If you’re having a heart attack, chances are you won’t be handcuffed and stuffed in the back of a police cruiser when someone calls for help.
You’ll probably be cla-clanked into an ambulance on a gurney, where people in a health crisis belong.
But when Chioma Oruh would call for help when her brother — who lived for 47 years with schizophrenia — was having a panic attack or an anxiety attack, the handcuffs and a D.C. police cruiser were what he got, she said. Every time.
He needed care, not cuffs. But in the District, police are the ones who get the call when someone is having a mental health crisis. One way to look at it is discrimination, the denial of services to those with disabilities.
Last week, the Justice Department agreed there’s a disconnect.
“Relying on a less effective, potentially harmful response … may deprive people with mental health disabilities of an equal opportunity to benefit from a critical public service,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement Thursday.
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This was related to a lawsuit filed last summer by the ACLU on behalf of Bread for the City, a nonprofit in D.C. that is calling this treatment a case of discrimination against people with disabilities.
Yes, people get bread and other food at this place, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Over time, the nonprofit has grown to provide clothing, social and legal services, and medical help. And it’s when folks come while they’re in a mental health crisis — whether it’s a panic attack or suicidal thoughts — that the disconnect with care happens.
“It’s traumatic, certainly for the person who’s supposed to be receiving care,” said Tracy Knight, who has led the social services program at Bread for the City for more than two decades. “It’s also traumatic for providers, who are stuck in a situation where it’s the only option. It’s traumatic for other clients and other staff who are witnessing this person be handcuffed and led out. It’s just, it’s an unnecessary trauma for everyone involved.”
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Over two decades, she’s seen this scenario often; someone comes in for help, saying they’re suicidal, and the staff calls 911.
“And even if the person is completely nonviolent, completely in agreement and voluntarily wanting to get help, the only way that [police] can transport someone is to handcuff them and put them in the back of the car,” Knight said.
The stigma behind seeking treatment is fading thanks to years of messaging. The slogans make sense:
“Mental health is health.”
“Mental health matters.”
“Let’s shatter the silence.”
We’re more open about our Zoloft prescriptions and therapy sessions than we’ve ever been. But crisis is what tests the limits of that progress. At the end of the day, the lawsuit states, police are the most likely to respond when someone becomes deeply unwell.
It’s terrifying and stigmatizing for anyone who’s never been in handcuffs and can be retraumatizing for anyone who’s already been there.
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This was the case in Oruh’s family. Her brother, who died from health complications at 47 two years ago, had a long history with police all over the nation.
His nature was gentle, she said. He was a storyteller who completely loved and indulged his nephews. When he worked on the West Coast as an executive pursuing his secret dream to be an actor, the police were called every time he had a meltdown. It happened in California, in New York, in Maryland.
“They show up with weapons, and they can be scary. And who you get is the luck of the draw,” said Oruh, who is now an advocate for people with mental health differences. “You don’t know if you’re going to get Officer Friendly or you’re going to get Officer Ready to Shoot.”
Sometimes, officers are trained to address mental health issues. That was part of the pushback against the ACLU suit — the Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics (ICAT) training program that will be taught to “every sworn member” of D.C.’s police department this year.
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“We want our officers to demonstrate empathy, passion and care — but also to not be afraid to take the necessary law enforcement actions in order to protect our community,” said D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith, speaking at a news conference held at the D.C. police academy last year.
Great. Excellent. All good. Certainly better than in years past.
“But they’re still police officers,” said Oruh.
At Bread for the City, workers helping someone in crisis will call the police department’s special community response team, the CRT, which is the perfect solution to these situations. These are unarmed clinicians and counselors.
The only problem is that there are only about 44 of them. According to the ACLU lawsuit, they can address only 1 percent of the 911 calls that need them.
It’s the routine that Knight at her fellow social workers are used to. They try the CRT team, no one’s available, so the next step has to be that 911 call.
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“So the police come into a space where there’s already a person who’s experiencing a mental health crisis,” Knight said. “There’s probably already some anxiety, you know, some fear in the situation, and then to have armed officers show up, it creates more anxiety.”
This happens hundreds of times every year. But the few times the rest of us who aren’t on the front lines hear about it is when it goes badly, when shots are fired and someone dies.
Half of the people killed by police in our nation had some kind of disability, according to a report by the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
“Police have become the default responders to mental health calls,” wrote the authors, historian David Perry and disability expert Lawrence Carter-Long. They propose that “people with psychiatric disabilities” are presumed to be “dangerous to themselves and others” in police interactions.
And that’s not okay.
It’s time to move beyond the slogans and the rhetoric.
We hear it, we know it. Mental health care is just health care.
Now it’s on our nation’s leaders — the ones who can make the change we’re asking for — to do something.
correction
A previous version of this article misstated the name of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. This article has been corrected.
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