Police step up effort to raise understanding
BY EILEEN KELLEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
CINCINNATI, Ohio — She’s 23 and had her mind made up.
Police scare her.
Or so Michelle Schoone thought.
With her head slightly bent down, Schoone stared intensely as a worker explained that the future police officers - recruits - were going to visit the administrative offices of the Hamilton County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities so they could learn about the special populations in Greater Cincinnati and see what goes on.
Schoone stood her ground.
Police made her very nervous.
Then, she met some.
On that early November afternoon, two young recruits similar in age to Schoone, Jennifer Myers and Tytus Phillmore, showed Schoone that life didn’t have to be that scary. By mid-afternoon, the three were fully engaged in laughter.
That’s the ideal, but not always the reality when it comes to law enforcement and the mentally disabled and ill.
Police around the country have come under fire for being too quick to draw weapons and use force when dealing with the disabled.
It’s happened in Cincinnati and more recently in Butler County, where a mentally disabled man first fought with his father and then with police before collapsing and dying last month.
The training appears to be giving Cincinnati police a better understanding of the problems they’ll face when dealing with a disabled person.
When the 50 recruits graduate next month, they will be certified as members of the Cincinnati Police Department’s Mental Health Response Team.
That’s a first for newcomers to the police department.
Recruits have been trained about mental health issues in the past, but never to the extent they are now. At one time, the state required academies to offer three hours of training on mental illness and other disabilities.
“It’s impossible to cover in three hours,” said Victor Lloyd, the police training coordinator for the Mental Health Association of Southwest Ohio.
Now, state guidelines for academies call for 16 hours.
For Cincinnati recruits, they’ll spend 40 hours learning about the issues and seeing problems firsthand.
Lloyd said he knows of no other police academy in the county mandating such extensive training.
STARTED AFTER 2001 RIOTS
Following the 2001 riots that were ignited after police shot an unarmed man, the U.S. Justice Department called for broad reforms in the Cincinnati department.
One reform called for creation of a team of specially trained officers to deal with the mentally ill. That reform came as a result of the 1997 police shooting death of Lorenzo Collins, a mentally ill, unarmed hospital escapee.
The change didn’t come easily.
At the time, only 27 officers willingly offered to take the 40-hour training program, said Lloyd.
Today, 200 veteran officers have be trained to be members of the 24/7 response team.
The idea is to one day have every officer trained. That’s why the department is starting with recruits.
The recruits spent a week in the classroom learning about mental illness and mental retardation, depression, suicide and other conditions such as autism.
Each recruit then spent time at various social service agencies such as homeless shelters, centers for the deaf and blind, work centers for the mentally retarded and disabled adults and a school for the autistic.
“Michelle (Schoone) was just the best,” said Myers after her week of training.
Schoone had equal praise for the recruits.
“You guys are going to do great,” she told them.
Still, the week was long, rigorous and involved multiple speakers. What some recruits learned was eye-opening.
Myers said she had no idea about the extent of the various illnesses and conditions.
THEY ARE NOT ALONE
Despite society’s efforts to mainstream mentally and physically disabled children into schools and the work place, the lives of many remain a largely hidden and unknown world.
“I had no idea,” said Myers midway through her day visiting centers that help and work with the disabled.
That’s why advocates and police say the training is essential.
The lessons learned are sure to crop up again when the recruits move from the academy and onto the streets as officers this winter.
Not a day goes by when there isn’t a call for one of the specially trained police officers.
The highest number of calls for the officers on one day this year was 30, according to a review of calls by the police department from January through October. The average daily number of calls for a member of the team in the 10 months was 17.
Last year finished with 6,487 calls for a member of the team.
That’s three times the number of calls - 2,150 calls - in 1997.
Experts say the steep increase can be attributed to many things:
Better recognition of conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
More awareness of the crisis centers that can help.
The deinstitutionalization of many people who up until just a few decades ago were kept largely in isolation at various institutions.
A larger and more visible homeless population.
IS IT WORKING?
Lloyd, of the mental health association, said his group is trying to track the progress the city has made since the inception of the mental health teams. He thinks eventually there will be proof that relationships are better and police and the disabled suspects are far better off.
Police say you can’t go wrong with more training.
“We believe in the training,” said Lt. Mark Briede, a department spokesman. He said the department wouldn’t invest the time or the effort to train the recruits if it didn’t believe in the program.
Only one known mentally unstable person has died during a confrontation with police since the start of the teams, police say.
Nathaniel Jones died in 2003 after a fight with police when they were called to a parking lot for the report the man was behaving oddly.
Agencies such as Tender Mercies Inc., which deals with severely mentally ill clients who would be homeless without its shelters, report excellent relationships between their clients and police now.
Bren Blaine, the chief executive officer of Tender Mercies, said his group has been helping to train the police for years.
“We have seen a huge change at Tender Mercies over the last couple of years,” Blaine said. “Because the officers are trained, they no longer pull guns on our residents and they know how to talk them down so that we can get them safely taken care of with nodanger of getting shot.
The Cincinnati Enquirer