An observation last week from the city’s police reform monitor is both spot on and dead wrong. That it comes from the paid agent overseeing the city’s reform efforts to prevent police from using excessive force, is problematic.
IntegrAssure’s recent report correctly points to the glaring fact that the mental health system in Aurora, and across the state and nation, is broken.
Everyone agrees on that. Federal officials. State lawmakers. Local governments. Mental health providers. Advocacy groups. Families desperate to find help for loved ones in crisis. The nation’s behavioral health system is overburdened, underfunded, fragmented and often inaccessible to those who need it most.
But there is a dangerous leap in logic between recognizing the failures of the mental health system and suggesting those failures explain why Aurora police continue to kill people suffering mental health crises.
The shortcomings of America’s mental health system are hardly a recent revelation. The problem predates Aurora’s police reform efforts by decades.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the nation began dismantling a vast network of state mental institutions. Those institutions often served as warehouses where people with severe mental illnesses were effectively locked away, frequently for years and under ghastly conditions. The shift away from mass institutionalization was driven by a variety of forces: the emergence of psychotropic medications, growing recognition of the cruelty of treating mental illness as a crime, and a national desire to reduce the enormous human and financial costs of mass confinement.
The change was humanely necessary, and it was progress.
But the promised network of community-based mental health services never materialized at the scale needed to replace what was lost. For half a century, governments at every level have struggled — and largely failed — to create a system capable of meeting the demand.
IntegrAssure is right to insist that local, state and federal leaders confront those failures. The report is hardly alone in urging policymakers to improve access to treatment, coordination of services, crisis intervention and long-term care.
Yet the assessment fails to adequately explain why Aurora police continue to shoot, injure and kill people suffering mental health crises. And the report certainly does not offer a valid excuse.
A stronger mental health system might reduce the number of encounters between people in crisis and police officers. It might divert some cases before they become emergencies, and it might save lives by making police-involved shootings a problem of better odds.
But it cannot explain away the central issue confronting Aurora. The best way to prevent Aurora police from shooting people suffering a mental health crisis is for Aurora police to find a way to stop shooting people suffering a mental health crisis. Suggesting otherwise is akin to police recommending that pedestrians stay off Aurora streets if they want to avoid being killed in auto-pedestrian crashes.
The problem is not that people suffering from a mental crisis exist and venture into the public. The problem is how systems respond when they do.
Police responding to so-called psych calls is not unique to Aurora. Officers across Colorado and the nation routinely answer calls involving people in mental distress, whether armed or unarmed, compliant or combative.
What is unique is Aurora’s history.
When Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser imposed the consent decree that still guides reform efforts today, he did not cite a failed mental health system as the root cause or a community that included too many people of color. He cited Aurora Police Department “patterns and practices” that led to unacceptable levels of excessive force against members of the public, and especially people of color.
That distinction is critical and cannot be discarded or ignored.
Aurora has invested heavily in crisis-response programs. It has expanded clinician partnerships. It has worked to improve training and procedures. Those efforts matter, but they clearly aren’t enough.
Residents should reject any narrative suggesting that responsibility for fatal police encounters rests primarily with hospitals, therapists, families or a behavioral health system stretched beyond capacity.
Insisting that people “hide their crazy” or risk being shot dead is ludicrous and unacceptable.
Responsibility rests first with the agency pulling the trigger.
Yes, city leaders, police officials, community advocates and lawmakers should aggressively pursue better mental healthcare, especially for poor and financially struggling residents who face the greatest barriers to treatment.
At the same time, everyone must insist that Aurora police must continue working until responding to a mental-health crisis no longer carries an unacceptable risk that someone in crisis leaves the scene dead.
Same silly lack of any type of objective examination of the problem. Although the Attorney General’s report and analysis was wrong, there still exists a sensible approach to the problem. Having committees that are composed of people with no knowledge of police work who will address the problem is silly. Believing that an academic monitor with no practical knowledge of police work will solve the problem is also silly. Listening only to those within the system who will not be honest is also silly. It takes an honest effort with objective people who will listen to all arguments. That doesn’t happen within the City. Everything is weighted so that you never hear objective and professional opinions. It isn’t complicated. First, chiefs are generally well spoken politicians who paid attention to their own advancement and not to the nuts and bolts of how to do the job better. So, in general, we always have the same problem. The people who care the least about the actual job and who know the least, make the decisions. A Scythian proverb said “Wise men argue causes….fools decide them”. APD is woefully lacking in practical tactical training and the use of all available tools to reduce the need to shoot. The officers have no hands on skills and must resort to shooting. APD has neglected the regular practical training necessary to foster an expectation of what level of force is expected to be attempted before shooting. It isn’t enough to have some less lethal tools if you don’t realize that they will fail. You must understand that there are more tools available other than the few that APD trots out. You have to work at limiting the person’s ability to get close enough to you to present a threat that requires you to shoot. Proper use of positioning, barriers, shields, capture poles, less lethal munitions, and more will do much to limit the shootings. It requires that the people in charge seek out better answers and dedicate the department to proper, adequate, consistent and regular training. The token training and nice written policies are not enough to reduce the shootings. It isn’t racial bias. It is a sad example of police and city politicians dancing around with nice talk and no practical approach. It takes work and a consistent effort to develop the knowledge and skill down at the Sergeant and officer level. Without developing that open and inquisitive approach, you simply reinvent the wheels or go with silly academic approaches to a practical problem. Poorly trained officers become poorly trained sergeants who become poorly trained police administrators who make all the decisions.
I realize that what I know will have little bearing and will be ignored. It is sort of like our politics. The system is designed to ignore the rest of us and goes with small power bases. So, don’t expect APD to come up with any real changes.
There is an unwritten rule in all civilized societies: You have a right to freely live your life unless you threaten to deprive another of their same right. And unlike the Aurora Editorial Board who penned this editorial while sitting safely behind their desks, I understand that if I were to ever assault an Aurora police officer and endanger their life, they are welcome to use deadly force to stop me whether it is due to a “mental health crisis” or not. It is long past time we stop devaluing our law enforcement and expecting them to take undue risks with their lives because “it is their job.” Their lives must have at least as much worth, if not more, than the average citizen.
I see a few problems with this and I’m not qualified to weigh in. When an officer rolls up on someone having a mental crisis, how do they determine the crisis let alone the identity of the individual? APD may not know the individual, especially if they’re visiting from out of town. Will HIPPA even allow the mental illness to be disclosed? There would need to be national guidelines, so get after your congress persons.
Shoot first, ask questions later.
Myself, I don’t pay the police to kill obviously disturbed people. Call me crazy.
I have spent years listening to bogus “threats” claimed to justify murdering my fellow citizens when there is no rational reason justifying lethal actions.
We have long been a bloodthirsty society that is quick to sanction murder for little to no reason. But stopping to understand how such situations arise never seems to be considered relevant to state murder.
I suggest that anyone who cares about the truth of many of to view the video of the killing of Laquan McDonald in Chicago. What is sad is that so many “right thinking” Americans think this is the way to eliminate inconvenient, and complicated, citizens.
“MUH FELLOW CITIZENS A BLOO BLOO BLOOO!”
Yeah, but you hate white people, Jeff, so you don’t actually believe this.
“Aurora has invested heavily in crisis-response programs. It has expanded clinician partnerships. It has worked to improve training and procedures. Those efforts matter, but they clearly aren’t enough.”
Ah, the typical leftist canard–“If it isn’t 100% effective, it’s a failure! We need mo’ money fo dem programs to make it 100% effective!”
If this is a problem unique to Aurora, it sounds like the problem lies with the massively dysfunctional population of the northern side of the city in particular, not the police department that has the unfortunate responsibility to deal with them every time someone has a “mental health crisis” which is more like a drug-related crashout.