News reports in early 2011 exposed issues found by probe

While Mayor Sam Adams looks for money to meet crisis intervention requirements outlined last week in a U.S. Justice Department report, a news report by the Portland Tribune more than a year ago brought to light the same problems highlighted by federal investigators.

The city has until Oct. 12 to come up with an acceptable plan for dealing with Portland police officers’ use of force against people with mental illnesses. Tribune news stories in January 2011 ('Experts say police training flawed') and in 2008 ('Crisis training takes some cues from Memphis'), uncovered the same flaws found in the federal report presented to city officials Sept. 13.

Adams says the city’s plan to deal with the use-of-force issue will include showing that money will be available for the changes.

“They know we face fiscal realities, but they need to see a path to implementation, even if it doesn’t happen by Oct. 13,” Adams says.

The Justice Department critique should not have come as a surprise. A crisis training expert brought in as a consultant to help Portland police develop its own program said in the Tribune’s January 2011 story that he believed the program used in Portland was a far cry from the one he helped the police bureau implement in the 1990s.

In addition, the Tribune’s 2011 story included a statement from Portland Police Chief Mike Reese that he had assigned staff to look at how crisis training was implemented in other cities and expected an immediate report.

More than a year and a half later, the Justice Department investigation says those same problems exist, and they are greatly responsible for the fact that the “Portland Police Bureau is engaged in a pattern or practice of unnecessary or unreasonable force during interactions with people who have or are perceived to have mental illness.”

The Justice Department report says Portland police are too quick to use Tasers on people suffering mental illness. It notes that the city has paid about $6 million during the past 20 years to settle lawsuits related to alleged police misconduct.

Interviews with police officers during the federal investigation found that some had little awareness of how to calm explosive situations. Some did not even know that handcuffing a suicidal person when transporting them to a crisis center could escalate their agitation.

And essential cooperation and trust among police and mental health patients and their families, according to the report, has eroded.

Crisis training

Much of what appears in the new Justice Department report reiterates what appeared in the Tribune’s story. In that story, Sam Cochran, who coordinated the Crisis Intervention Team program in Memphis, widely considered the national model, said Portland had forsaken one of the critical elements of crisis training — recognizing that not all officers are equally suited to dealing with mental health calls.

After homeless psychiatric patient James Chasse Jr. died while in police custody in September 2006, the city decided that all its police officers would receive crisis training. Cochran, who consulted with Portland police when crisis training was originally set up here, said that process does not pose a problem.

But in choosing to train all officers in dealing with the mentally ill, Portland moved away from the model of having an elite squad of officers with the experience and attitude for the often tense and nuanced situations.

Cochran said not all police officers have the psychological makeup to deal with the mentally ill, and the new Justice Department report echoes that sentiment.

Cochran noted more than a year ago that Portland was training its officers in crisis intervention right out of the police academy. In his opinion, officers new to policing don’t have the experience to benefit from training based on dealing with people suffering mental illness. The training, he said, does not significantly impact the attitudes of new officers, who tend to be intent on apprehending criminals.

The 2011 Tribune story included an interview with a psychiatric social worker who had helped set up the original crisis training program in Portland and who said the goal of bridging the gap between police and mental health patients had initially been achieved. That goal was lost with the decision to not single out officers who are best at defusing crises, she said. In addition, the Tribune story noted that in other cities it was deemed critical that regular crisis intervention training of police take place because de-escalation skills diminished.

Making headway

Adams, in response to the Justice Department report, says the poor state of the local community mental health system, which has placed an increased burden on police to deal with the mentally ill, was a key reason he did not cut police positions in his most recent city budget. But simply retaining current staffing won’t come close to meeting the standard being set by the Justice Department if the city wants to avoid a potential Justice Department lawsuit, according to Reese and Adams.

The Justice Department report lists as its first remedial measure that Portland police put together a “specialized unit of crisis intervention officers who are selected based on their temperament, experience and desire to interact with individuals with mental illness or in mental health crisis.”

That, says Reese, will require more city money. Adams and Reese say police already are making headway on some fronts. Reese says new de-escalation training for all officers has been taking place. Adams says he will increase specialized staffing so that 9-1-1 dispatchers can identify mental health calls and refer them to mental health professionals rather than police, when appropriate.

Yet Reese says the police bureau is sticking with its model of training all officers in crisis intervention and not selecting a special squad for dealing with mental health calls. Instead, Reese says, the city’s preferred alternative is to increase the use of Project Respond, which pairs police officers with mental health professionals who can be sent on crisis calls. Mayor Adams says he is committed to expanding the mobile crisis units so they are available at all times.

But the federal Justice Department report makes clear that Project Respond as it is configured has nowhere near enough staff to handle the huge number of mental health crisis calls besieging police.

Reese says the bureau might need 16 new police officers and 16 Project Respond staffers to make the mobile crisis units work.

“It’s one of the challenges City Council is going to have with the Justice Department reporting,” Reese said. “How do you find funding to do what people would actually like to do?”

Adams says the city requested the Justice Department investigation before the Tribune’s 2011 story. He says that models for police crisis training that work in other cities won’t necessarily be the best models for Portland because a set of unique issues here includes “a financially starved community mental health system.”

Money to staff ‘round-the-clock Project Respond teams also is part of the fund search, Adams says.

“I haven’t found it yet,” he says, “but I’m working on it.”