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By Barbara Carmen
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Franklin County Sheriff James A. Karnes “still hasn’t gotten the message,” said an attorney who won a $500,000 settlement that will force changes in how deputies deal with the mentally ill.
Frederick M. Gittes said yesterday he is shocked that Karnes has defended his deputies for shooting a man they were to take in for mental-health treatment.
Deputies said Nasir Abdi, 23, brandished a knife when they confronted him in December 2005. They shouted at him to drop it, drew their weapons and fired a single fatal shot, all within 40 seconds of arriving at his Northeast Side home.
Gittes also criticized the sheriff for saying that mental-health training programs compelled by the settlement are already largely in place.
The settlement, approved by Franklin County commissioners, will require the sheriff’s office to set up a crisis-intervention team, similar to one at the Columbus Division of Police.
That team and the county warrant squad also must keep a database on individuals so they will have background information to better deal with the person the second time around.
Everyone, from dispatchers to deputies to supervisors, would receive increased mental-health and crisis-intervention training. For example, those who serve Probate Court mental-health detention orders must receive 40 hours of crisis-intervention training and take 20 hours of continuing in-service, mental-health training every three years.
Abdi, 23, suffered from schizophrenia but was able to lead a normal life with medication.
Karnes said he had no problem agreeing to the additional training requirements in the settlement, predicting that they will be “minimal.”
“I would like to see Mr. Gittes’ response if someone came at him with a knife and he has 37 seconds to decide what to do,” Karnes said. “Even the judge, in his statement, said the deputies followed procedure. And the grand jury followed suit.”
But Abdi’s mother, Amina, fought tears yesterday as she told of her struggle to bring her seven children to America. The family fled civil war in Somalia and lived for years of refugee tent camps.
“I would never think my son would die at the hands of law enforcement,” she said. “I would tell Sheriff Karnes to train his deputies. This is never to happen again to the rest of the community.”
George L. Kirkham, professor emeritus of criminology at Florida State University, was a witness for Mrs. Abdi. He said the shooting could have been averted if the deputy had been properly trained to calm the man.
“But you can’t calmly talk to someone who is rushing at you with a knife,” said Jim Gilbert, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, Capital City Lodge No. 9.
Gilbert, who is trained in crisis intervention and called the training “excellent,” noted that a Columbus officer trained in crisis intervention had to shoot and kill someone on the West Side a month ago.
Copyright 2008 The Columbus Dispatch