Mental-health law teams' aim: Stop 'another Loughner'

Tucson’s two main law enforcement agencies are working to improve how their officers deal with calls that involve a mental-health issue.

In the moments of a mental-health crisis, all someone might need is just to talk to somebody. But too often what happens to a person in crisis is that law enforcement is called and they get taken to jail or a hospital.

“That shouldn’t happen,” says Deputy Chief Chris Nanos of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.

Now, specially-trained officers on the Mental Health Support Team of Tucson police and the sheriff’s department seek to provide that “alternative” with a more personable and proactive approach to dealing with people who may be mentally ill.

As a welcome side effect, those involved say the teams have contributed to changing the culture within their departments of policing to one with higher awareness of the community’s mental-health issues.

“Deputies on the ground see that mental health is a big issue out there,” Nanos said. Perhaps the most significant change, he said, is that those deputies and officers now know who to call for help when they encounter someone in crisis, and that call actually leads to finding help.

The sheriff’s department established its team in December 2012. Tucson police followed shortly after. Members of each agency’s teams receive special training in responding to and intervening in law enforcement situations involving people with mental illnesses.

So far, just a handful of officers and deputies have received the additional training, but the program is evolving.

They work with other agencies, the mental-health court and treatment providers in what is essentially a task force to address mentally ill people’s run-ins with the criminal justice system.

The main functions of the support teams include supporting regular patrol units as needed, serving mental health-related court orders and connecting people to resources, such as treatment. If the specially-trained officers are not available, patrol officers and deputies can also call in civilian behavioral-health specialists to immediately help deal with the incident they are working.

A vital part of the effort is the Crisis Response Center, which does not turn away anyone in crisis dropped off by law enforcement agencies.

The goal for the mental-health support teams, Nanos said, is “helping those in crisis and preventing another Jared Loughner.” Specifically, it means finding help for the mentally ill before something catastrophic happens, such as Loughner’s Jan. 8, 2011, mass shooting on the northwest side, and also reducing the number of people ending up in jail solely for having a mental-health crisis.

“Citizens made it clear that this is something we’re going to address,” said Detective James Wakeman of the police’s mental-health support team.

A PERSONABLE APPROACH

On a sunny Wednesday morning, two Tucson police officers with the mental-health support team are headed to a midtown apartment complex. They’re picking up a man who hasn’t shown up to his court-ordered treatment.

That’s just one of the tasks the team carries out on a daily basis. It’s part of an approach undertaken by law enforcement agencies to connect people to services and make sure they follow through.

Most cases come on a referral basis, Wakeman said. The team spends a lot of time identifying a potential crisis before it happens. For example, there are people with mental illness who have multiple run-ins with the police.

Members of the mental-health team may reach out to those people to talk, he said. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re in trouble. Sometimes, it’s just to let them know what kind of help is available out there, he added.

“We try to get to them before they get to jail,” said Officer Todd Schladweiler.

This isn’t the first time Schladweiler has encountered this particular man. “We know this guy,” he said. They’ve built a rapport over the months they’ve been dealing with him.

The officers try to be approachable and easy to talk to, he said. Schladweiler and his partner are dressed in plain clothes and speak calmly, not confrontationally.

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Oftentimes, the officers sit down with people they encounter — sometimes for hours — and allow them to smoke a cigarette, feed the cat or have a lawyer come over. When Schladweiler and his partner walk into the man’s apartment, they are in and out within 10 minutes with the man they’re picking up. No handcuffs, no struggle. From here, the man is taken to the Crisis Response Center on the south side.

“They know we’re not going to wrestle them or grab the gun,” Schladweiler said. The team’s goal is to have 100 percent compliance.

INTERVENTION VS. INCARCERATION

In 2012, there were 11 million people being admitted per week to jails across the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Of them, 17 percent had serious mental illness and 72 percent had co-occurring substance use disorder.

Often, jails end up being shelters to those who are having a crisis because of the lack of an alternative, Nanos of the sheriff’s department said.

What’s made that alternative possible is a place like the Crisis Response Center, said Sgt. Terry Staten of the sheriff’s department’s support team.

“It’s better to have somebody that’s in crisis go to the (Crisis Response Center) in lieu of the jail,” he said.

The center will take anyone in crisis who is brought in by law enforcement, even if just to point people in the right direction, he said.

The overrepresentation of the mentally ill in the local jail systems is “one of the greatest tragedies of our time,” said Margie Balfour, the chief clinical officer of the Crisis Response Center, which opened in August 2011.

The center is staffed with psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, social workers and peer-support mentors, she said. It is open around the clock.

Police officers are first responders who encounter a wide range of situations, and for them to have the competency to deal with people with mental illnesses is important, she said.

The center takes the burden of having to refer patients to other services from the police into their own hands, Balfour said. “We want to make it easy for them to do the right thing,” she said.

CHANGING CULTURE

Officer Matthew Golden, who was with Schladweiler when they picked up the man in midtown, is usually a patrol officer.

He signed up to be a back-up officer on the mental-health support team because he knows as a patrol officer he would inevitably run into situations where people with mental illness are involved. “The more experience we get, the better we get in dealing with these situations,” Golden said.

He took part in an advanced crisis-intervention training, which is voluntary.

New police and sheriff’s recruits are required to have mental health first-aid training, but the advanced training is generally reserved for officers who are interested in specializing in the field. More officers are choosing to take part in such training, members of the support team in both agencies said. For Wakeman, the Tucson police detective, the message he wants to convey to other officers is one of compassion, and “to be a person who happens to be a cop.”

“I’m Jim, not just Detective Wakeman,” he said. That quality is especially important for team members, who are required to have exceptional communication skills.

Law enforcement’s response to situations involving people with mental illness is far from perfect, but Wakeman said things are moving in the right direction.

“This is an ever-evolving unit,” he said. We’re always looking to find ways to make it better.”

The agencies take on these approaches in the hopes that they would stop the next mass shooter, but the truth is, he said, “We’ll never know when we do.”