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It's Not Rocket Science
By lindamuralidharan on 2020-09-11 04:48:39
There is a lot of coverage of recent killings related to White Supremacy, Anti Fascism and police abuse of people of color.
Many reports give the broad outlines of what was happening and usually it is necessary to do one's own digging to get to
some of the pertinent details. Either way, a pattern emerges for those of us who have worked in the field of mental health
and substance abuse and who thus interfaced with the criminal justice system on behalf of the clients. I am most extremely
distressed by what appears to me to be a failure to insure that police officers, in too many instances, use state of the art de-
escalation and problem solving skills. I have concluded they are not so trained, but a acquaintance whose brother-in-law is a
retired police officer says they are given all that training. Then her conclusion and mine was that some officers choose not to
use some desirable skills even when they are in possession of them. I am not in the minds of these folks so I cannot say
what motivation is involved although some evidence points to the idea that racism is a factor. [caption
CIT
Crisis Intervention Team
id="attachment_14515" align="alignleft" width="276"] i 7th Memphis Tn. police
prepared for crises[/caption] Some of the skills are taught in Red Cross First Aid and CPR class. When Tamir Rice was
killed by police in minutes after they roared up in cop cars (he had a toy gun in a park area), they failed one of the first
commandments of such training. "Survey the Scene." I do believe the officer who shot to kill a 13 year old had been
removed from a previous job with another department for similar inappropriate behavior although no fatality occurred as a
result of his bad choices in that job. Certainly this and other instances suggest the possibility that management level police
do not enforce their own policies. Recently there have been calls for mental health professionals to accompany police or
replace police in situations where a disturbed person is the object of a 911 call. In response, a letter to my local paper said
how can you expect a low level mental health worker to do what the police cannot (or will not). The public obviously could
well use some educating. Good policy and accountability of public officials depend on it. I have worked as such a low level
mental health worker (case manager/substance abuse counselor). At any time we could encounter a potentially violent
person....psychotic, paranoid, under the influence of a drug such as PCP. Any or all of the a above. And that would include
people with severe anger management issues. In about a half day session, we were trained at the agency I worked for on
techniques for de-escalating volatile situations with the potential for violence. This could include risks that a person would
hurt herself or others. The training involved our being able to identify the stages of volatility as the escalation might
proceed. We learned effective interventions for each stage so that we might have the opportunity to stop the process at any
stage. We learned what to do at the highest stage when violence was imminent and also what not to do. In the specific case
of PCP intoxication we learned very specialized techniques which include several "do not" categories to be sure we would
not make the situation worse. Space and time are among the keys to bringing down a person on PCP. Do not crowd the
person, talk calmly, be patient. It's not rocket science folks. All staff at an agency benefit from this education even those
such as administrative assistants and maintenance staff who may only occasionally interact with clients and who frequently
do not have more than a high school education. I am not talking about training people with PhDs necessarily. In my own
police department itself a person needs only a high school diploma. Police with an open mind would be prime candidates
for this training although that group of trainees probably needs a longer training day as they would need some general
information about mental illness and certain symptoms and perhaps even diagnoses although I am very skeptical about
diagnose as labels or as definitive statements. Nonetheless, police in general may well benefit from a serous look at mental
illness in general. It's not rocket science, folks. I don't expect the general public to take this training. I do wish the general
public would have enough understanding of the guiding principles of public safety in the context of dealing with the
mentally ill to understand their relevance and the problems that arise when untrained or irresponsible people are called to the
scene of a crisis disturbance. A knowledgeable public will demand accountability from their public servants. I have been
extremely distressed by the lack of application of simple first responder and mental health crises best practices in many of
the recently publicized cases of police killings and maimings. Tarir Rice is a good example and then the egregious case just
this year of the man in Rochester, N.Y. who died at the hands of the police after his brother called for "help" since Daniel
Prude was exhibiting very erratic behavior and was nude (in pubic) at the time. [caption id="attachment_ 14516"
Justice
align="alignright" width="235"] Daniel Prude's brother called for help. Instead he got
violence. Is that what Ronald Reagan meant be very afraid when the government comes to "help"?[/caption] Yes, Prude was
nude and unarmed. (hard to hide a Bowie knife in your armpit.) The police were quick to get their hands on him and force
him to the ground. Apparently at that point he was sitting on a curb and spitting at them. I don't know if he was handcuffed
at that point but the police did have some scope to step back from the spitting and talk calmly to him for a while. If he
continued spitting the anti-spit hood may have been appropriate. However, it was not appropriate...in fact it was deadly ....to
throw him on the ground and push his head into the pavement. It took Prude a week to die in the hospital, and I see little
evidence that these officers were applying positive crisis management techniques that have been shown to work in restoring
peace and saving lives. Daniel Prude was a black man. In the case of a white, nude, apparently psychotic triple murderer we
see police in another jurisdiction using a nonviolent and highly effective approach. Were these more competent police
employees or would they have behaved more like the killers of Daniel Prude if the young man in question had been a person
of color? This week we learned of the serious wounding by gun shot of a 13 year old boy said by his mother of have
Asperger's Syndrome. She called for help when he experienced a "melt down". As he ran from the police....insofar as
anyone can tell unarmed.....they shot him. I am not an expert in issues involving Asperger's or autism, although I have done
extensive volunteer work with people so diagnosed. Recently it was a 5 year stint with adults in a day program. Participants
were required to be stabilized before joining but some had melt downs for whatever reason, however, rare. I saw the
paraprofessional staff, mostly well trained immigrants from places like the Philippines, handle these incidents....often even
preventing them as they were just beginning....with great skill and effectiveness. [caption id="attachment_14517"
align="alignright" width="250" |e Unarmed and shot by police.[/caption] It seems to
me it would be pretty simple to provide every police officer with a wallet card that describes what not to do in instances
where some form of autism is suspected. Don't arrive with sirens blaring, bright lights shining at the person, don't crowd,
avoid agitated angry speech, etc. I am not sure what the status of various programs across the country might be today. Back
in the early aughts when I was living on the mainland East Coast, many of us activists were involved with promoting the
kind of programs that had been or were being instituted in a number of urban jurisdictions. One model has on-call mental
health crisis management team going to crisis calls with the police. Another model trains a certain number of police officers
in crisis management and these are then sent to the relevant calls for help. There is, however, the problem of keeping a
constantly updated cadre of officers since some eventually retire or are promoted to other duties and on some shifts there are
not a sufficient number available for whatever reason. I believe the latter situation obtained in Utah were the boy was shot.
I think the boy is white, and it appears statistically that white people are subject to police brutality and that the relative (to
the respective populations) number is significantly less than the number of fatal and life threatening incidents in the black
community. We have to look at racism, lack of accountability, America's love affair with guns, the militarization of the
police, public apathy, and other possible factors in order to root out this ongoing blot on America. I mention accountability
because there is evidence from a variety of sources that however much the respective police departments provide de-
escalation training, it is of minimal use if there are no consequences applied by the brass for failures to put the training into
practice. It's not rocket science. The media has done a fair job of contrasting some of the types of arrests of white murderers
with the arrests of black persons who may have committed minor or not crimes. There is Dylan Roof with his jolly trip to a
fast food joint after his peaceful arrest. There is the de-escalation of a psychotic, nude accused mass murderer Matthew
Bernard. The latter two people are white. I am not at all sure if this reflects excellent training or just that some white police
officers are going to treat white perpetrators they way they would treat their own brothers and are going to treat black
perpetrators as though they are enemies from the Taliban.
