River City Hall: Actually, this is just another day at the office
A former Riverside Police Department officer and U.S. Marine faces charges for killing or ordering the killing of at least two prisoners in Iraq, according to this article in the Press Enterprise.
Jose Luis Nazario, Jr., who was terminated for allegedly failing to pass probation shot and killed several individuals who were unarmed inside a house in Fallujah. He's scheduled to appear in federal court today on voluntary manslaughter charges after being arrested while onduty as a police officer.
He became an officer in 2006 after being honorably discharged from the military in 2005 and completing a stint at the Ben Clark Training Academy. Although the shootings happened nearly three years ago, it's only been recently that potential criminal conduct came to light.
(excerpt)
Some specifics of what happened in Fallujah on Nov. 9, 2004, varied slightly from witness to witness quoted in the federal criminal complaint and affidavit filed Aug. 6 by Special Agent Mark Fox of the Naval Criminal Investigative Services. But the central accusation pointed to Nazario either killing the men directly or ordering their deaths.
Nazario's squad had lost a Marine and later was taking gunfire from a house. After the shooting stopped, the Marines searched the house and detained four men. The Marines found AK-47 rifles and ammunition in the home, according to the Naval Criminal Investigative Services affidavit.
In a radio conversation with a superior, Nazario was asked if the prisoners were dead, and he responded, "Negative," according to the affidavit.
Nazario was then told to "make it happen," the report states.
One witness, whose name was redacted in the Naval Criminal Investigative Services document distributed by Ledger, said he heard a gunshot coming from a room where one of the prisoners had been taken. Seconds later, the witness heard another gunshot and saw Nazario lower his rifle.
"After Nazario shot the detained male, he exited the room and asked, 'Who else wants to kill these guys, because I don't want to do it all myself,' " according to the documents.
All four of the men were shot to death.
Ironically, the alleged incident came to light when another marine was asked during a polygraph exam for the Secret Service whether or not he had participated in any unjustified killings, according to this article in the Los Angeles Times. He started talking about the Fallujah incident which soon became under investigation by the U.S. Navy.
In contrast, Nazario applied for jobs in two law enforcement agencies and was never asked that same question.
(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)
Sources say Nazario passed lie detector tests when he was applying for jobs with the Los Angeles Police Department and Riverside police.
Steven Frasher, a spokesman for the Riverside Police Department, confirmed that Nazario was terminated Aug. 7, but said he could not comment on the reasons for Nazario's departure or whether it was linked to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation.
"When it comes to personnel matters and investigations being handled by other agencies, there is really not much we can say," Frasher said.
Frasher said Nazario was employed by the department since November 2005, including his recruitment period. As a probationary police officer, he was in the field for some of that time but was still undergoing training, Frasher added.
Frasher said all recruits undergo a polygraph test before they are hired, but he said Nazario was not asked whether he took part in "wrongful killings." Nazario enlisted in the Marines in September 1997 and left as a sergeant in October 2005.
With all the criminal investigations coming out of Iraq in the past several years including at its prisons, it's difficult to understand why potential hires from military branches who served in the wars ongoing in both Afghanistan and Iraq would not be asked this question as well as questions in relation to other criminal activity including beatings, torture and rape.
Hopefully, this latest incident involving a Riverside Police Department officer will change the process of administering the polygraph to military laterals.
It also appeared vague in terms of what Nazario was actually doing in the police department. There was some mention of him spending time in the field but also undergoing training, a process that for most officers lasts about 12 months where as he was at the 15 month mark. Not much is said or allowed to be said about what kind of officer Nazario was during his relative short stint in Riverside.
(Excerpt)
'Who else wants to kill these guys, because I don't want to do it all myself."
If Nazario did indeed make such a statement, then that says a lot to answer that question right there.
Another irony, is that if Nazario indeed committed the crimes that he is accused of or worse, these crimes were hidden behind a code of silence that remained unbroken until another marine out looking for a job spilled the beans. It's likely that the incident involving Nazario and other marines at Fallujah was investigated by the military under some capacity and approved, perhaps because the military didn't look beyond its employees' stories.
In the meantime, another agency belonging to another profession that is well known for its own unwritten code of silence hired an individual who may have committed serious crimes that may have never come to light until someone broke that code.
Ward One candidate, Letitia Pepper has filed a complaint alleging that members of the Riverside Police Department were trying to kill her both in 2004 and in recent months, according to the Press Enterprise. Department representatives denied the claims.
The article accounts a disturbing incident in 2004 at her house given that so many police officers responded to what at most was an allegation of a stolen pet, something which usually gets little attention. Even though she was arrested, the Riverside County District Attorney's office opted not to file any charges against her for reasons it did not disclose.
(excerpt)
Riverside police officers arrested Pepper on March 10, 2004, on suspicion of theft of lost property and obstructing a police officer in the performance of his duty. Officers were sent to her house when she refused to return a lost yellow Labrador to its owners. She had taken the dog in.
When Pepper wouldn't turn over the dog, officers handcuffed Pepper and put her in a patrol car for more than an hour, she wrote in the complaint's footnotes. Eventually there were seven officers on the scene, she said.
A sergeant then tried to push her into retrieving the dog from her house, Pepper wrote. She said she believed opening her front door while still cuffed with her hands behind her back would cause her other dogs -- there were seven to 10 in her house at the time -- to rush outside, giving the police a pretext to open fire, Pepper wrote in the complaint.
The episode was an effort by "bad eggs" in the Riverside Police Department "to murder me in retaliation for my political activities, which had caused their two favored candidates to lose by very narrow margins," she wrote in the complaint.
The traffic stop downtown this year, around 1 a.m. June 17, frightened her and revived memories of the previous incident, Pepper wrote.
She said she did not commit the traffic violation officers were citing her for, and that the officers who dealt with her would not provide their names and badge numbers -- only providing last names on the ticket. They also refused to answer questions, she said.
The silence was frightening, Pepper wrote.
Pepper ran for election herself this spring against Councilman Dom Betro and challenger, Mike Gardner and placed third. The more recent incident took place in June and not much information was provided in the news article about it but there was a statement made by Pepper that the police officers didn't identify themselves except on a citation they issued to her.
One complaint I've heard a lot involving police officers doing traffic stops that I have heard just about more often than anything else is the alleged failure or unwillingness of officers to provide their names and badge numbers when they are requested. That's been a trend that appears to have not abated much in the past several years unfortunately. It's not only reported by individuals who wish to file complaints but by others as well.
Hopefully, there will be followup on this story to see what happens. But for many people, the complaint process remains unknown in terms of exactly what happens especially once they file one. Most of the outreach in terms of explaining the complaint process to the public seems to focus mainly on where complaint forms are located. Not nearly as much is explained about the actual process in terms about what happens with the complaint, the various stages it goes through and what and how the outcome is reached on it. The department does send out a letter when it receives complaints about how many complaints it receives in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of contacts its officers have with the public each year, but not much else.
Officers who are the subject of the complaints do not even have names, just numbers designating them. They are never mentioned by name in any letter that the city sends to a complainant. And what this letter states is the final decision reached by Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis on what the finding will be on each allegation for each officer listed on the complaint. The allegations to be investigated are chosen by the Internal Affairs Division so if the final letter from the city involves a complaint with multiple officers and multiple allegations, then even the findings can be very confusing to the person who reads the letter.
If any of the allegations are sustained, the complainant has no way of knowing what happens with the officer, whether they get discipline or not. Whether or not they perhaps get needed training or counseling or whether or not they are placed on the department's Early Warning System to be watched if a trend regarding their behavior has emerged that might need to be addressed at some point.
The city council approved a plan to address graffiti at a workshop held earlier this week. Det. Kathy Nelson who was for a long time the sole detective assigned full-time to this division received help with the transfer of Officer Steve Warlick. A former POPs officer, Warlick had impressed members of the Human Relations Commission last year with a presentation on the homeless that he gave at one of its meetings. There are also plans to hire an office specialist.
The City Attorney's office also files law suits against the parents of minors who do graffiti even as some people attending the meeting said that they've seen adults to it including White adult men in the Greenbelt area of the city. Although the city's said it has levied fines against parents, in terms of collection, there's been very little because most of the people targeted in the campaign don't have the money to pay the fines or judgments.
A major water pipeline project will close down parts of Alessandro for over a year. A public forum is being planned to answer questions including among other things how to access businesses at the Mission Grove Plaza.
Columnist Dan Bernstein of the Press Enterprise wrote a hilarious account of the recent city council meeting where the elected officials decided to revoke an earlier vote to raise electricity rates. This is required reading for anyone interested in seeing why so many people watch the city council meetings from home with popcorn and drinks on hand.
(excerpt)
The council was a portrait in decorum. Ed Adkison accused "somebody" (Art Gage) of "political grandstanding." Frank Schiavone accused someone (Gage) of a "spin story." And Gage, who had accused Schiavone of bashing high electric rates for (of all things) political purposes, tried to hijack the issue for his own (re-election) purposes, telling the applauding crowd that he wasn't about to vote for anything that would make the citizens pay more.
But for the most part, the council heartily trashed the rate increase they had personally approved months earlier.
They did it forcefully. Adkison: "The structure of this rate increase is ludicrous." Eight years in office, the retiring councilman discovered residents pay more per kilowatt hour than businesses. Tip to biz: Better watch out!
They did it with visual aids. Schiavone, running for county supe, displayed a fat file, proving he had looked into complaints about the rate increase!
They did it with straight faces. It was hard to tell who fought harder for the people -- Art or Frank. I wept (allergies) as I pictured them in Stockholm, sharing the Nobel Peace Prize.
Interesting and vivid mental picture on Bernstein's part and he's obviously having a lot of fun writing about the actions and antics of the dais folks during this contentious election cycle as well as the wheezing of what's left of the GASS quartet. If you write, it's really too hard to get too depressed about how Riverside Renaissance, like Bernstein said, is used as the thrust for all sorts of behavior including the city council's now cursed decision to raise electricity rates last year. It provides a lot of fodder for funny material, the kind that you have to blink your eyes at and remember it's real life and impacts people because often what's said and done is that unbelievable.
Because the sad thing is, if this weren't an election year(because after all, last year wasn't), people in this city would still be drowning in high electricity bills.
Sometimes those on the dais play like the heads of court in the River City kingdom. Other times, like Tuesday night, they play more like the court's jesters.
What would be nice is for any one of them to stand up and say, we're sorry we made this decision, it's our bad and we want to reexamine it to try to make it right. That's much better than choosing instead to use it for grandstanding purposes.
Decriminalizing mental illness was the topic of a recent Time article, which began when a mental health expert asked law enforcement officers to describe individuals who were mentally ill.
The answers included, "psycho", "freak" and "Jason from the horror movie".
Habsi Kaba, the counselor who asked these questions raised some concerns about the answers, not in terms of what they were but who had made them.
(excerpt)
"The worst thing you can have is power and lack of knowledge," Kaba says.
The article discusses the evolution of crisis intervention teams being created and utilized in police agencies and sheriff departments all over the country. The first such program, created in Memphis, Tennessee, has spread since. It also refers to the nation's largest mental institution which is also a prison, Riker's Island which holds up to 3,000 mentally ill people.
Over 600,000 hospital beds for the mentally ill were reduced down to about 40,000 according to the Time article. Deinstitutionalization began in serious earnest in the 1980s when publicly owned facilities were shut down putting many mentally ill individuals out in the streets.
CIT programs offer training and resources to law enforcement agencies whose officers and deputies interact with mentally ill people in increasingly large numbers, up to about 1 out of at least every 9 contacts.
(excerpt)
Most police officers aren't trained to deal with people suffering from severe mental illness. But because they are the first to respond to calls involving psychiatric crises, police are in a unique position to fix the crippled system. That effort is now under way, thanks to Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT), which are being adopted by a growing number of police departments across the country. The concept was pioneered by the Memphis Police Department in 1988 after an officer shot and killed a person suffering from schizophrenic hallucinations. Working with the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and two local universities, Memphis police trained and organized a unit of officers specifically to deal with people in psychosis — a mental state commonly suffered by patients with severe mental illness in which their thoughts don't match up with reality.
In these cases, normal police procedures often increase the chances of violence, confusion and even death. So, police officers are taught to approach psychotic suspects in a different way: by speaking softly, rather than shouting commands, repeating phrases, holding hands palms-up instead of holding a gun or badge, and wearing plainclothes instead of uniforms. These actions may seem minor, says Kaba, who is the CIT training coordinator for the Miami Police Department, but they go a long way in breaking down the barriers — psychological and otherwise — that often exist between the mentally ill and police.
The ultimate purpose of the CIT program is perhaps empathy. Using a device called Virtual Hallucinations, officers can begin to understand what it's like to be in the grip of a severe and untreated mental illness. Made by the pharmaceutical company Janssen, the rig and headphones simulate the disturbing and disorienting environment of a psychotic episode. After using the rig, Lt. Wall of the LAPD says he was struck by the idea of being exposed to such chaos all the time. "It's just a scary thing," Wall says, "I can do it and walk away from it." Those with serious mental illness, however, cannot.
The Riverside Police Department began reexamining the way it addresses mental illness and how officers interface with the mentally ill, through the creation of training curriculum for its officers offered through the department's personnel and training division.
Discussion on the need to do this began after the April 2006 fatal shooting of Lee Deante Brown, a mentally ill Black man but it had been an ongoing concern in both the community and the police department for quite a while before that.
The training, a 40 hour class, began in late May and was held again in July. The department, according to Capt. Mike Blakely, hopes to train its force including supervisors and detectives and also civilian personnel including dispatchers within the next 18 months. Blakely and other officers in his division have been submitting regular reports to the city council's public safety committee since April this year.
Posts regarding my blog at Inland Empire's Craigsliste removed by one or more individuals who do not want people who visit that site to come to this one. That's really too bad that someone or some people feel the need to do this on a regular basis but not all that surprising given the contentious nature of this city given that the majority of posts removed from Craigslist have involved city issues and the this year's city elections.
Jose Luis Nazario, Jr., who was terminated for allegedly failing to pass probation shot and killed several individuals who were unarmed inside a house in Fallujah. He's scheduled to appear in federal court today on voluntary manslaughter charges after being arrested while onduty as a police officer.
He became an officer in 2006 after being honorably discharged from the military in 2005 and completing a stint at the Ben Clark Training Academy. Although the shootings happened nearly three years ago, it's only been recently that potential criminal conduct came to light.
(excerpt)
Some specifics of what happened in Fallujah on Nov. 9, 2004, varied slightly from witness to witness quoted in the federal criminal complaint and affidavit filed Aug. 6 by Special Agent Mark Fox of the Naval Criminal Investigative Services. But the central accusation pointed to Nazario either killing the men directly or ordering their deaths.
Nazario's squad had lost a Marine and later was taking gunfire from a house. After the shooting stopped, the Marines searched the house and detained four men. The Marines found AK-47 rifles and ammunition in the home, according to the Naval Criminal Investigative Services affidavit.
In a radio conversation with a superior, Nazario was asked if the prisoners were dead, and he responded, "Negative," according to the affidavit.
Nazario was then told to "make it happen," the report states.
One witness, whose name was redacted in the Naval Criminal Investigative Services document distributed by Ledger, said he heard a gunshot coming from a room where one of the prisoners had been taken. Seconds later, the witness heard another gunshot and saw Nazario lower his rifle.
"After Nazario shot the detained male, he exited the room and asked, 'Who else wants to kill these guys, because I don't want to do it all myself,' " according to the documents.
All four of the men were shot to death.
Ironically, the alleged incident came to light when another marine was asked during a polygraph exam for the Secret Service whether or not he had participated in any unjustified killings, according to this article in the Los Angeles Times. He started talking about the Fallujah incident which soon became under investigation by the U.S. Navy.
In contrast, Nazario applied for jobs in two law enforcement agencies and was never asked that same question.
(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)
Sources say Nazario passed lie detector tests when he was applying for jobs with the Los Angeles Police Department and Riverside police.
Steven Frasher, a spokesman for the Riverside Police Department, confirmed that Nazario was terminated Aug. 7, but said he could not comment on the reasons for Nazario's departure or whether it was linked to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation.
"When it comes to personnel matters and investigations being handled by other agencies, there is really not much we can say," Frasher said.
Frasher said Nazario was employed by the department since November 2005, including his recruitment period. As a probationary police officer, he was in the field for some of that time but was still undergoing training, Frasher added.
Frasher said all recruits undergo a polygraph test before they are hired, but he said Nazario was not asked whether he took part in "wrongful killings." Nazario enlisted in the Marines in September 1997 and left as a sergeant in October 2005.
With all the criminal investigations coming out of Iraq in the past several years including at its prisons, it's difficult to understand why potential hires from military branches who served in the wars ongoing in both Afghanistan and Iraq would not be asked this question as well as questions in relation to other criminal activity including beatings, torture and rape.
Hopefully, this latest incident involving a Riverside Police Department officer will change the process of administering the polygraph to military laterals.
It also appeared vague in terms of what Nazario was actually doing in the police department. There was some mention of him spending time in the field but also undergoing training, a process that for most officers lasts about 12 months where as he was at the 15 month mark. Not much is said or allowed to be said about what kind of officer Nazario was during his relative short stint in Riverside.
(Excerpt)
'Who else wants to kill these guys, because I don't want to do it all myself."
If Nazario did indeed make such a statement, then that says a lot to answer that question right there.
Another irony, is that if Nazario indeed committed the crimes that he is accused of or worse, these crimes were hidden behind a code of silence that remained unbroken until another marine out looking for a job spilled the beans. It's likely that the incident involving Nazario and other marines at Fallujah was investigated by the military under some capacity and approved, perhaps because the military didn't look beyond its employees' stories.
In the meantime, another agency belonging to another profession that is well known for its own unwritten code of silence hired an individual who may have committed serious crimes that may have never come to light until someone broke that code.
Ward One candidate, Letitia Pepper has filed a complaint alleging that members of the Riverside Police Department were trying to kill her both in 2004 and in recent months, according to the Press Enterprise. Department representatives denied the claims.
The article accounts a disturbing incident in 2004 at her house given that so many police officers responded to what at most was an allegation of a stolen pet, something which usually gets little attention. Even though she was arrested, the Riverside County District Attorney's office opted not to file any charges against her for reasons it did not disclose.
(excerpt)
Riverside police officers arrested Pepper on March 10, 2004, on suspicion of theft of lost property and obstructing a police officer in the performance of his duty. Officers were sent to her house when she refused to return a lost yellow Labrador to its owners. She had taken the dog in.
When Pepper wouldn't turn over the dog, officers handcuffed Pepper and put her in a patrol car for more than an hour, she wrote in the complaint's footnotes. Eventually there were seven officers on the scene, she said.
A sergeant then tried to push her into retrieving the dog from her house, Pepper wrote. She said she believed opening her front door while still cuffed with her hands behind her back would cause her other dogs -- there were seven to 10 in her house at the time -- to rush outside, giving the police a pretext to open fire, Pepper wrote in the complaint.
The episode was an effort by "bad eggs" in the Riverside Police Department "to murder me in retaliation for my political activities, which had caused their two favored candidates to lose by very narrow margins," she wrote in the complaint.
The traffic stop downtown this year, around 1 a.m. June 17, frightened her and revived memories of the previous incident, Pepper wrote.
She said she did not commit the traffic violation officers were citing her for, and that the officers who dealt with her would not provide their names and badge numbers -- only providing last names on the ticket. They also refused to answer questions, she said.
The silence was frightening, Pepper wrote.
Pepper ran for election herself this spring against Councilman Dom Betro and challenger, Mike Gardner and placed third. The more recent incident took place in June and not much information was provided in the news article about it but there was a statement made by Pepper that the police officers didn't identify themselves except on a citation they issued to her.
One complaint I've heard a lot involving police officers doing traffic stops that I have heard just about more often than anything else is the alleged failure or unwillingness of officers to provide their names and badge numbers when they are requested. That's been a trend that appears to have not abated much in the past several years unfortunately. It's not only reported by individuals who wish to file complaints but by others as well.
Hopefully, there will be followup on this story to see what happens. But for many people, the complaint process remains unknown in terms of exactly what happens especially once they file one. Most of the outreach in terms of explaining the complaint process to the public seems to focus mainly on where complaint forms are located. Not nearly as much is explained about the actual process in terms about what happens with the complaint, the various stages it goes through and what and how the outcome is reached on it. The department does send out a letter when it receives complaints about how many complaints it receives in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of contacts its officers have with the public each year, but not much else.
Officers who are the subject of the complaints do not even have names, just numbers designating them. They are never mentioned by name in any letter that the city sends to a complainant. And what this letter states is the final decision reached by Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis on what the finding will be on each allegation for each officer listed on the complaint. The allegations to be investigated are chosen by the Internal Affairs Division so if the final letter from the city involves a complaint with multiple officers and multiple allegations, then even the findings can be very confusing to the person who reads the letter.
If any of the allegations are sustained, the complainant has no way of knowing what happens with the officer, whether they get discipline or not. Whether or not they perhaps get needed training or counseling or whether or not they are placed on the department's Early Warning System to be watched if a trend regarding their behavior has emerged that might need to be addressed at some point.
The city council approved a plan to address graffiti at a workshop held earlier this week. Det. Kathy Nelson who was for a long time the sole detective assigned full-time to this division received help with the transfer of Officer Steve Warlick. A former POPs officer, Warlick had impressed members of the Human Relations Commission last year with a presentation on the homeless that he gave at one of its meetings. There are also plans to hire an office specialist.
The City Attorney's office also files law suits against the parents of minors who do graffiti even as some people attending the meeting said that they've seen adults to it including White adult men in the Greenbelt area of the city. Although the city's said it has levied fines against parents, in terms of collection, there's been very little because most of the people targeted in the campaign don't have the money to pay the fines or judgments.
A major water pipeline project will close down parts of Alessandro for over a year. A public forum is being planned to answer questions including among other things how to access businesses at the Mission Grove Plaza.
Columnist Dan Bernstein of the Press Enterprise wrote a hilarious account of the recent city council meeting where the elected officials decided to revoke an earlier vote to raise electricity rates. This is required reading for anyone interested in seeing why so many people watch the city council meetings from home with popcorn and drinks on hand.
(excerpt)
The council was a portrait in decorum. Ed Adkison accused "somebody" (Art Gage) of "political grandstanding." Frank Schiavone accused someone (Gage) of a "spin story." And Gage, who had accused Schiavone of bashing high electric rates for (of all things) political purposes, tried to hijack the issue for his own (re-election) purposes, telling the applauding crowd that he wasn't about to vote for anything that would make the citizens pay more.
But for the most part, the council heartily trashed the rate increase they had personally approved months earlier.
They did it forcefully. Adkison: "The structure of this rate increase is ludicrous." Eight years in office, the retiring councilman discovered residents pay more per kilowatt hour than businesses. Tip to biz: Better watch out!
They did it with visual aids. Schiavone, running for county supe, displayed a fat file, proving he had looked into complaints about the rate increase!
They did it with straight faces. It was hard to tell who fought harder for the people -- Art or Frank. I wept (allergies) as I pictured them in Stockholm, sharing the Nobel Peace Prize.
Interesting and vivid mental picture on Bernstein's part and he's obviously having a lot of fun writing about the actions and antics of the dais folks during this contentious election cycle as well as the wheezing of what's left of the GASS quartet. If you write, it's really too hard to get too depressed about how Riverside Renaissance, like Bernstein said, is used as the thrust for all sorts of behavior including the city council's now cursed decision to raise electricity rates last year. It provides a lot of fodder for funny material, the kind that you have to blink your eyes at and remember it's real life and impacts people because often what's said and done is that unbelievable.
Because the sad thing is, if this weren't an election year(because after all, last year wasn't), people in this city would still be drowning in high electricity bills.
Sometimes those on the dais play like the heads of court in the River City kingdom. Other times, like Tuesday night, they play more like the court's jesters.
What would be nice is for any one of them to stand up and say, we're sorry we made this decision, it's our bad and we want to reexamine it to try to make it right. That's much better than choosing instead to use it for grandstanding purposes.
Decriminalizing mental illness was the topic of a recent Time article, which began when a mental health expert asked law enforcement officers to describe individuals who were mentally ill.
The answers included, "psycho", "freak" and "Jason from the horror movie".
Habsi Kaba, the counselor who asked these questions raised some concerns about the answers, not in terms of what they were but who had made them.
(excerpt)
"The worst thing you can have is power and lack of knowledge," Kaba says.
The article discusses the evolution of crisis intervention teams being created and utilized in police agencies and sheriff departments all over the country. The first such program, created in Memphis, Tennessee, has spread since. It also refers to the nation's largest mental institution which is also a prison, Riker's Island which holds up to 3,000 mentally ill people.
Over 600,000 hospital beds for the mentally ill were reduced down to about 40,000 according to the Time article. Deinstitutionalization began in serious earnest in the 1980s when publicly owned facilities were shut down putting many mentally ill individuals out in the streets.
CIT programs offer training and resources to law enforcement agencies whose officers and deputies interact with mentally ill people in increasingly large numbers, up to about 1 out of at least every 9 contacts.
(excerpt)
Most police officers aren't trained to deal with people suffering from severe mental illness. But because they are the first to respond to calls involving psychiatric crises, police are in a unique position to fix the crippled system. That effort is now under way, thanks to Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT), which are being adopted by a growing number of police departments across the country. The concept was pioneered by the Memphis Police Department in 1988 after an officer shot and killed a person suffering from schizophrenic hallucinations. Working with the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and two local universities, Memphis police trained and organized a unit of officers specifically to deal with people in psychosis — a mental state commonly suffered by patients with severe mental illness in which their thoughts don't match up with reality.
In these cases, normal police procedures often increase the chances of violence, confusion and even death. So, police officers are taught to approach psychotic suspects in a different way: by speaking softly, rather than shouting commands, repeating phrases, holding hands palms-up instead of holding a gun or badge, and wearing plainclothes instead of uniforms. These actions may seem minor, says Kaba, who is the CIT training coordinator for the Miami Police Department, but they go a long way in breaking down the barriers — psychological and otherwise — that often exist between the mentally ill and police.
The ultimate purpose of the CIT program is perhaps empathy. Using a device called Virtual Hallucinations, officers can begin to understand what it's like to be in the grip of a severe and untreated mental illness. Made by the pharmaceutical company Janssen, the rig and headphones simulate the disturbing and disorienting environment of a psychotic episode. After using the rig, Lt. Wall of the LAPD says he was struck by the idea of being exposed to such chaos all the time. "It's just a scary thing," Wall says, "I can do it and walk away from it." Those with serious mental illness, however, cannot.
The Riverside Police Department began reexamining the way it addresses mental illness and how officers interface with the mentally ill, through the creation of training curriculum for its officers offered through the department's personnel and training division.
Discussion on the need to do this began after the April 2006 fatal shooting of Lee Deante Brown, a mentally ill Black man but it had been an ongoing concern in both the community and the police department for quite a while before that.
The training, a 40 hour class, began in late May and was held again in July. The department, according to Capt. Mike Blakely, hopes to train its force including supervisors and detectives and also civilian personnel including dispatchers within the next 18 months. Blakely and other officers in his division have been submitting regular reports to the city council's public safety committee since April this year.
Posts regarding my blog at Inland Empire's Craigsliste removed by one or more individuals who do not want people who visit that site to come to this one. That's really too bad that someone or some people feel the need to do this on a regular basis but not all that surprising given the contentious nature of this city given that the majority of posts removed from Craigslist have involved city issues and the this year's city elections.
Labels: business as usual, officer-involved shootings, public forums in all places
posted by Five Before Midnight | 12:25 PM
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