Global Crisis

When three Virginia police officers put Linwood Lambert in a squad car around 5 a.m. on May 4, 2013, they said they were taking him to the ER for medical attention because he was speaking delusionally. Just over an hour later, Lambert died in police custody.

He was never given medical care, though the officers of South Boston, Va. did drive him to the hospital. He was not initially put under arrest, though the officers ultimately arrested him, shackled his hands and legs, and tased him repeatedly. While in custody he was agitated and ran from the officers. Ambulance workers say police later claimed he fought them at a time when videos show he was actually unconscious. Police dispute that account and deny allegations of excessive force.

White of Eagle was trying to get back home from a conference on technical advancements to assist the blind. He arrived at the Greyhound station downtown to learn the bus he wanted to get on was full. He says the employee told White he could stay at the station and wait.

Then a security guard told White he was trespassing and called police. The security guard did not tell White the police were on the way. When Officer Kyllion Chafin arrived on scene White asked to see his badge.
"He says how are you going to look at my badge if you're blind?" explained White. "I said I just want to touch your badge. He said you're not touching me."
That's when the incident escalated. Chafin pulled White's arms behind his back and threw him onto the counter, hitting and causing bleeding to White's head.
...
After putting the man in cuffs, Chafin's supervisor Sergeant Robery Wyckoff began to record an interview with White without reading him his Miranda rights.
...
Wyckoff was promoted to Lieutenant last year.

The Denver Police Department did not respond to specific questions but did send the following statement:
"We believe in the judicial process and respect the jury's decision. The Department of Safety and the Denver Office of the Independent Monitor took part in reviewing the incident, and the Denver Police Department found that the officers' actions fell within department policies. We are always looking for ways to improve."

1. Lack of compliance, on its own, absent other threat indicators, must not be used to justify force. 
2. Officers who violate principle #1 must be held accountable for their actions by law enforcement itself. If such actions do not violate department policies, change your policies.

1. How Not to Kill Someone in Mental Health Crisis. This is a video, from the UK, of a person with a machete not being killed by London police. It's instructive and important.
2. Disability, Trauma, and the Assault at Spring Valley High - If 25% of all American children have experienced trauma, it means we have to rethink fundamental systems in our schools.
3. Peter Singer's Tells - A controversial philosopher who argues that the correct ethical decision in the case of disability is euthanasia/abortion, reveals that he doesn't think those positions should be such a big deal. To him, they're old news.
4. Adventures in Universal Design: Handwriting Notes and Take-Home Tests - My approach to universal design for learning. We're learning the wrong thing from the research on handwriting.

In 2005 (the wheels of justice can grind exceedingly slowly) the police in Cambridge, Md., acted on a tip and found a small amount of marijuana residue in a trash can. At 4:30 a.m. on May 6, a SWAT team executed a search warrant on the apartment of Andrew Cornish. A jury would later find the commandos failed to knock and announce themselves properly. As they rushed through the apartment, Cornish came out of the bedroom with a sheathed knife in his hand. The police say he advanced on them. One of the officers shot Cornish twice in the head, killing him.

Elapsed time: about 30 seconds.

Cornish’s father sued, claiming the police used excessive force and violated Cornish’s constitutional rights. The first point was quickly dispatched with. (Lesson: Never bring a knife to a gunfight.) But as Balko points out in his Washington Post blog, on the second point the courts agreed. Not only that, “both the trial court and the appeals court that ruled against Cornish’s father acknowledge both that the police violated the knock-and-announce rule, and that they lied about doing so.”

Yet two out of three judges on the 4th Circuit panel (both George W. Bush appointees) decided nevertheless that Cornish bore all the blame for his own death. Other courts have reached similar conclusions in similar cases, you see — so that must make it OK: The police can break into your home unlawfully and shoot you dead, and nobody is at fault for that except you. Not only that, according to the court majority “no reasonable jury could have found that the Officers’ knock-and-anounce violation proximately caused Cornish’s death.”

That is irrefutable, in the same way the no-true-Scotsman fallacy is irrefutable. If I say to you, “No Scotsman would shave his beard,” you can show me countless cleanshaven Scotsmen. Rather than concede I was wrong, I can say, “Well, no trueScotsman shaves his beard!” The revision renders all your counterexamples irrelevant by definition. So while it’s easy to imagine plenty of juries that might blame the police for Cornish’s death, the court can simply write them all off by contending no reasonable jury would.

The courts, including the Supreme Court, have granted wide latitude to police officers, partly because — they say — officers who exceed the scope of their authority can be held responsible through lawsuits.

Whether Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires law enforcement officers to provide accommodations to an armed, violent, and mentally ill suspect in the course of bringing the suspect into custody; and

Whether it was clearly established that even where an exception to the warrant requirement applied, an entry into a residence could be unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment by reason of the anticipated resistance of an armed and violent suspect within.

1. Affirm or severely limit the protections of the ADA for people with disabilities as they apply to policing.
2. More clearly define the limits of qualified immunity (the Fourth Amendment issue).
3. Carve out a narrow ruling that sends the case back to the Ninth Circuit and doesn't establish wide precedent either way.

The United States’ ADA argument asks the Court walk a line between the Petitioners’ and Respondent’s arguments. Title II requires officers to provide reasonable accommodations during the arrest of mentally disabled individuals. Yet, if objective evidence causes concerns about public or police safety, then it might not be reasonable for police to provide accommodations (i.e., delay immediate entry to arrest). In those situations, safety can outweigh accommodations. And despite the importance of safety, the United States refused to make the safety exception ironclad, arguing that a plaintiff “should remain free to show that special circumstances rendered a modification reasonable.” (U.S. Amicus Br. 7.) For this case, the United States asked the Court to pass on rendering judgment on the reasonableness of the officers’ actions by instead remanding the case to the Ninth Circuit to determine whether Respondent, who would bear the burden of proof establishing that “special circumstances” were present, was owed reasonable modification despite the safety risks she posed.

Hill and his parents. Used by permission of the picture's owner.

Yesterday, in DeKalb, GA, a police officer responded to a call about a naked, unarmed, man at an

apartment complex. He was clearly in a mental health crisis. He ran at the officer and the officer killed him.

DeKalb officers receive some training in dealing with the mentally ill while in the academy before they join the force, Alexander said, but on Monday he said perhaps the training needed to be bolstered.
“That is becoming more and more apparent,” he said.

According to Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who specializes in police regulation, there are two ways to look at use-of-force incidents. One position advocates for a narrow time frame in which we only examine the moment in which the trigger was pulled. The other argues for a broad time frame, in which the whole chain of decisions leading up to the moment of force is part of the assessment.

In fact, Stoughton notes that the Supreme Court may well rule on this matter in Sheehan vs San Francisco, a case also involving police violence and mental illness. On March 23, the court will hear whether San Francisco police should have considered Teresa Sheehan's disability before entering her room, and whether their failure to accommodate her disability violates the Fourth Amendment. Sheehan was shot, but survived, and is trying to keep her lawsuit from being thrown out. As with most Supreme Court cases, the decision will likely have broad implications.

In late January, Kristiana Coignard, a seventeen-year-old woman with bipolar disorder and depression, walked into the police department in Longwood, Texas, with "I have a gun" written on her hand. She also had a knife in her waistband. Officer Glenn Derr approached her, read her message, and quickly restrained her. He then let her go, restrained her on the floor, then let her go again as two other officers entered the scene.

On the surveillance video that the department released, you can see the moment in which Coignard decides to die. She raises her knife and charged at Derr, who shoots, as does one of the other officers. The third officer deploys a TASER, but by then it was too late. She lies on the floor for a few minutes until emergency medical services arrive.

When police misread the circumstances of encounter with an individual with mental health crisis, the possibility for violence rapidly escalates. The only solution is for law enforcement to try to stabilize every encounter, to the extent possible, as if it involved psychiatric disability.

According to Burke, someone from Read's mental health provider, Bridgeway Rehabilitation Services, had called 911 after Read's landlord reported receiving a threatening letter with photos. Burke did not immediately have information on the contents of the letter.
Officials said that when police arrived at the home Read refused to leave his first floor apartment and was holding a knife.
"Police were able to enter the home and confront the individual. Mr. Read refused to comply with police orders to drop the knife, advanced at the officers and was subsequently shot,"officials said in a press release today.

Rosser lived with her boyfriend, Victor Stephens. The night of her death, Stephens called 911 and asked police to “come and get her," according to a memo released by the prosecutor's office. He said he had locked himself in a room and that “she jumped on [him].” He also said he might need an ambulance for his hand.

When Ried and his partner Mark Raab arrived at Stephens’ home, they heard a woman say she had a knife and a man respond, “What are [you] gonna do, stab me?” according to the memo. They then heard a loud thump and entered the home through the front door to find Rosser and Stephens struggling. Rosser was attempting to attack Stephens with a knife while he fended her off, the document states.

When officers ordered her to drop the weapon, she turned on them and advanced, they said, with “her eyes wide open with what appeared to be a blank stare.” Raab used a Taser on Rosser at the same time Ried fatally shot her once in the chest.

“The fact that Officer Raab chose to draw his Taser does not make Officer Ried’s decision to draw his sidearm a criminal act,” the memo states. “The law of self-defense does not require that the least harmful means be employed before a more harmful level of force may be lawfully used.”

LEBANON COUNTY
March 14, 2012: Samuel Snyder, 57, was fatally shot by police at the end of a 14-hour stand-off that began when state troopers appeared at his North Annville Township home to involuntarily commit him for mental health treatment. Police said one officer was wounded and that Snyder fired 40 to 60 bullets during the standoff.

A mental evaluation has been ordered for a 46-year-old Shelby Township man accused of holding police at bay in his home for more than two hours last November.

Bobby Jo Grimes will undergo an evaluation to determine whether he is fit to face charges of attempted murder, felon in possession of a firearm, felony firearm and resisting arrest for the Nov. 11 incident near Ryan and Auburn roads. The exam was approved last week by Judge Douglas Shepherd of 41A District Court in Shelby Township.

• Brian Sterner thrown from his wheelchair by an officer who thought he might be faking (I write about this as the "pencil test" for wheelchair users).
• Dwight Harris thrown from his chair in DC in 2011. He was allegedly intoxicated and not complying.
• Indiana police officer knocks Nicholas Kincade from his wheelchair for bumping into an officer.
• Here's an Oakland school security officer beating and throwing a student from his chair. He was arrested and fired [Note - Not technically "police" but school culture, I argue, is part of the broader cult of compliance. If you are new to the blog, start here for that concept].

A defense lawyer characterized him as an unstable suspect who was "unpredictably and dangerously close to a defenseless officer while he was wielding two knives."
"I'm looking forward ... to the DA's office presenting one single witness that says this is murder," said Sam Bregman, a lawyer for Sandy.

• They killed Ethan Saylor by forcing him to the ground, fracturing his trachea.
• They killed him because they couldn't figure out how to deal with a large, cursing, man with Down syndrome.
• They killed him because no one in the theater, some of whom recognized that Ethan had Down syndrome, volunteered to buy him a ticket.
• They killed him because he didn't fit their idea of people with Down syndrome as cute little kids and they didn't know what to do with a man, cursing at them, not complying.
• They killed him because they couldn't wait for his mother to arrive, although she was on the way, and Ethan's aide told them this. But non-compliance, for many officers, requires the use of force. So they used force, and he died.

"Grigsby then allegedly made an aggressive move towards the officer while carrying a metal object. The officer said he ordered Grigsby to stop but he continued to approach, forcing the officer to fire a shot into Grigsby's chest."

"He was real sweet. He would never hurt anybody. He had a mental illness," said Evelyn Grigsby, Dennis Grigsby's Mother.
She was asleep inside their home when the shooting happened and she says she didn't know her son had left home.

In cases like these, we need to stop talking about mental illness and start thinking through the implications of psychiatric disabilities. We also need police whose first instinct is to de-escalate tense situations whenever and however possible, and, when necessary, solve confrontations with the absolute minimum amount of force.

"Psychiatric disability" refers to mental illness that "significantly interferes with the performance of major life activities," a category that clearly applies to people whose "erratic behavior" got them killed by police.

The distinction matters. In America, being disabled comes with certain civil rights protections. While we generally try to eradicate illness, we are required to accommodate disability. So how does a police officer accommodate someone behaving erratically and holding a knife?

Officers were called to the home after a family member reported that Anderson was disturbing the peace.
Patrolmen had lengthy discussions with Tanesha Anderson and members of her family. Everyone agreed she should undergo an evaluation at St. Vincent Charity Medical Center, police said.

As the officers escorted Anderson to the police vehicle, she began actively resisting the officers," police spokesman Sgt. Ali Pillow said in a press release.
Officers placed her in handcuffs and she began to resist officers' attempts to put her in a squad car, Pillow said.
"The woman began to kick at officers," he said. "A short time later the woman stopped struggling and appeared to go limp. Officers found a faint pulse on the victim and immediately called EMS."

Two male officers escorted Tanesha Anderson, who was prescribed medication for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, to the police cruiser. She sat herself in the backseat but became nervous about the confined space and tried to get out, Anderson said.
Police struggled to keep her in the car and an officer eventually drew a Taser. Joell Anderson said he begged the officer not to use the weapon on his sister.
Tanesha Anderson called out for her brother and mother while an officer repeatedly pressed down on her head to get her into the backseat. After several attempts, the officer used a takedown move to force her to the pavement, Joell Anderson said.
The officer placed his knee on Tanesha Anderson's back and handcuffed her. She never opened her eyes or spoke another word, her brother said.

ACLU releases graphic video of 2012 police shooting of mentally-ill black man in Michigan. More than 45 shots http://t.co/rNYQN2HHZM
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) October 27, 2014

Milton Hall stole coffee & refused to drop knife. officers fired 47 shots, 11 hit. All cleared by local PD & feds http://t.co/hxIRQX2gfb
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) October 27, 2014

Genuine question: when officers encounter someone armed but w/history of mental illness, what would be the ideal protocol?
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) October 27, 2014

The stories follow a similar pattern. The victim had a weapon and did not respond to police commands to drop it, and so they died. Of course, a person struggling with his or her disability is not likely to follow verbal police commands in a moment of stress. Once the equation reached drop or die, death was inevitable.

The only solution is for the police to avoid getting into that situation if at all possible. Unfortunately, this runs directly against police training. Police are trained to display command presence in the face of uncertainly, seizing control of a situation by issuing orders, demanding compliance and using force on those who won't obey. Protect and serve has become command and control.

There are other models. Seattle police now teach their recruits to be "guardians." Others emphasize patience. When Cusseaux frustrated the police by opening and closing the door repeatedly, why not just wait her out? Moreover, where were the Tasers? Taser-overuse is a major problem, but if they have a place in modern policing, surely it's when confronted by an armed psychiatrically disabled person at close range.

In cases like these, we need to stop talking about mental illness and start thinking through the implications of psychiatric disabilities. We also need police whose first instinct is to de-escalate tense situations whenever and however possible, and, when necessary, solve confrontations with the absolute minimum amount of force.

"Psychiatric disability" refers to mental illness that "significantly interferes with the performance of major life activities," a category that clearly applies to people whose "erratic behavior" got them killed by police.

The distinction matters. In America, being disabled comes with certain civil rights protections. While we generally try to eradicate illness, we are required to accommodate disability. So how does a police officer accommodate someone behaving erratically and holding a knife?

Often it starts with a call for help. A family member, a caretaker or even a stranger dials 911 seeking paramedics to treat someone in a psychiatric crisis. But when there’s a threat of violence, the first responders are usually police, and what started as a call for help can quickly turn deadly for a person with a treatable illness.

A series of escalations led Chang to barricade himself inside the house. The Daly City SWAT team arrived with assault rifles and an armored car.

According to the DA review, police were worried Chang might find a .22-caliber rifle and ammunition hidden separately in the house. The SWAT team held their assault rifles trained on the house and took cover behind the armored car.

Here’s the question before the court: If police know they are dealing with a person with mental illness, and they use confrontational tactics that can agitate the person, are they violating the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Hernandez, 35, fired his service weapon, killing Miller, because he perceived a threat, a sheriff's office spokesman said.
The sheriff's office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are investigating the shooting, and would not release further details.
Miller's 25-year-old son witnessed his father's death. He told the Ledger that his dad, who only had two percent of his hearing, was further impaired because his hearing aid was broken at the time. He denies that his father was a threat.
“I kept telling them that he can't hear them,” the 25-year-old, who's also named Edward Miller, told the Ledger. “I kept telling them he can't understand them.”
The son told the Daytona Beach News-Journal that Hernandez shot his father six times while his dad sat inside a vehicle in the tow yard.

Attention was swiftly drawn online to Hunt’s remarkable resemblance as he walked around on the morning of 10 September to Mugen, a swordsman character in the short-lived Japanese anime series Samurai Champloo. The Comic Con convention had also taken place in Salt Lake City, about 35 miles to the north, the weekend before the shooting.

Hunt’s aunt, Cindy Moss, previously told the Guardian that a witness to the confrontation with police had told the family that Hunt “had his earbuds in, and was kind of doing spins and stuff, like pretending he’s a samurai”.