Suicide by cop

Barron Harvey Davis had bipolar disorder and had taken more than 20 pills before he started shooting at a police officer.

Davis told family members over the phone that he wanted officers to kill him.

After he was tasered and taken to jail Davis continually pounded his head against a brick wall and had to be restrained. Davis later died in his jail cell.

A friend of Davis’ said his death could have been avoided if he was given proper care.

“I told them you need to do something to help him,” Graham said, explaining she told officers at the scene he had taken too many medications and was overdosing.

“We knew if they would have gotten him to a psychiatric care unit somewhere this probably would not have happened,” she said. “Who knows him better than we do?”

There’s little question Davis should have been getting care and treatment before he shot at officers and asked to be killed by police officers. Whether officers acted appropriately in this situation is up for debate, but the mental health community almost certainly didn’t.

Unlucky 7

Justin Quintana claimed he was God. He called police officers to saying he should be treated like the President and wanted 24-hour protection. He threatened his mother, and police had been called to Quintana’s house six times in a little more than a year. His mother – Susan Kuchma- was a state police officer, but there was nothing she could do to get treatment for her son’s paranoid schizophrenia. He didn’t chose treatment and wasn’t deemed dangerous.

One of Kuchma's family members said Friday that the officer loved her son and took great pains to document his behavior with the goal of getting him help. But her efforts were often frustrated.

"It's a lot of red tape," said Kuchma's niece and Quintana's cousin, Tenika Susana Sosa-Quintana, 28, of Mesquite. "...we all have civil liberties and Justin is an adult and Justin has not been deemed incompetent by any court.

"The whole thing comes down to whether or not a person is construed to be dangerous to themselves and/or others," said Ron Gurley, a local advocate for the mentally ill. "Well, that is in the eyes of the beholder. But locally here there seems to be a strict adherence to dangerousness being something where you have to almost present the fact that you are going to hurt somebody or hurt yourself."

Last Thursday, the seventh time police were called to Quintana’s home, officers found Kuchma dead from a gun shot wound. Maybe now that Quintana is charged with murdering his mother he’ll get treatment.

Where was the mental health community?

Trinidad Ornelas was fatally shot by police officers in Orange County on Sunday after his mother called 911 because he was choking her.

Neighbor Victoria Hernandez said

…family members told her that Ornelas sometimes didn't take his medications [for schizophrenia] which led to outbursts. The mother had called the police in the past to calm her son down.

Hernandez says police have been to the Ornelas house before, “They should have known.”

An attorney for the family – Thomas Beck says, “The officers who responded Sunday were "just brand new to the circumstances.”

The real question should not be whether the officers who responded to the 911 call on Sunday were the same ones who frequently responded to calls to calm Ornelas.

No – the real question should be – where was the mental health community?

What assisted outpatient treatment can... and can't... do

Last Saturday, Lee Coleman evaded his family’s attempts to have him hospitalized and went on a rampage – stabbing two people with knives he stole from a Manhattan restaurant before being shot by an off-duty police officer who had just paid his check.

It is the type of gripping tragedy that leads to unfortunate, big-lettered headlines in a city’s papers, such as PSYCHO STABBER from the New York Post, as well as editorial pleas with titles like Stop The Insanity On The Streets. And when the general community peers into the most often ignored world of severe mental illnesses, the possibility of reform emerges. On Monday, Governor Eliot Spitzer expressed his support for creating a panel tasked with investigating how to treat the most severely ill and thereby protect the public from those in that group whose symptoms would otherwise escalate to violence. New York is home to Kendra’s Law, the best-known and most thoroughly documented assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) law in the United States. Yet despite the availability and success of Kendra’s Law, tragedies intertwined with non-treatment continue in New York. Does that mean Kendra’s Law has failed? Hardly.

Kendra’s Law neither is nor is purported to be a cure-all.

For starters, an AOT program cannot help someone who is not in it. As is appropriate with any form of court-ordered treatment, the eligibility standard for Kendra’s Law is targeted at those incapable of managing and maintaining their own care. And even if Coleman was eligible at some point, the Kendra’s Law program is not tasked with searching out those who are sick and need AOT.

AOT is also not a mechanism designed for times of extreme crisis. The law has no mechanism for immediate intervention other than for those already under AOT orders.

The purpose of Kendra’s Law is to give intensive and sustained outpatient treatment to those that courts order into the program, treatment designed to help some of those most overcome by severe mental illnesses stay out of the hospital, off the streets and away from jail. It does that exceptionally well.

Failure in the case of Lee Coleman can be pinned to New York’s still-restrictive standard for emergency intervention and inpatient hospitalization, which requires immediate and demonstrable physical danger. Coleman’s uncle pled with police for help after his nephew frantically fled attempts for treatment and disappeared. The police told him they were powerless because “there was no history of violence.”

CIT: It shouldn't be the only tool

Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) is an excellent tool for law enforcement officers who will inevitably encounter a person with a mental illness who is in crisis. The training helps officers to de-escalate situations that may otherwise turn deadly.

CIT is a very important tool, but it shouldn’t be the only one.

Law enforcement officers in Buchanan County, Missouri will be receiving CIT “in light of dwindling funding for mental health programs and increased demand for such programs”

Police Sergeant Matt Rock, a CIT supervisor in Buchanan County said:

“The response for CIT officers will range from a call of a mentally-ill person caught shoplifting to an emotionally-distressed subject threatening to jump off a bridge. The officers will facilitate emergency mental health assessments at the scene of a crisis."

Is it too much to ask to have police officers enforce the law and mental health professionals provide mental health evaluations?

Killing yourself with a cop's gun

Weak treatment laws often require a person to be a danger to themselves or others before getting involuntary treatment. As we often lament on this blog, this keeps the mental health community from intervening because the person is not yet dangerous, and forces law enforcement to become involved when a person finally deteriorates to that condition.

Occasionally, these encounters with law enforcement become “suicide by cop.”

According to family members, that was the case on Monday when Guy Ray III held four women hostage in a Louisville, Kentucky bank. After releasing the hostages, Ray emerged from the bank waving what turned out to be an air rifle at officers. Ray died of multiple gunshot wounds.

According to his sister Ray had been on and off medication for his mental illness that he had struggled with most of his life.

Guy Ray III left police no choice but to shoot him when he came out of a bank Monday and threatened them with a firearm.

“[He] was there to make it happen. He had a goal. He was going to force them to shoot him."

A sad weekend in California

Families and police officers are two of the groups most at risk for being on the receiving end of violence by those with untreated mental illnesses

In Salinas, John Vierra, a 44-year-old man with schizophrenia fatally stabbed his mother, Maria James. Vierra had stopped taking his medication last spring.

In San Diego, Alan Kosakoff is in critical condition after he was shot by two police officers. Kosakoff, who has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, attempted to run over the two officers when they tried to arrest him for driving 114 mph. Kasakoff had not been taking his psychiatric medication.

Today, one California man faces time in prison; the other, if he survives, will also likely face the criminal justice system. Both men were not taking their prescribed medications for severe mental illnesses.

Yet most California counties still haven’t implemented Laura’s Law – a way to get court-ordered outpatient treatment for people with severe mental illnesses. Access to treatment, and to programs such as Assistant Outpatient Treatment, maintain treatment compliance, an important step in helping prevent such tragedies from occurring in the future

Perhaps it’s time to help people in California with severe mental illnesses get treatment, because without it, there are certain to be more sad weekends.

A sad day...

Believing microwaves were aimed at his brain and that aliens were using wires and television to tap into his brain wasn’t enough to get Farron Barksdale treatment. But when he killed two police officers he thought were aliens, it was enough to get him a prison sentence of life without parole. It turns out it was a short sentence; Farron Barksdale died today.

Today is a sad day for the family of Farron Barksdale. It’s also a sorry reflection on our mental healthcare system and treatment laws. How long will we keep neglecting those who need treatment?

Death sentence in Alabama

"Farron Barksdale will die in an Alabama prison," said the prosecutor when Barksdale was last week sentenced to life without parole.

Doubtful she knew how soon those words might come true.

Today Farron Barksdale is on life support. [UPDATE: Barksdale has since died.]

Prison is a notoriously terrible place for those with severe mental illnesses - and whether something happened to Barksdale during intake, as some reports indicate, or whether he succumbed to record-breaking heat in a facility with no air conditioning, the fact remains that Barksdale walked through the door of Kilby Correctional Facility and will come out in a hearse, whether it is this week or 50 years from now.

Barksdale, who has schizophrenia, had called 911 for help - when two officers pulled up in his mother's driveway, he brutally shot and killed them with a high-powered rifle. Records and Barksdale's attorneys indicate Barksdale believed microwaves were being aimed at his brain - in fact, he tore the cable out of his mother's home because of his belief "they" were using the wires and television to tap into his brain. At the request of Barksdale's mother, a probate judge had committed Barksdale to mental institutions five times previously. Yet he was off medication when the murders occurred.

Three people died because one man was not getting treatment.

Nice job, Alabama.

Canadian police praise treatment act

Police officers in Nova Scotia praise the passage of the Involuntary Treatment Act in Canada:

Halifax police Supt. Bill Moore said the new law is useful, particularly since his officers come in contact with people with mental health problems on almost every shift.

"We have to understand a lot of people with mental illness are not going to voluntarily come to the system, so this is the system going back out to them," he said. "So from that point of view, I think it is a step in the right direction."