originally published at: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20070606/NEWS/706060328/1350
Mental crisis training proposed
Sonoma County sheriff will ask supervisors to fund 5-year, $360,000 program for deputies
By KATY HILLENMEYER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Wednesday, June 6, 2007 at 3:42 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at 9:00 p.m.
Sonoma County Sheriff Bill Cogbill has proposed a five-year, $360,000 program to improve deputies’ crisis-intervention skills when they confront mentally disturbed subjects.
The program, modeled on tactics that police in Memphis, Tenn., have used during the past decade, follows months of community debate about two fatal officer-involved shootings involving mentally ill males.
Cogbill announced the proposal at a meeting Monday night with citizens who have called for more law enforcement training in the wake of those shootings. However, he said the primary motivation is not the recent cases, but the need to prepare his deputies for cutbacks in community-based services for mentally ill homeless people, juveniles and those needing psychiatric hospitalization after the county’s Norton inpatient facility closes.
“The more mental health is cut and people aren’t getting their treatment or their medications or aren’t able to see somebody, the more likely they are to be in crisis,” Cogbill said Tuesday. “When people are in crisis, it’s typically beyond the point of talking.”
He said he intends to submit a formal funding request to county supervisors this summer.
The sheriff unveiled the training proposal Monday night at Santa Rosa’s Finley Center, where for a third time Mayor Bob Blanchard convened law enforcement officials with mental health advocates, civil rights representatives and minority leaders. Those private meetings arose from citizen concerns after two sheriff’s deputies fatally shot Jeremiah Chass, an armed 16-year-old who resisted his parents’ and deputies’ efforts to control him, and Santa Rosa police shot and killed Richard DeSantis, a 30-year-old bipolar man who fired a gun inside his house and later charged Santa Rosa police outside the home.
The county chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness welcomed Cogbill’s proposal, reaffirming its support for local adoption of the Memphis crisis-intervention method.
“We’re very, very excited about it,” said local alliance President Jennifer Hedgpeth, who recently wrote law enforcement leaders urging more training. “It will involve family members and (mentally ill) consumers . . . so we can help reduce stigma and enhance an educated view of the mentally ill.”
County Mental Health Services Director Art Ewart and Cogbill said it’s doubtful crisis-intervention training would have saved Chass or DeSantis, who were reported to be armed and threatening violence before officers arrived. It is focused on better acquainting police with firsthand experiences of the mentally ill and their symptoms and verbal de-escalation techniques best used before a crisis spirals out of control.
“Particularly when there’s a weapon involved and violence has already started, police officers and deputies have to react and stop that violence,” Ewart said. “I don’t care if it’s someone who’s mentally impaired or on drugs, they’ve got to stop that violence.”
Ewart said his department has been planning with law enforcement for 18 months to slowly roll out this training countywide. The county’s initial Mental Health Services Act funding, from Proposition 63 tax dollars earmarked last June, included partial funding to put on the training, Ewart said. But the bulk of the costs would fall to individual police agencies.
The expected decline in funding to serve mentally ill homeless people and mentally ill juvenile offenders and the closure of the Norton psychiatric inpatient facility in Santa Rosa have accelerated that process.
A five-year program that allots $72,000 annually would train 30 deputies each year, Cogbill said.
“I don’t have enough discretionary funds to fund this,” Cogbill said. “(But) I don’t want to wait another five years to train everybody because the (mental health) cuts are happening in July.”
The Memphis crisis-intervention model, a collaboration with mental health “consumers” and their family members, was launched in 1988 following a 1987 police shooting involving a mentally ill person.
Bay Area counties including San Mateo, San Francisco and Santa Clara have implemented similar training — including a San Mateo program last month attended by Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt. Mark Essick and Mental Health Services staffer Mike Kennedy.
Essick, a field services supervisor with the county’s patrol division, said the five-day training included realistic role-playing that mimicked mental health emergencies, and introduced him to families who gave their views on officers’ successes and failures in disarming their endangered relatives.
“It’s not a cure-all,” said Essick, who praised the program for bringing together doctors, mental health professionals, social workers, police and other professionals. “But it will give us tools to better handle situations we deal with every day and get a different perspective on mental health consumers.”
Two hundred of the nearly 1,200 inmates housed in Sonoma County’s two jails have mental health issues, Cogbill said, and he foresees a growing burden on law enforcement.
Santa Rosa Police Chief Ed Flint said he and his training coordinators are evaluating the benefits and costs of the program.
“We’re very interested in teaming with the local jurisdictions to cut costs and provide a greater level of training for our officers,” Flint said. “This is not Johnny-come-lately because of these shootings. This is ongoing — about how do we get additional training and how do we better deal with the increased contacts we will have with the mentally ill.”
County Supervisor Mike Kerns, who spent more than 20 years on Petaluma’s police force, said he looks forward to reviewing the plans Cogbill, Ewart and others have developed.
“There’s probably real value to this kind of approach,” Kerns said Tuesday. “I’m sure we’ll look and try to find the money to do it. It might mean he (the sheriff) will have to cut elsewhere in his budget to make this happen.”
Sebastopol resident Sherman Blackwell, a former state psychiatric social worker who has two mentally ill sons, praised the crisis-intervention training as a “great” first step.
“It’s an answer,” he said during Monday’s roundtable at the Finley Center. “At some point, the community needs to do its job about helping to identify some more funds.”
News Researcher Vonnie Matthews contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Katy Hillenmeyer at 521-5274 or katy.hillenmeyer@
pressdemocrat.com.