, release data about police encounters with persons with mental illness.

“We expect council to do these seven actions,” says Renaud. “We’ll give them until the middle of next week. They are fairly simple, straightforward actions to take and will really help begin the rebuilding process.”

City Commissioner Amanda Fritz thanked Renaud for his remarks, apologizing for Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman’s “scheduled absence.” “I’ll be working with our human relations and police and community relations committee to continue working on this,” she said.

Update, October 1, 1:55 pm “We have had a public relations firm on retainer for years and years and years, we have just switched firms,” says Westerman, responding to Renaud’s comments about hiring a PR firm. “This is about contract negotiations, public relations, branding—trying to differentiate the PPA from the PPB, and media response.”

READ – Testimony for Portland City Council, September 30, 2009

This list of policy changes, a timeline of events, and a press release was distributed to the media on September 23 2009 in lieu of a direct response to the request by the Mental Health Association of Portland for release of the internal investigation of what happened to James Chasse, made on September 17 2009.

The death of James Chasse prompted several policy changes and additions to officers’ training:

CIT Training Bureau wide Training all uniform officers and supervisors in crisis intervention techniques.
As of December 2008, all officers and sergeants (except one officer on medical leave) in the Operations Branch were trained in CIT. This included 540 Bureau members, 70 Multnomah County deputies and 20 Gresham officers.

Advanced Academy CIT Training
Introduce CIT training, include scenario based training and reinforce person encounter doctrine. Began in January 2009 and is ongoing.

In-Service: Foot Pursuits
Provide a refresher course in foot pursuits with emphasis on outlining factors that should be considered at the onset of the pursuit, including severity of the crime, applicable statutes and policies, one’s own knowledge of the subject including physical descriptors and the immediate environment. Taught in 2008 Officer In-service.

Emergency Medical Transport Directive
A complete overhaul of the policy and procedures surrounding the evaluation and transport of prisoners who are possibly injured or suffering from a possible medical condition. Emergency Medical Custody Transport Directive (630.45) adopted July 27 2007, and amended March 11, 2009. Roll call videos explained these changes in great detail.

Bureau Mental Health Professional
The recruitment and hiring of a mental health professional whose responsibilities include the development and implementation of “best practice” procedures in connection with officers’ contact with mentally fragile individuals. Hired Liesbeth Gerritsen, Ph.D. on May 30, 2007. Acts as liaison for the Bureau to mental health groups, attends the Bureau’s CIT Advisory Committee meetings, works with individuals with mental health issues as well as families who need assistance. Continues to work closely with Project Respond. Works closely with the Hostage Negotiation Team and responds to all callouts.

Improved communication and intervention with chronic situations
Improvement in the Bureau’s communication with mental health professionals and action toward people with mental health issues who use police services frequently. The Bureau’s Mental Health professional, Liesbeth Gerritsen, works closely with mental health providers. She also works with Neighborhood Response Team officers and jail personnel to refer people who suffer from mental illness and frequently call police to Project Respond’s Intensive Engagement Team for intervention. This team partners with officers to respond to individuals and work toward connecting them with appropriate services.

Foot Pursuit Data
Track data related to foot pursuits. Committee was formed and recommendations were implemented that added foot pursuits data tracking to current system of tracking vehicle pursuits. A Training Bulletin has been written and computer programmers have added the new forms to the Field Reporting System for officers. It will be rolled out shortly in conjunction with a roll call video.

Foot Pursuits Roll Call Video
The development of a roll call video that reiterates the threat assessment doctrine taught at 2008 in-service. The video will also train officers on how to use the new data tracking system. Scheduled date: November 2009.

Sudden Death and Excited Delirium Conference
Send Bureau members to receive additional training on Sudden Death and Excited Delirium. Bureau members attended conference. Two videos regarding this subject were presented in roll calls in July 2007 and July 2009

READ – The death of James Chasse prompted several policy changes and additions to officers’ training:, September 23 2009

From the Portland Mercury, July 21 2009

Portland Police are using their Tasers almost twice 26 percent more against people with mental illness as they were in 2006 according to a new report. A use of force report released by the city in November 2006 showed only 26% of force used against people with mental illness was Taser use, but a new use of force released yesterday puts that statistic at 52%.

There were 110 Taser uses against people suffering with mental illness in the most current reporting reporting period, November 2007 to November 2008, and in a previous 12-month period between October 05-September 06 there were 87 uses of Tasers against people suffering with mental illness.

“While officers appear to be using force on fewer mentally ill suspects overall,” reads the report, “reported Taser use on this population is up…Additional analysis would be needed to evaluate the possible causes of data fluctuations in this area.”

The report said understanding those fluctuations would be beyond its scope. You can download the whole thing here.

“Without raw numbers, it is hard to compare one-on-one,” says Portland Copwatch activist Dan Handelman. “But the report explicitly states that Taser use is up against those identified as having mental illness.”

That data has mental health advocates concerned.

“Having a Taser pointed is a particularly traumatizing experience for someone with a mental illness,” says Jason Renaud of the Mental Health Association of Portland. “The person may not be able to respond to a police officer appropriately.”

The police bureau introduced new Crisis Intervention Training for its officers in dealing with people suffering from mental illness following the death in police custody of James Chasse, a man suffering from schizophrenia, in 2006. But while the bureau says it has now trained all its officers, mental health advocates are concerned that there is no way to measure the success of that training.

“There’s concern that the CIT is not sufficient,” says Renaud. “There’s still no measurable evidence of the success of this program.”

Numbers released last year also showed cops using a disproportionate amount of force against African Americans—a trend that continues in the latest report. You can read the Portland Mercury article about Taser use here in Portland written last November by clicking here.

The report is not all bad news. It shows a drop in most uses of force by cops between November 5, 2007 to November 4, 2008:

Complaints about uses of force are down 58% since 2004, from 118 to 50.

A police bureau spokesperson is yet to return a call for comment, but Police Chief Rosie Sizer is scheduled to present the report to the city’s Citizen Review Committee this afternoon at 5:30, at city hall. Hopefully the chief will announce plans to probe this issue further.

“In July 2006 Officer Paul Ware who was then in charge of the police bureau’s crisis intervention program came to a citizen forum and told the group that yeah, sure, we’ll talk to them for thirty minutes but if they’re not complying then we’ll just Taser them,” says Copwatch’s Handelman. “I wonder if that’s what’s happening here. But it’s also possible that officers are better trained to recognize mental illness and are reporting it more.”

Handelman would like to see more research done into the reasons behind the increase.

Handelman is also extremely concerned about police apparently using the Taser as a compliance tool. Tasers were used 61 times against people who “failed to comply,” and 18 times where no resistance was indicated on the use of force form.

“For the benefit of the doubt, it could be that the officer did not write down the amount of resistance used,” says Handelman. “But it also could be that there was no resistance.”

READ – Use of Force by the Portland Police Bureau Follow-up, (Use of) Force Task Force, July 2009
READ – New Use of Force Report Shows, But Does Not Explain, Disparities, Portland CopWatch, July 2009
READ – Use of force by Portland police drops in two divisions, Oregonian July 21 2009
READ – Report: Mentally ill are most likely to get Tasered by Portland police, Willamette Week July 22 2009

You can now download and read new and important documents from CHASSE v HUMPHREYS, released to the public July 2 2009. These documents are posted here as an independent, impartial and permanent public service.

The attached 30 page document includes

Page 1-3, Prehospital Care Report by American Medical Response, signed by EMTs Tamara Hergert & Kevin Stucker, September 17 2006
Page 4, American Medical Response Oregon Agency Incident Report, September 17 2006
Page 5-9, Wikipedia listing for “Forest Gump.”
Page 10-14, Wikipedia listing for “Rain Man.”
Page 15-18, text messages between various police officers (redacted), September 17 2006
Page 19, Sheriff’s office Hazard Report, signed by Deputy Bret Burton, September 17 2006
Page 20, Sheriff’s office Force Report, signed by Deputy Bret Burton (portion), no date
Page 21-24, Prehospital Care Report by American Medical Response, signed by EMTs James Hunter & Lori Andrews, September 17 2006
Page 25-27, Portland Police Bureau web site, Crisis Intervention Team
Page 28-30, Declaration of Gillian Austin, paralegal and employee of Steenson Schumann, no date

DOWNLOAD (PDF 2.3 MB)

This document was provided by the plaintiff’s attorneys in CHASSE v HUMPHREYS.

We’ll gladly post additional documents from the defense, or evidence which contradicts the documents linked here.

Run on Morning Edition, May 21 2009
LISTEN – Training Police To Handle Mental Illness Cases

In 1987, a Memphis, Tenn., police officer shot and killed a mentally ill man who was cutting himself and threatening others. The incident inspired training programs to help police handle these tricky situations. Those programs are catching on.

Confronting The Mentally Ill

It’s a situation no one wants to see: An armed police officer is called because someone is in the throes of a psychotic episode. “How the officer handles that situation can have a significant impact,” says Russell Laine, head of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

The IACP held a two-day meeting recently to discuss how officers should respond. On the first morning of the meeting, there was a silent period for attendees to write the names of officers or people with mental illness who had lost their lives in an encounter. There were about 75 people in the room, and about four dozen names went up on the board. National statistics, though, are hard to come by.

Feeling Threatened

Police officer Darek Ardoin of the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office in Lake Charles, La., was at the conference. About three or four of the calls he’s sent out on each week involve people with mental illnesses. Ardoin says they’re disturbing the peace, scaring their families or threatening to hurt themselves.

He says he’s rarely felt directly threatened. But last year, a man called and asked for the police to come to his home. The man’s wife was in the bedroom, talking back to the television, and was quite agitated. The man himself wouldn’t get near the bedroom.

“I talked to her from the front door at first, and then I made it to the bedroom door,” Ardoin says. “I could see the knife was there, lying next to her on the bed.”

He followed his training, talked to her quietly and reassured her that he didn’t want to take her to jail. After about 20 minutes, the woman agreed to go to the hospital. “At that point, we had established a relationship,” he says.

The Use Of Deadly Force

Old-style policing calls for subduing the person, usually by force. That approach is upsetting to the person in the throes of a psychotic episode. It’s upsetting to the family, who are often the ones who called the police in the first place. And it’s upsetting to police officers, says Laine.

“Any time an officer has to use deadly force, it takes a significant toll,” he says.

Ardoin has trained three officers who came to training because they had shot and killed a mentally ill man. It was their way of dealing with their post-traumatic stress disorder.

“This is not a magical program, where 100 percent of the incidents will end up well,” Ardoin says. But he says it’s dramatically decreased officer injuries as well as injuries to people with psychoses, and the number of call outs to SWAT teams in Calcasieu Parish.

It’s not just an issue for police. It’s tough from the point of view of the person with psychosis and his or her family members. Sandra Spencer, executive director of the National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, felt that firsthand when her son, who has bipolar disorder, was stopped by police officers when he was walking home from a friend’s house.

“He was manic, shaking,” she says. “He wasn’t coherent.” The police officers told him to be quiet and stay absolutely still. Instead, he reached into his pocket for his cell phone to call her.

“Guns were drawn,” says Spencer.

No shots were fired, but when the officers got her son home, says Spencer, she could see he was a wreck. “He had completely come apart,” she says.

Understanding Mental Illness

She began to talk to other families around the country, and heard a lot of stories about problems with police encounters. She talked to police officers, too, and realized there were lots of misunderstandings. So her organization put out a booklet for families, with advice like always telling the police dispatcher that mental illness is an issue, and not rushing out to greet the police, who might think they were being attacked.

The city of Memphis created a model program for training police officers after that shooting incident in 1987. It was started by Samuel Cochran, who now says officers tend to reflect the views of society.

“When I, in my career in law enforcement, came across a person with mental illness, the reaction I had was, this is just another crazy person that I’ve got to deal with. I was learning that from the community.” Cochran says.

But when the Memphis police chief told him to deal with the public reaction to the shooting, Cochran started talking to mental health experts and families. And he realized that most situations could be defused if police officers were trained to approach mentally ill people differently from common criminals — slowly, calmly and recognizing that the person may not be seeing the situation clearly.

According to the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, an advocacy group for people with mental illness, there are now about 200 or 300 police departments around the country with active training programs. The center’s position is that what’s really needed are community services where people with mental illness can get treatment and support, so that crises can be avoided in the first place.

That’s in line with Russell Laine, the head of the police chiefs’ organization. He says one of the challenges facing trained police officers is that there’s often nowhere to take people in need of immediate help other than the county jail.

From the Portland Mercury, February 5 2009

The director of the Portland Police Bureau’s Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) program, Liesbeth Gerritson, spoke out publicly for the first time last night about the program’s curriculum and its chances of success, at a talk sponsored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) at Emanuel Hospital.

Gerritson, who had earlier threatened to walk out if she was video-recorded at what had been billed as a public meeting, spoke for almost two hours to an audience predominantly comprised of people suffering with mental illness and their family members. Also present was Officer Betty Woodward, a Portland cop who has been a major advocate for CIT training. “She has stopped train wrecks from happening,” said Gerritson. “She’s talking to big dudes who want to go in in a different style, and stopped that from happening.”

CIT, which trains officers to diffuse confrontations with people in mental health crisis without necessarily resorting to force, started in Portland in 1995. It was voluntary until late 2006, when Mayor Tom Potter made the program mandatory for all uniform officers and sergeants in the wake of the death in custody of James Chasse, Jr, a man with schizophrenia. Gerritson completed the training for all uniformed officers last December—a total of 504 Portland officers and sergeants. The training was also extended to cover 70 Multnomah County Sheriff’s Deputies and 20 Gresham police officers.

It’s not yet clear whether expanding the program has actually worked. Indeed, news emerged last week that Officer Christopher Humphreys, one of the officers involved in the Chasse death, is now the potential subject of an excessive force lawsuit by a mentally ill woman whom he is alleged to have assaulted just days after going through CIT.

EXTRA – New Lawsuit Threatened Against Chasse Cop

Gerritson said the training has focused on teaching officers to identify potential signs and symptoms of mental health crisis in the field. “What are they actually seeing? How is a person acting? Ho do you deescalate the person verbally? How do you leave enough space so that you’re comfortable deescalating the person verbally?” asked Gerritson. “I think, and I hope, that that is something that we’ve gotten across to a good proportion of the officers. And not all of them got it. I can’t even tell you what percentage of them did. But a few of them did.”

Gerritson said the program is really trying to address stigma related to mental illness. “We’re trying to get at that idea of what are some of these ideas you have of people who are mentally ill?” On the other hand, Woodward said, the training doesn’t necessarily rule out the use of force by officers.

“We deal with behavior, but the very first thing is safety, and beyond safety is how I interact with everyone,” Woodward said. “Does that mean that I never use physical force? No.”

Woodward related a recent incident where she was called out by Project Respond—the county’s mental health outreach project—to do a check on a woman with mental illness who had been decompensating—showing worse signs and symptoms of mental illness—for the preceding two months.

“We went up, knocked on the door, and she answered the door with a knife drawn like this,” said Woodward—gesturing to show a knife held over her head, reminiscent of the shower scene from Psycho. “What we did was, we closed the door…we set up a plan where someone would open the door and I would Tase her. Tasers hurt more than anything you’ve ever felt in your entire life. But did I enjoy doing that? No. But in the end, the most important thing was to get her safe.”

“You know, the fact that physical force gets used is not as issue,” Woodward continued. “Is it used in excess on occasion? Probably, because we’re dealing with human beings. But I think we’re dealing with things that are a lot more complex than just knocking on the door and saying Hey, it’s time to go to the hospital.”

“I hope it’s a good step, but I can’t make a prediction,” said Gerritson, of the training. “You can train somebody to do something different, but my highest dream about the training was I want to change hearts and minds. I think what makes the difference is in here,” she said, gesturing to her chest. “What is your intention when you go out on that call?”

“I felt like the knowledge that we gave them would hopefully meant that there’d be less fear around these calls,” said Gerritson—Woodward estimated that 60% of emergency calls to Central Precinct, where she works, involve mental health crisis in some manner. Gerritson did not give a formal outline of the CIT curriculum, but handed out a sheet with elements of the curriculum listed on it, and discussed parts of the curriculum with the audience. The sheet read as follows:

Curriculum Elements

a. Major mental health (Axis I) disorders
b. Mental health system in Multnomah County
c. Process and criteria for putting “holds” on people
d. De-escalation techniques for people in crisis
e. Dual diagnosis
f. Consumer presentation
g. Officer videos
h. Consumer videos
i. Educational videos (“I’m Still Here”)
j. Scenarios
k. COPS videos
l. Personality Disorders
m. Exercises

Gerritson talked at length about the officer videos—of which five are currently offered as part of the training. “We thought, there are 1000 people in the bureau, what are the chances some have a family member with mental illness?” she said. “And a few brave souls came forward, because officers don’t like to be in the limelight.”

Gerritson said one video features an officer whose father was diagnosed with schizophrenia when the officer was six years old, and spent the rest of his life in institutions. The officer “was surprised at his own emotions,” said Gerritson. “It was really something. And you could hear a pin drop in some of those interviews.”

She also drew the following model for crisis escalation and deescalation, that showed a crisis victim’s curve in red, and an officer’s curve in green, a rough rendering of which is as follows:

Gerritson said that at different points on the crisis curve, both officers and crisis victims will process information and act differently. For someone at the height of the curve, it’s almost impossible to respond to orders. “You’re talking to someone in that state, and they’re not responding. Why not?” Gerritson asked.

Gerritson also stressed the importance of body language in controlling crisis situations.
“You come in, and you’re not looking like, hey, I’m going to put an arm bar on you,” she said. “We’re just talking, here. If you come in with an aggressive stance, an aggressive stare, then they’re going to go up on that curve.”

Gerritson and Woodward also discussed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder among cops, and the difficulty in a partnership situation for an officer in showing weakness.

“There is this tension between officers that comes with the work that we do,” said Woodward. “We have to find ways to deal with that—the alcoholism rate among officers is much higher than the public at large. It’s a legal drug, so officers self medicate. And there’s been a remarkable change in the culture—there’s still a long ways to go but it’s gradually turning.”

“That tension is never going to go away, though,” Woodward continued. “But I think that this helps because it gives more guys permission to feel that it’s okay.”

The pair also addressed the shift in police work over the last 30 years, following the de-institutionalization of people with mental illness under President Reagan.

“Before CIT existed, the only training that did exist was police training,” said Woodward. “Now, police training and CIT are very different because police training is all about control and safety, about how to talk to someone with a command presence…and now we’re into this social service area.”

“Some of the roughest, toughest guys will come up to me and say how did you do that?” Woodward continued. “A lot of these things are things that these guys as human beings have never paid attention to I think that there is a drive to get from one place to another. I think it is going to take time, though, to turn people who are police officers into efficient social service providers.”

An audience member expressed concern that newly-trained CIT officers might be less effective at handling crisis calls than those with more experience at using the training.

“The logistics of it now are, there’s going to be a call and it’s going to be luck of the draw,” said Gerritson. “Whoever shows up, they’ll be CIT trained. But there is no ‘wait! I want the CIT person who, you know, sat in the front row!’”

From the Portland Mercury, January 29 2008

Bad Apple Reputation – New Lawsuit Threatened Against Chasse Cop

The Portland Police Bureau officer involved in the death of James Chasse Jr. is facing the threat of another lawsuit—this time relating to his use of force against a woman claiming to suffer from mental health issues.

Chasse, a 42-year-old man with schizophrenia, died in police custody in 2006. It is now hotly rumored that Officer Christopher Humphreys’ alleged assault of Lisa Ann Coppock occurred just a few days after he completed Crisis Intervention Training (CIT), the police bureau’s education in how to diffuse confrontations with people in mental health crisis (the exact date of Humphreys’ training is not known). The training was expanded to include all the bureau’s officers in November 2006, in direct response to controversy created by the Chasse incident.

Attorney J. Ashlee Albies filed a tort claim with the city on October 21, 2008, giving notice of Coppock’s intention to sue.

“The circumstances that gave rise to Ms. Coppock’s claims arose on or about April 22, 2008, when Portland Police Officers Christopher Humphreys and Rod Nusum assaulted, falsely arrested, and discriminated against Ms. Coppock at the Gresham City Hall transit stop,” alleged Albies in the claim letter, a copy of which was obtained from the city’s Office of Risk Management through a public records request.

Albies works for Steenson, Schuman, Tewksbury, Creighton, and Rose, the same law firm handling the Chasse case ["The Chasse Files," Feature, November 15, 2007], but has declined further comment on the tort claim for the time being.

Further details of the incident are unclear, since it is against police bureau policy to release use-of-force documentation to the media while a case is pending criminal trial, or to comment on cases where litigation is pending. But Coppock was charged with theft of services in the amount of $50, resisting arrest, and interfering with a police officer, and is scheduled to stand trial for her alleged offenses at Multnomah County Circuit Court on February 23.

Coppock’s criminal defense attorney, Maite Uranga with Metropolitan Public Defender Services, has also declined comment on the case, but issued a subpoena to Officer Humphreys on January 6 requiring him to appear at the trial next month, according to records on the Oregon Judicial Information Network. She also filed Coppock’s notice of intent to rely on a defense of mental disease or defect, diminished responsibility, or extreme emotional disturbance on January 7.

Police Chief Rosie Sizer has yet to make a recommendation on discipline for Humphreys related to an internal affairs investigation into Chasse’s death, the outcome of which is still unclear.

Humphreys, who has been protected by the city attorney’s office from having to comment publicly on the Chasse lawsuit, will now be required to testify in court at Coppock’s trial about his use of force against a person claiming to suffer from mental health issues. Coppock declined comment through her attorneys.

Meanwhile, Portland Police Association President Scott Westerman has been an outspoken defender of Humphreys since he took office last November, when he told the Mercury, “There’s nothing in the Chasse incident that CIT training would have helped.”

Regarding the Coppock case, Westerman says, “I don’t want anybody to assume that Officer Humphreys is automatically guilty of anything, and the fact that he is named in the suit, to me, is not surprising.” He continues, “The fact is, his name has been dragged through the media for three years on a case that should have been resolved two years ago. I strongly disagree that he is developing a bad apple reputation. He is one of the hardest working cops that the Portland Police Bureau has, and just because somebody has a tort claim filed against them does not assume that the officer has done something wrong.

“Perhaps this woman or her attorney saw the arresting officer’s name and decided to try to capitalize on it,” Westerman continues. “Down the road, I am confident he is going to get honorably cleared.”

Westerman says he has also heard from police bureau sources that the Use of Force Review Board has recommended no discipline for Humphreys regarding the Chasse case, although that information has yet to be released by the city, which Westerman describes as “frustrating.”

“We don’t know a lot about the incident yet, but it certainly seems like Officer Humphreys has had his share of lawsuits filed against him,” says [Portland] Copwatch activist Dan Handelman. “Hopefully since the bureau is now tracking lawsuits against its officers through its employee information system, this will now lead to some corrective action.”

From Street Roots, September 19 2008

If anything has become clear in the two years following the beating death of James Chasse by the hands of Portland police, it is that police officers need to know what to do when responding to a situation involving someone with a mental illness.

Soon after Chasse’s death, Mayor Tom Potter convened the Mental Health Task Force. On the task force’s recommendations, Project Respond, an information referral program for people with mental illnesses, received $290,000 in additional funding to strengthen the ties between law enforcement and mental health providers to deal with individuals suffering from mental illnesses.

“Police officers are the default interveners for people with severe mental illness,” says Jason Renaud, a long-time mental health advocate and volunteer with the Mental Health Association of Portland. “They need to know what to do.”

“It takes a long time for the police to figure out a situation with someone’s that mentally ill,” says Greg Borders, Clinical Director of Crisis and Intake Services at Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare.

One of the Task Force’s recommend-ations was to make a training called Crisis Intervention Training mandatory for all patrol officers and their sergeants. Officers receive 40 hours of training about mental illnesses, their signs and symptoms, and how to interact with someone expressing those symptoms. Borders says that the training has helped the police to have a better understanding of how to work with individuals with a mental illness.

“There was a lot of energy after James Chasse died to increase capacity,” says Lynnae Berg, assistant chief of operations for the Portland Police Bureau.

“We really wanted to get away from the idea of us and them,” says Leisbeth Gerritson, the Portland Police’s CIT coordinator.

The program started in 1995, but was voluntary, and only a fraction of Portland’s police officers took it. Officers Christopher Humphreys and Kyle Nice, the two Portland officers who approached Chasse, did not have CIT training at the time of the incident, according to Gerritson.

As of August 2008, 554 officers have received the training, and all 612 officers will have received the training by December 2008.

With the CIT training, any officer has the knowledge to properly respond to a situation involving someone experiencing a mental health crisis.

“I think the police have been greatly educated by Project Respond over the years,” says Renaud. “How many other James Chasse’s have they intervened with and de-escalated? It’s in the thousands.”

Project Respond also funds an outreach program called Intensive Services, operated by Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare.

Partnering with law enforcement, the Intensive Services program provides outreach to homeless and housed individuals suffering from the most severe mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, thought disorders, and mental illnesses with psychotic features. The program is the only one to originate from Potter’s Task Force.

The program targets those who run afoul of law enforcement and who are “frequent users of the criminal justice system,” Borders says. “There are a lot of mentally ill folks who, because of their mental illness, come into frequent contact with the police.”

Those contacts can involve something as simple as public urination, but also petty crimes such as theft and shoplifting. But there are also times when the person is presenting a danger to himself and others.

The outreach workers work with mentally ill individuals in an effort to engage them with services that can help them receive benefits, housing, medication, and solutions other than long waits in the emergency room or short stints in the psychiatric ward.

Between the time the Intensive Services project began on April 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008, 80 individuals were served, including 35 individuals experiencing homelessness. Eight of those people were placed into housing, and three were placed into permanent housing.

On Sept. 3, City Council voted to continue funding the Intensive Services program and contracting with Cascadia.

But it raises questions as to why the city is continuing to contract with Cascadia, the state’s largest, and now discredited, mental health provider.

In April of this year, Cascadia went through a financial implosion when its bank, Capital Pacific, collected on a $2 million credit line, threatening the mental health provider with bankruptcy.

A $2.5 million loan from Multnomah County and the state’s Department of Human Services is keeping Cascadia’s doors open. Currently, other providers such as LifeWorks and Central City Concern are taking over some of Cascadia’s operations, and Multnomah County is working to create a viable future for Cascadia.

“I think our partners at the city and the county actually believe that Cascadia does excellent clinical work,” Borders says, and cites instead fiscal and administrative failings for Cascadia’s now tarnished reputation.

Having the funding and training to respond to someone in a mental health crisis, however, is not remotely close to a real solution to Portland and Multnomah County’s mental health woes.

“The answer isn’t Project Respond,” Renaud says.

State and county cuts in mental health care and Cascadia’s now wobbly existence lead Renaud to say that “the mental health system is far worse off today than it was two years ago.”

“Every other social safety net is gone, or underfunded,” Berg says. “More and more, officers are the ones who are having to respond to people in mental health crisis.”

Berg says what is needed is a mental health system more preventive in nature, allowing for intervention at an earlier point in a person’s mental illness. If people can be helped and medicated at an earlier point, Berg says, they would not enter a crisis.

“One of the biggest problems we see is that there is just a backlog,” Borders says. “We just need more of everything.”

“The sub-acute center is the big missing piece,” Renaud says, referring to an emergency psychiatric center that would be equipped to treat and house individuals experiencing a mental health crisis until they stabilized.

Creating such a facility was the number one recommendation of Potter’s Task Force, which released its recommendations in January 2007.

There was a time when such a center did exist — the Crisis Triage Center — but it was closed by the county in 2003 because of poor management. Had it existed two years ago, it could have been where police could have taken James Chasse for treatment.

Lately, there have been murmurs of such a center opening. The county is partnering with Central City Concern to build a facility that would provide mental health assessments, treatment, and evaluations at the current location of the David P. Hooper Detoxification Center in east Portland.

Funding from the county and the Portland Development Commission is set aside for the building of the center, but the money for operational costs — an estimated $3 million a year — has not yet been found.

“There’s no reason to think that it will be any time soon,” Renaud says.

From the Oregonian, September 16 2008

Mental health – Advocates remember James P. Chasse Jr., who died in police custody

To mark the second anniversary of James P. Chasse Jr.’s death, the Mental Health Association of Portland Tuesday wrote in chalk outside Portland’s Central Precinct the names of a dozen people who were either killed by officers in the region or who died in custody.

The names include six who died in Portland. The others died after confrontations with police or deputies in Silverton, Scappoose, Sandy, Gresham and Clackamas and Washington counties.

“Our goal is to remember the people who died and acknowledge that police work is difficult, but we also need to have accountability and trust between the officers and people with mental illness,” said Jason Renaud, a volunteer with the association who also was a friend of Chasse.

While the association praised several steps that have been taken in the past two years to increase services to the mentally ill and improve police training, its members are dismayed that the Portland Police Bureau hasn’t completed its internal inquiry into Chasse’s death on Sept. 17, 2006, nor disciplined any of the three officers involved.

In fact, the bureau has since hired one of them — former Multnomah County sheriff’s Deputy Bret Burton, who was sworn in as a Portland officer on June 14, 2007.

Chasse, 42, who suffered from schizophrenia, died from blunt force trauma to his chest after police struggled to take him into custody in the Pearl District. Police thought Chasse might have been on drugs after they saw him shuffling on a street corner and then possibly urinating behind a tree. When they approached him, police said, Chasse ran. Two Portland officers and the sheriff’s deputy chased him and knocked him to the ground. Chasse suffered multiple rib fractures, some of which punctured his left lung. He had no drugs in his possession.

Portland Police Chief Rosie Sizer said the internal investigation to determine whether the officers followed policy was caught in a backlog of internal affairs cases, partly due to inadequate staffing and the need to interview people from multiple agencies. Yet she called the two-year wait “disappointing.” The completed internal investigation is scheduled to be presented to a use-of-force review board in early October.

Sizer said the bureau hired Burton because he passed the department’s “rigorous” hiring standards, but called the matter a personnel decision she couldn’t discuss further.

Officers entering Portland police headquarters Tuesday couldn’t miss the bright blue chalk out front that read, “I will remember James Chasse.”

Sizer said she understood the mental health advocacy group’s desire to keep attention on the case. “We all realize the Chasse incident was enormously painful for just about everyone involved and the community,” the chief said.

Chasse’s death revealed gaps in procedures because no one recognized the significant injuries he had suffered until it was too late. Ambulance paramedics said his vital signs were normal, and a Portland police officer signed for him, declining transport to a hospital. Officer Christopher Humphreys and Burton drove Chasse to the Multnomah County Detention Center. A jail nurse looked through the cell door window and told police the jail would not book Chasse, but did not call for an ambulance.

Portland officers placed him in a patrol car, and he died on the way to Adventist Hospital, after appearing to suffer a seizure and losing consciousness. Police say they were headed to Adventist because that’s the hospital the bureau contracts with for prisoners, but Chasse’s family argues the officers should have taken him to a closer hospital.

The Chasse family filed a wide-ranging federal lawsuit naming the city, the county, the ambulance company, the police chief, the mayor, the officers, paramedics and jail nurses. A trial is scheduled for April. The lawsuit contends that the officers violated Chasse’s civil rights and that the city has a pattern of failing to discipline officers involved in use of deadly force. The suit also demands policy changes to reduce excessive force by officers and provide people in custody with appropriate medical care.

The suit argues that Chasse fell victim to an unwritten city policy by Portland officials of “cleaning up the streets,” or trying to remove “undesirables” from downtown.

Mental health advocates praised the steps that have been taken since Chasse’s death: The City Council spent $250,000 for more Project Respond mental health specialists to respond with police directly to crises. The city approved $500,000 to mandate Crisis Intervention Training for all Portland patrol officers and sergeants.

To date, 557 Portland police sergeants and officers have completed the training, with 55 more scheduled to complete the course by the end of the year. Next year, Crisis Intervention Training will be incorporated into the advanced academy for all recruits, said Liesbeth Gerritsen, a mental health expert who was hired to coordinate the training.

Under a new policy, officers are directed not to transport those seriously injured in patrol cars.
“Since Chasse’s death” Renaud said, “no similar incidents have occurred in Portland. This remains the enduring tribute to James.”

Yet all agree that an important component still missing is the lack of a crisis triage center that would offer round-the-clock psychiatric and medical services. County officials are still working to determine who would run it and how to pay for it.

From the Portland Tribune, September 11 2008

Portland program requires all street cops to be taught intervention techniques

In Memphis, as in Portland, change started with a death.

In Portland, two years ago, the death of 42-year-old schizophrenic James Chasse Jr. at the hands of Portland police prompted public outcry for change in the way officers here deal with people suffering mental illness.

In Memphis, Tenn., a similar death 20 years ago — of a 27-year-old schizophrenic man who was shot by police after he brandished a knife — was the beginning not only of change for the Memphis police department, but for police throughout the country.

The outcry from the Memphis mental health community led the Memphis police department, in partnership with local mental health activists, to form the nation’s first Crisis Intervention Training program. It’s a program similar to one that, after Chasse’s death, Portland police have turned to as their primary response to the local call for change.

But the evolving Portland program is significantly different from the one in Memphis — for the better, according to some, and for the worse, according to others. The critics say the police don’t have adequate backup in their new efforts to help the mentally ill.

Crisis Intervention Training is based on 40 hours of classroom work designed to teach police officers to recognize the signs of mental illness in people they are dealing with, and then to use social worker techniques to defuse situations that might otherwise lead to use of force.

By the end of 2008, Portland will be the largest city in the country to have required all its street officers to be trained in crisis intervention.

Nevertheless, many experts say that Portland’s program, as currently configured, never will achieve the success that Memphis has had.

Memphis effort multipronged

According to Memphis officials, crisis intervention training is only one part of their overall solution, which includes a designated place for police to take people with uncontrolled mental illness, and a partnership between police and local mental health advocacy organizations.

“I believe the Memphis model is the gold standard,” says Bradley Cobb, executive director of the Memphis chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “I believe it is a lifesaver.”

A 2000 analysis of three cities and how their police responded to incidents involving people with mental illness showed that Memphis police rarely ended up arresting subjects with mental illness — only about two out of every 100 they dealt with on the street.

In some cities, as many as 20 percent or 30 percent of people with mental illness are taken to jail. In Memphis, a city comparable in size to Portland, almost all are directed into mental health care rather than the criminal justice system — an outcome mental health and police officials agree is preferable.

Departments in Memphis and Portland do not track police use of force involving people with mental illness. But Memphis police say they’ve got a pretty good idea that their use of force dropped when they instituted crisis intervention.

According to Sam Cochran, who has coordinated the crisis intervention program for Memphis police since its inception, in the first three years after the program was instituted, injuries suffered by police officers during crisis events dropped by more than 80 percent.

“If you’re seeing where officers are not getting hurt, you can pretty much conclude that (citizens) are not getting hurt,” Cochran says.

But the program being developed in Portland differs from the Memphis model in three significant ways.

All Portland street cops trained

In Memphis, not all officers are trained in crisis intervention, and that is intentional. In fact, Cobb says, after early successes, the Memphis chief of police told him he wanted to train all of the city’s officers, and Cobb says he told the chief that wouldn’t be a good idea.

Cobb says that — similar to a police agency’s special tactics team — not all officers are qualified to routinely deal with people suffering mental illness.

“It’s more than just training,” Cobb says. “You can get training anywhere. It depends on the officer. It really has to come from the heart.”

In Memphis, police officers volunteer to be trained in crisis intervention, and then are screened, so only those selected get to wear the crisis intervention badge and are in charge on calls involving people showing signs of uncontrolled mental illness.

Before Chasse’s death, about 250 Portland police had received crisis intervention training, following the Memphis model. Now, Portland is training all its street level officers. And that’s a good idea, says Jason Renaud, a longtime Portland mental health activist and former executive director of the Multnomah County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

“They’re wrong,” Renaud says of Memphis. “I’m convinced James Chasse proves that. The people who took crisis intervention in the past (in Portland) were looking for promotions, or were people already sensitized to the issue (of mental illness) and knew it was useful. It’s the folks who think it’s not useful training who benefit the most from it.”

Training helps alliance form

Another difference between crisis intervention training in Memphis and in Portland is the training itself. In Memphis, mental health advocates take part in the classes, from describing their own experiences with police to role-playing.

Cobb says that approach has forced the mental health community and police officers into what has become a strong alliance. “They (mental health activists) feel they have ownership in this program because they help do it,” Cobb says.

Portland is training more than 500 officers. But Liesbeth Gerritsen, a crisis counselor hired by the city to coordinate its crisis intervention training, said that while the city once used mental health advocates in its training, it was unable to find enough advocates to continue participating.

Instead she uses a videotape of interviews with local advocates.

Still, even with an entire street level force trained in crisis intervention, Portland’s police are at a disadvantage in dealing with the mentally ill because of the city’s lack of a dedicated mental health triage facility, according to Cobb and Cochran.

Portland police don’t have a place to take people once they have them in custody — something Cochran, in charge of Memphis’ program for 20 years, calls “a tragedy.”

“You’re undermining crisis intervention training,” he says.

In Memphis, crisis intervention officers are trained to take subjects they suspect of having out-of-control mental illness to a special center set up at the University of Tennessee medical center. The officers are able to drop the subjects off there and leave within minutes, and by agreement with the city, no drop-offs are refused.

In Portland, police officers’ choices are usually jail or one of the local hospital’s overcrowded emergency departments, where the officers cannot leave until physicians have signed off on a transfer.

That process often takes hours, according to police officials. That makes dropping them off at jail a much more appealing alternative, even if officers know people won’t get the help they need.

Assessment center lacking

Multnomah County officials have plans for a mental health crisis and assessment center to be located in Northeast Portland, but details and funding have not yet been worked out. The facility, if funded, could be years away from opening.

Portland police get calls about people whose primary problem appears to be mental illness about 360 times a year, according to bureau statistics.

But Gerritsen says the collapse of the Multnomah County mental health system, from the near bankruptcy of Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, the county’s primary provider of mental health services, to inadequate state funding for psychiatric services for the poor, means there are more Portlanders with untreated mental illness than ever.

Add in the lack of an assessment center, and that means there probably will be another James Chasse event in Portland — despite improved policing.

Still, the new system appears to be working so far. Renaud says he hasn’t heard a complaint about police abusing someone with mental illness in at least six months — and those complaints used to come in regularly, he says.

“Portland has done a terrific job at getting prepared for the next experience,” Renaud says. “Perhaps the next experience has already happened and the crisis intervention training intervened and no one was hurt or killed.”

Some plans turned into action

In the wake of James Chasse Jr.’s death, Mayor Tom Potter launched a Mental Health and Public Safety Initiative, involving regular meetings by a wide variety of mental health providers, county and city officials, and advocates, that produced a 10-page action plan involving 14 separate recommendations.

Two years later, some have become reality and some haven’t.

Based on one recommendation, the Portland Police Bureau and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office have trained officers and law enforcement deputies with special Crisis Intervention Training classes. To address another recommendation, the county has increased its funding for Project Respond, a nonprofit group that specializes in crisis intervention with the mentally ill.

However, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners did not fund mental health screening nurses for the jail booking area, and local jurisdictions have not produced funding for a new mental health coordination and oversight body.

The county is making progress toward setting up a 16-bed mental health crisis and assessment center, so police don’t have to take the mentally ill to jail.

Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Julie Frantz and county Community Health Services Director Joanne Fuller chair the committee that was supposed to oversee the implementation of the initiative’s recommendations. The committee has shifted its focus to setting up a “mental health court” intended to divert the mentally ill from the criminal justice system.

FROM: MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION OF PORTLAND
TO: ALL MEDIA
SUBJECT: SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF JAMES CHASSE
DATE: SEPTEMBER 8 2008

September 17 marks the second anniversary of the beating death of James Chasse.

On a late Sunday afternoon, September 17, 2006, James Chasse Jr., walking home from a Northwest church, was attacked by and died at the hands of three law officers in downtown Portland in front of a dozen witnesses.

The officers, Portland Police officer Christopher Humphreys, Portland Police Sergeant Kyle Nice and Multnomah County Sheriff deputy Bret Burton, did not know Chasse, he was not suspected of a crime, and he did not provoke them.

When asked why the officers beat Chasse to death, one officer claimed Chasse “acted strange.”

Chasse was tackled to the ground, punched, kicked, Tasered repeatedly and hogtied, resulting in 16 broken ribs, a number of abrasions, a broken shoulder, both lungs punctured.

Inexplicably, paramedics cleared Chasse to be taken to jail. Upon seeing his injuries, jail nurses refused to admit Chasse, telling Officers Nice and Humphreys to take Chasse to a hospital.

Instead of administering first aid, calling for an ambulance, or taking Chasse to the nearest trauma unit, the officers tried to take him to a psychiatric hospital eight miles away. He died enroute, less than an hour after the beating.

No grand jury in Portland’s history has indicted a police officer for using force. The grand jury did not indict the officers who beat Chasse. The City and County refused to discipline the officers.

Christopher Humphreys was named in a federal lawsuit alleging police brutality that the city settled for $90,000 earlier in 2006. And in instances of use of force, Humphreys in 2006 was tied for No. 2 since the bureau began collecting statistics in 2004.

In response to Chasse’s death, the outcry of the Portland community led to changes in city and county procedures and processes.

In November 2006, Mayor Potter, reacting to the outcry, appointed a Mental Health / Public Safety Task Force to study how the mentally ill are cared for in Portland and their interactions with the police.

Increased funding ($290,000) for Project Respond to hire more staff and create a dedicated unit to partner with law enforcement and respond directly to police referrals.

Increased funding ($500,000) to establish mandatory Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) for all Portland Police officers.

Police Bureau hired a mental health professional to coordinate the CIT program as well as to provide policy advice on how to work with persons with mental illness. This person has significantly improved both our process of training officers and the quality of training.

Portland police officers no longer transport persons they have injured to jail or hospital.

HB 2765 was spurred by James Chasse’s death. The law requires the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training to include at least 24 hours of training relating to mental illness utilizing a crisis intervention training model (CIT.)

SB 111 was directly influenced by James Chasse’s death. SB 111 requires every county to create a six member planning authority co-chaired by the District Attorney and Sheriff. The planning authority must create and implement a plan that specifies how city and county law enforcement will respond when a police officer “was a cause in fact of the death of a person.” SB 111 requires that the county planning authorities inform the Oregon Department of Justice about such incidents. SB 111 also ensures officers or deputies who cause the death of a person is treated fairly psychologically, professionally, financially and legally.

Portland Police Chief Sizer issued a new Use of Force policy.

Since Chasse’s death, with the changes noted above that followed, no similar incidents have occurred in Portland. This remains the enduring tribute to James.

Regardless of these long overdue advances, persons with mental illness, their friends and family members, and citizens of Portland will hold public servants accountable for their actions, and not forget or overlook their mistakes.

James Chasse had a family, a history and a future, friends, neighbors, dreams and hopes. He was an artist, a small shy gentle person, and a person with schizophrenia. His death was merciless, brutal and pointless.

To remember James, and others with mental illness and addiction who died in past years during police action, supporters of the Mental Health Association of Portland will join on September 16 for a political action at the Portland Police Bureau Central Precinct and the Multnomah County Jail.

The action will begin at Noon September 16 and end before dusk. The action will consist of supporters drawing chalk outlines of persons who died during police actions on the sidewalks circling the block. Names, dates of death and perhaps remembrances of those who died will be written on the sidewalks in chalk. As per agreement with the City, all chalk drawings will be removed by the end of the day.

You’re invited to participate with this political action. Come at anytime between 10 AM and 6 PM. Bring friends and help remember those who have died.

For more information about James Chasse, see jameschasse.blogspot.com

To learn about a documentary film being made in Portland about the life and death of James Chasse, see www.alienboy.org

For more information about the Mental Health Association of Portland, see our web site at www.mentalhealthportland.org

Our letter to Mayor Tom Potter

Tom Potter
City Hall
September 17, 2007

Mayor Potter,

While we applaud your effort to consider how people with mental illness move through small portions of the criminal justice system with the Mayor’s Mental Health Task Force, direct accountability for James Chasse’s death remains unanswered.

A complete year has passed since James’ horrific killing at the hands of two Portland police officers and a Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputy, and a variety of questions and concerns persist. Unanswered, they undermine the credibility of the city.

Members of the Mental Health Association of Portland have collected and summarized some of the remaining questions and concerns from the community about what happened to James Chasse. These questions come from a wide variety of people, and not all questions represent all signers of this letter. Yet all these questions are open, inquiring, forthright and unguarded.

Your open and honest response to these questions will help regain the trust which has been hurt with the actions of individual officers, the comments of their associates, and the inability of the civil service to discipline or terminate the officers involved.

We understand there is an ongoing civil suit, but hope you consider reconciliation over defense in your response.

Question
What recommendations from the Mayor’s Task Force have been implemented and what recommendations have not been implemented? Who is responsible for overseeing the process of implementation? Who is responsible to report to the public what efforts have been successful or unsuccessful?

Question
On reflection, do you believe the police department and Rosie Sizer in particular handled the Chasse case appropriately?

Question
Should officers responsible for serious injury to an individual provide their transport, care, and/or communication with health professionals regarding their condition?

Question
Has the city fully and completely disclosed all documents and records regarding the Chasse case to the legal team heading the civil suit filed by the family?

Question
How can potential conflicts of interest be eliminated, such as having the District Attorney’s office lead the grand jury proceedings in the case of death in police custody and/or accusations of excessive use of force?

Question
No officer has been indicted for excessive force by our current district attorney. How can it truly be possible no Portland police officer has used excessive force during the last decade?

Question
How can the City of Portland maintain a contract relationship with AMR after what happened to James Chasse? After 16 ribs broken, Taser shots, shoulder broken, punctured lungs, how could they send him to jail as if he were unharmed?

Question
If the City’s ambulance service responded to the James Chasse call today, how would they act differently than they did on September 17, 2006?

Question
In your opinion, would different officers have responded differently to James Chasse? Would James be alive today if Nice, Humphrey and Burton were not involved?

Question
By what date can a person in crisis be certain a responding officer will be CIT trained?

Question
What percentage of Portland officers has completed CIT training to date?

Question
Has CIT training been offered to law enforcement outside of Portland? Which departments have been trained and what percentage of officers in those departments have been trained?

Question
What part of the CIT training imbues mercy and compassion to police officers? What part of CIT training teaches de-escalation and rapport building techniques to promote peaceful outcomes? If this is not part of CIT training, can there be another source that can incorporate these basic principles of crisis management into this curriculum?

Question
What funding has been sought for or secured to expand and sustain supportive housing capacity for special needs populations?

Question
One of the recommendations from your Task Force was for restoration and expansion of state sponsored health insurance. What exactly was done by the city to accomplish this recommendation in the 2007 legislature?

Question
What has the City done to assure the County is able to provide treatment services as a safety net for people with mental illness?

Question
Considering the released grand jury evidence do you believe the District Attorney should indict the officers who killed James Chasse?

Question
Within the CIT program are officers instructed to refrain from using force with people they simply want to question?

Question
Speaking as a seasoned experienced law professional, are officers’ claims that they believe their life was in danger a sufficient justification for lethal use of force?

Question
The degree of force used against James Chasse outweighs the reasons for questioning his behavior. Is this degree of force still acceptable within your police department?

Question
City contracted emergency medical technicians judged James Chasse uninjured and not appropriate to take to an emergency room. The City has just renegotiated this contract. Within the new contract, are contract EMTs given a new set of instructions about how to handle a case such as Chasse’s?

Question
Would justice and public trust been better served in cases such as James Chasse’s with an independent investigation and an independent prosecutor?

Question
James Chasse was mortally injured when he left jail in custody of police officers. Do the Portland police continue to serve as ambulances for the jail? Is it still police and city practice to drive wounded prisoners to distant hospitals rather than the closest emergency room?

Question
Is the use of force by Portland officers appropriate in light of the many accusations of unnecessary or excessive use of force? How do you – as Mayor – find a balance between safety for officers and safety for the public?

Question
How can we explain the death of James Chasse to our children, and that the men who are responsible for his death were not held accountable?

Question
Please explain why other citizens should be held accountable when the district attorney’s office failed to hold the men responsible for James Chasse’s death accountable?

Question
Please explain the rationale behind asking a judge to protect the Police Bureau Internal Affairs investigation report about what happened to James Chasse.

Question
Since when is looking odd a crime?

We would appreciate complete answers to these questions and concerns before the end of October. Because many of these questions and concerns begin with a lack of trust we hope you understand our need to shine a bright light on our questions – and on your answers.

Thank you, Roy Silberstein, President

Co-signers: Oregon Advocacy Center, Albina Ministerial Alliance; Mindfreedom.

From KATU.com, October 31, 2006

Mayor Potter says he is seeking $500,000 in hopes of getting all Portland police officers additional training on how to deal with people with mental health issues following a fatal incident in September.