Mental Health Association of Portland

From the Portland Mercury, September 29, 2011

Some 12 hours after hostage negotiators persuaded a mentally ill, gun-waving 50-year-old man to peacefully emerge from his Goose Hollow apartment, Portland police officials this afternoon were triumphantly taking credit for averting a “huge tragedy” that could have ended, easily, with the death of the man they arrested, or maybe—in a worst-case horror story—with the man shooting as many as dozens of other citizens.

John Griffin's seized guns

And what brought about that mostly happy ending? Among many reasons, one stands out: Restraint.

In what even top police officials would call a dramatic shift in their thinking, officers decided not to leap immediately into a confrontation with the man, identified as John Loxley Griffin—acknowledging in a way they usually don’t that sometimes officers’ very presence in a situation can lead it to spiral fatally out of control.

In fact, in the two previous incidents with Griffin, both of which also involved guns, officers “walked away” because it wasn’t clear Griffin had committed a crime, and also because Griffin had calmed down. Instead, officers worked with mental health professionals, Veterans Affairs, relatives, and the district attorney’s office to obtain a civil commitment hold for Griffin. That plan went awry after Griffin last night finally did, police say, commit a crime: pointing a gun outside his Southwest Yamhill window and actually threatening to shoot someone.

“This is a big change under the leadership of Chief [Mike] Reese,” said Day, until recently the bureau’s top training officer. “[Mentally ill subjects] may not be receptive [to officers' offers of help]. At what point do we force help, and what might be the consequences?”

Unfortunately, that message might be lost amid news coverage that has—so far—seemed to focus intensely on the huge cache of weapons turned up in Griffin’s apartment: body armor, 12 rifles, handguns, 2,000 rounds of ammunition, etc.

But for a police bureau that’s facing federal scrutiny of how it uses force against the mentally ill, especially after a particularly bloody run of police shootings starting in January 2010 through the early months of 2011, it’s a shift worth noting.

Day said sergeants all across the bureau are being trained on the finer points of “walking away,” with training for all officers planned over the course of the next year. In Griffin’s case, when asked why officers didn’t try to take him into custody before last night’s standoff, Day hammered again the notion that heavy-handed action can sometimes backfire.

“That is a very difficult balance,” he said, invoking the term “risk vs. reward.” “Any action we take is…going to be an overt action, which is going to provoke a reaction from the citizen.”

Earlier Wednesday, a crisis team police officer, teamed with a Cascadia worker, had devoted much of his shift to learning as much as he could about Griffin’s temperament and history. He concocted a plan, with the help of Griffin’s girlfriend and apartment manager, to lure Griffin out of his apartment and into the the hands of undercover officers who would have placed him in a civil commitment hold and into the VA system for treatment.

That didn’t work. Griffin was reportedly too suspicious—a case of not being wrong that someone was out to get him. Later he waved the gun, and then it was a crime that officials said they could no longer ignore.

Tactical officers from Washington County—Portland’s tactical team was out of town for its annual one-week training retreat, officials say—even adopted restraint as their mantra during the standoff. Instead of announcing themselves to Griffin immediately, and risking violence, officers cleared out the surrounding apartments and cordoned off nearby streets without Griffin realizing.

“From what we know, it was exactly as it should be,” says Jason Renaud of the Mental Health Association of Portland, long an advocate for improving how cops interact with the mentally ill. “We want them to come in with a plan, talk to family, talk to clinicians, talk to a landlord. This is a person whose thinking may be very impaired. They may appear malevolent, but they they may actually just be in crisis.”

But police officials also recognized that of the hundreds of calls they receive each day involving someone who is mentally ill or in crisis, they rarely have the luxury of investing the kind of time and energy the spent on Griffin’s case. Griffin also wasn’t as manic as some who wind up in confrontations with police. He was actually sleeping when negotiators rang him up to coax him outside.

And as Renaud notes, plans can go out the window when someone in a standoff continues to act erratically.

“The gun comes out again and points out the window,” he says, “and all this negotiation comes out of the away, and they go back to being cops.

From the Oregonian, September 28, 2011

A paranoid and delusional man who had 14 guns and 2,000 rounds of ammunition in his Southwest Portland apartment peacefully surrendered to law enforcement early Thursday after a six-hour stand off with police.

John Losley Griffin

Portland police said the peaceful resolution followed elaborate planning and collaboration between police, Griffin’s family, and mental health professionals.

“We have a mental health crisis in our community,” said Bob Day, commander of the bureau’s Central Precinct. “It’s a sign of our times and what we are dealing with. The role of law enforcement is changing. Social disorder issues now fall to police, and we are the first responders.”

Dealing with the mentally ill has been a challenge for the bureau and a source of controversy. The federal Justice Department has launched an investigation to see whether Portland police have used excessive force, particularly against people with mental illness, following a spike in police shootings the past 20 months.

Police were first called to Griffin’s apartment complex at 1631 S.W. Yamhill St. late last week.

Rod Hoover, 36, said he called 9-1-1 Sept. 21 after Griffin knocked on his door. When Hoover answered, he saw Griffin wearing “full body armor,” with a shotgun in one hand and rifle in the other. Griffin then asked Hoover “if we knew we were under siege.”

By the time police arrived, Griffin had returned to his unit and refused repeated requests to come out. Since no crime had been committed, Day said, police could take no action.

On Tuesday, police were once more called to the complex. This time Griffin, wearing a gas mask and bullet-proof vest, was yelling and screaming out his window. Again, he refused to come out of his unit.

Day, meanwhile, instructed Sgt. Jeff Niiya to research Griffin’s background so officers would know who they were dealing with.

Niiya tracked down Griffin’s mother and girlfriend, and learned he’d been having problems. His girlfriend told police she moved out because Griffin was loading and unloading his weapons. She did know how many weapons he owned.

Neighbors said Griffin appeared to go downhill in recent weeks, and seemed to be having delusions. Before that, Hoover said, Griffin was “normally a gruff old guy.”

Niiya talked to Officer Herb Miller, a member of the bureau’s Mobile Crisis Unit that deals with the mentally ill. Miller works closely with Cindy Hackett, a mental health clinician with Portland’s Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare.

Officials laid out the case for a judge Wednesday and were given a mental health hold to place on Griffin. That meant officers could take him into custody and send him to Cascadia, where Hackett had reserved a space for him.

Officers, meantime, kept an eye on Griffin’s third-floor apartment, which has windows facing the street.

Undercover officers stationed in the Chapman Court Apartments had the manager call Griffin and ask him to come to the office. They were hoping to get him out of his unit so he could be taken into custody.

Griffin refused and hung up. Miller then scouted the complex so officers would know the layout should they be faced with forcing Griffin from his apartment.

Police continued to monitor the situation, planning to bring Griffin’s girlfriend to the apartment complex Thursday and have her call Griffin to lure him out of the unit.

But then Griffin forced police to act when he leaned out of a window around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, pointed a rifle at a neighbor in the apartment courtyard and threatened to hurt people.

Miller hustled to the scene where he shared information with officers. At that point, commanders decided to call out a tactical team. Portland’s team is in training, so the Washington County team was called in and complex residents were evacuated.

Day said all the background work done earlier in the week helped negotiators deal with Griffin. He said officers knew it would be hard to gain his trust.

Griffin repeatedly hung up on the negotiator, but then he abruptly agreed to come out.

“I’m thankful it worked out the way it did,” Day said. “Given that he was delusional and agitated I thought it would end up in a confrontation. This is the way it should work all the time. But given our resources and time, we can’t do this every time someone is in crisis. What we don’t want to do as police is force the issue.”

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

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

Officer Christopher Humphreys & Sargeant Kyle Nice

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

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

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

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

(Later in the conversation)

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

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

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

Humphreys: No.

Courtney: When you uh, stumble and fall too.

Humphreys: No.