Police and mental health crises

How are cops trained to deal with mental health crises? Do they receive training?

If social workers or counsellors were called instead of police right off the bat do you think that would be a good/bad/the same?

I ask because I came across this;

California man dies after police kneel on neck for 5 minutes, family say

I have no desire make this about race and I would ask the mods to help, if possible to steer this conversation away from that.

It is time to have a frank conversation about police and mental health and perhaps consider having some actual experts solving the problem instead of folks just forcing compliance because you ignored training or didn't receive adequate training

And please, I'm begging you, don't say " police see the worst in people". Bah. Talk to nurses; talk to psych nurses, paramedics, counsellors. ALL of these people deal with folks in mental distress but they are NOT permitted to use violence or pain. They are able to get the job done.

Your thoughts?

Geez. All these people so PASSIONATE about not defunding the police last summer sure for quiet..

ThatRobGuy said:

On this particular part, I think the line is a bit blurred.

Obviously it's not a rationalization for police over-using force (which the video certainly seems that they did in this occasion and in many other high-profile incidents)

But I don't know that it would be fair to equate the environment in which they're dealing with them as being the same.

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For instance, a nurse who's dealing with a person who's being treated in a mental health unit of a hospital (where they do have an entire team around them, and access to drugs to assist with keeping the person as calm as possible), or a counselor who's dealing with a patient who willingly came to their office, isn't exactly the same environment as walking into their home after an emergency call was made (when they're in a particularly erratic state, and may have already harmed someone else), and may or may not have access to weapons.

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While I would concede that having the ability to chemically restrain people is a GREAT safety net, it is not as though it is used as frequently as one would think. I've also seen and heard from PLENTY of paramedics who have had their salads ABSOLUTELY tossed by patients in crisis.


And your example of a "counsellor whos patient willingly came into their office". I hate to burst your bubble but,
counsellors work outside of offices often. Often times they also work with people who are NOT willingly in he environment that they are in. This was my role in a youth treatment centre a few years ago.
We were having difficulty with a client. By this point we had been able to restrain them and put them into the Seclusion Room but it was tough (and it required 2 people). When the police arrived, we explained our struggle and they were flummoxed:
"Why didn't you use pain restrictions? Why didn't you choke them? Where are your physical restraints (referring to straight jackets, cuffs or ties)"
When we told them we were not permited to use any of those techniques, they looked at us like we were aliens. Like: How can you do your job without that.

Fact is (and my clients attest to it) police are MUCH MUCH quicker to use pain compliance techniques that we EVER were; even when 2 cops would be dealing with 1 teenager.

wouldn't send a psychiatrist into the home of a potentially dangerous person by themselves after a 911 call, much like I wouldn't want police trying to make the determination of whether or not to give a person ativan if they appeared to be having an anxiety episode (without knowing their medical history, or which Rx drugs they may have already taken)

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I wouldn't send any random "psychiatrist" into a house either. However, a psychiatrist with excellent descalation and communication skills I ABSOLUTELY would send into a house of someone who was having a mental health crises. Just because someone is hvaing a mental health crisis doesn't mean that they are DANGEROUS (certainly not necessarily dangerous to others). Often times, many times, one is able to bring people to a calmer state by saying the right things in the right way at the right time. Police are called to deal with violence and danger. They are not called to have a "conversation to make someone feel better" and so the training they receive (likely) does not FOCUS on that skill. And yet that VERY skill can lessen the "use of force" necessary to control a situation.


Back when this "defund the police" idea was first put out, I remember seeing a picture of a dude dancing naked with knives and a caption saying "I'd love to see a social worker handle this". When I read it, alllll I could think is "something very similar to this happenned to me twice already at my job and I handled it JUST fine and nobody died".

It just seems like people have a lack of a full understanding of the training and expertise that mental health supports and experts can implement to affect people.

ThatRobGuy said:

I fully acknowledge that the use of force that we often see on these videos is beyond excessive in many cases.

To your part in bold, that ties in with the scenario I was describing.

You mentioned this was in a youth center, and "we" had been able to restrain them. That may not be within the physical capabilities of a lone counselor or therapist trying to enter the home of a person to try to calm them down..

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If those workers ever enter a home alone like that, their model of support and intervention is beyond broken. Under no circumstances would/should that ever be policy OR acceptable.

as @rturner76 mentioned in their post, there are situations in private homes where the person may have access to something that could do some damage that the person wouldn't have access to in the more controlled type of environment you're describing.

That's why mentioned a "best of both worlds" scenario of having an officer and counselor work as a team in that sort of environment.

A few cities are trying it, but even they make certain exceptions to their policies.
Police vs social workers: Who should answer mental health calls? | KRON4

The city manager for this city in California listed out two potential risks:
- The obvious one, the physical well-being of the social workers could be at risk in certain situations
- Concerns about how quickly a social worker could respond to a call


NYC is about to start piloting the concept, but there are some very clear conditions involved:
NYC to Test No-Police Mental Health Crisis Response in Harlem

-there's no history of violence, there's no weapon present

That stipulation was, in part, due to concerns by the EMT/Paramedics union who insisted that the city make sure an area is safe before they enter.

The CAHOOTS program in Oregon is probably one of the better known programs like this that have been around for a while and seem to do a great job with de-escalation. However, they even steer clear of any situations where weapons or violent behavior are a possibility.

They seem to implement the model I described before, for many cases, where they team up with police for certain situations.

CAHOOTS does not handle requests that involve violence, weapons, crimes, medical emergencies, or similarly dangerous situations.[4] Some calls require both CAHOOTS and law enforcement to be called out initially, and sometimes CAHOOTS calls in law enforcement or law enforcement calls in CAHOOTS

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Thanks for these examples.
I don't think these programs necessarily run counter to what I have said.

Lastly, I personally think all of this would have been avoidable if,
1. Police received training
2. Policies that limited force were followed.
3. Some kind of discipline was merged ourntonifficers who didn't follow use of force models