#CultOfCompliance - Compelling Compliance for Psychiatric Disability

Here's a disturbing and complex manifestation of the cult of compliance: 

Starting next week, San Francisco will be the fifth county in the state to implement Laura’s Law, the measure that allows judges to force severely mentally ill people to get treatment.
The measure is targeted toward people who are resisting care and have a history of hospitalization, incarceration or violence. Family members, mental health providers or police officers can petition the court to compel patients into outpatient treatment, though patients cannot be forced to take medication.

The devil, of course, is in the details of how it's regulated and enforced. But a history of hospitalization and incarceration does not mean, by itself, at risk for perpetrating violence. I see this law as spreading fear and stigma, the last thing the mental health community should want.

#CultOfCompliance - Oregon Prisons and Mental Disabilities

Prisons are the asylums of our age. We just don't call them that. Then, when people with mental disabilities end up incarcerated, they are horrifically vulnerable to abuse from both prison employees and other prisoners. Moreover, prison staff even when not intentionally abusive, are not well-trained in responding to the needs of people with disabilities, so they use the tools with which they are familiar - enforced compliance, pain and isolation.

From Oregon Public Radio:

Prisoners with severe mental illness are routinely tasered, pepper-sprayed, isolated, and denied access to adequate mental health care - according to a new report by Disability Rights Oregon.
Disability Rights looked at the Behavioral Health Unit at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
That’s where prisoners with severe mental illness, who’ve committed violent crimes, are often placed.
Sarah Radcliffe, an attorney with Disability Rights, says they found prisoners being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day; and an imbalance of power between security and medical staff, which led to inadequate mental health care. “And we also found that prisoners in this unit are subjected to frequent unnecessary use of force, by staff, often in response to behaviors that are related to their mental illnesses,” she said.

The whole report from DRO is here in pdf.

We have to rebuild our whole mental system from the ground up with massive community-based supports, as part of the path of ending mass incarceration.

Cult of Compliance: The Death of Anthony Hill

"The [naked] man who appeared mentally ill ran at the officer and ignored demands to stop before the officer shot him twice."

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.

His name was Anthony Hill. Here's more detail about his life and death. He was an Air Force veteran, a musician, and a recent critic of police violence. He also had bipolar disorder.

Readers of this blog know the story all too well, but there are points worth emphasizing. Each death operates within the general trend of the cult of compliance and the war on the unpredictable, but each death is a tragedy in its own specific details.

Hall was naked, so there's no question whether or not he was armed. Instead, we have an officer, in admittedly a split-second situation, ordering a naked man to stop, then firing when he didn't. This is another case in which, as I wrote about for Kajieme Powell and other deaths, the police officer is demanding that the disabled person choose between not being disabled or getting shot.

There are three key takeaways that I'd like to offer this morning. 

1. Failure to obey commands while in mental health crisis is not, by itself, a capital crime.

2. Failure to obey commands for anyone is not, by itself, a capital crime.

3. When assessing this incident, we need to ask why the officer ended up in this position both tactically and strategically.

For one and two, we have to ask officers to make split-second evaluations of risk. Hall didn't have a weapon, but was he big? Was he charging or running away? Was he screaming? At what point does any risk of bodily harm justify the use of deadly force? These are questions I can't answer in the specific case, but I do believe that police generally are too quick to use lethal force. In many ways, this is a learned response to policing a heavily armed society, but Hall was naked, so it's not like he was reaching for his belt. 

Still, we don't fix this problem just by giving individual officers better training. Cedric Alexander, director of the county public safety department, said this:

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.

More individualized training for officers is an unmitigated good. It is, however, also a limited solution. As with the death of Kristiana Coignard and Charley Robinet, along with so many others, we have to expand our lens and not look only at the moment of death.

What I want to know is why, in a situation that so clearly involved mental health issues - I mean, a naked man crawling around acting erratically is a mental health call - this officer ended up in the position where he killed Hall. Where is the crisis intervention team? Where are the mental health professionals? What teamwork has already been put in place between law enforcement and mental health?

De-escalation and crisis training are good. They might have kept Hill alive. I hold the officer responsible for shooting an unarmed naked man. But I want to know what the whole department, the whole state, is doing to prevent such deaths. The solutions have to be structural.

Time Frame and Police Shootings

Yesterday CNN published my new essay on the shooting of a black, homeless, disabled man by the LAPD. I argue that the focus on whether of not "Africa," as the man was known, was reaching for a gun, is the wrong question. Instead, use-of-force incidents should be assessed by taking a broad time frame, looking at the decisions that led up to the violence.

I am writing a longer piece on the upcoming Supreme Court case for Al Jazeera, out sometime in the next few weeks, and so have been thinking about that specific issue a lot, and learning from Seth Stoughton, a law professor at South Carolina. After the Africa shooting, I reached back out to him for more information.

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 an email, Seth wrote me to clarify slightly. "The failure to accommodate Ms. Sheehan’s disability isn’t the basis of the Fourth Amendment claim. The Fourth Amendment claim is for an unreasonable seizure (and one reason this seizure was arguably unreasonable is because officers knew of her disability)."

That's my fault for trying to compress the whole case into a single sentence, and I appreciate Seth clarifying. You should also read this storify of his tweets on the concept of tactical restraint, as I think it's critical for re-imagining policing.

One criticism of every piece critical of police violence is the argument that the suspect should have just complied with commands and he or she would have been fine. Therefore, the failure to not comply justifies the death or violence.

I need your help pushing back against that when you see the argument and have the energy to do so. To make it clear that for people with disabilities, failure to comply may not be a choice, and best practices offer other ways to approach such situations. There will always be moments in which police need to use deadly force. It may even be true that there was no way to approach Africa without violence resulting, though I am skeptical of this. I believe he was another victim of the cult of compliance, and there will be more. Probably within a few days.

Lavall Hall - The Cult of Compliance Claims a New Victim

It started, as it so often does, with a family member calling 911 for help for a loved one in mental

health crisis. Lavall Hall was outside, in Miami Gardens, when police arrived. He had a broomstick.

Miami Gardens police officers Peter Ehrlich and Eddo Trimino fired their Tasers at Lavall Hall after he struck them with the metal end of a broomstick. The Tasers had no effect. Then they chased Hall for about half a block before he turned and charged at them. As Hall neared, Trimino fired his gun five times, striking Hall twice, once in the arm, and the kill shot to his chest. Hall was still alive and “struggling” when the officers handcuffed him and placed him faced down on the street. He died moments later.

Note - He was running away and the police chased. Then when he turned, they were too close to maintain space. As I wrote about for the death of Kristiana Coignard and Kajieme Powell, the minute we enter a situation where the police have decided that the suspect must obey commands or be shot, shooting is inevitable. Here's Hall's death as described by the chief [my emphasis]:

That version of Sunday morning’s violent encounter between Lavall Hall, 25, and the two Miami Gardens cops came from Miami Gardens Police Chief Stephen Johnson, as he addressed the media at police headquarters Tuesday night.

“Tremino encountered the subject and gave him several commands. He continued to be combative,” said Johnson. “They did the best they could.”

They may well have done the best they could. But they didn't do enough. 

As Hall headed east on Northwest 191st Street, Tremino gave chase. “Mr. Hall at that time began to physically attack the officer,” Johnson said.

After hitting Tremino in the head with the broomstick, Johnson said Tremino fired his Taser. It had no effect. Hall headed south on Northwest Second Court, about half a block from his home. Tremino continued to chase. As Hall turned and charged toward the officer, Johnson said Tremino fired his weapon five times.

“He gave him several commands,” said Johnson.

Ehrlich was treated at the scene. Tremino went to the hosptial and received stitches. Both officers are on paid administrative leave. Johnson said both officers are veterans who have received crisis intervention training.

CIT is useful, but it's not a panacea. Maintain distance, call backup, be ready to gang tackle even if it means being hit with a broom handle.

These officers will be found innocent of any wrong doing (let alone criminal charges), but once it became a comply-or-die situation, that's a death sentence for people with psychiatric disabilities who cannot comply.

And so Lavall Hall is dead. Last week it was a man throwing rocks in Pasco. The week before, Coignard.

Who will die next week because police insist that people in mental health crisis be normal or be killed?

Mental Health and Policing - One Day's News

Yesterday, CNN published a piece of mine on the death of Kristiana Coignard. Here's how she died [warning - the video is very disturbing, so follow the link with caution]:

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.

What lessons do we draw this death? I write:

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.

I further suggest that just as police are likely to be over-aggressive when confronting black men, here they were under-aggressive, and that proved just as dangerous. Consistent stabilization tactics must be applied in all circumstances, rather than only when police are fully aware of a mental health crisis. The good news is that many law enforcement officers around the country are practicing just this. The bad news is that too many people are still dying.

I have various searches that deliver articles to me about the intersections of disability and policing. Every day, I read about deaths, trials, exoneration, commitments, and new ideas for training. Here's just a partial skimming of yesterday's news

Phillipsburg, New Jersey - Police shooting of man with a knife in mental health crisis ruled justified.

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.

My question - why enter the home? Was Read actually threatening anyone from inside his apartment? Why not invest the scene with patience, rather than charging in. Once the officers had entered the home, Read's death was guaranteed.

No charges for Michigan police who shot Aura Rosser, a woman holding a knife and in mental heath crisis.

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.”

This is a more difficult situation, strategically, as Rosser clearly was threatening Stephens at the time, forcing an intervention by police. I don't know enough about the timing and layout to know whether the TASER could have been used first before firing. If I hadn't read hundreds of these kinds of reports, I'd assume the officers had no choice. But I have read hundreds of these reports, and too often the officers place or keep themselves in proximity to the victim, allowing them to threaten the officers and thus drawing fire.

Mental health is cited explicitly in only one of these dozen officer-involved shootings in midstate Pennsylvania counties, but reading through some, I have my suspicions that others also involved psychiatric disabilities. The one is important, though:

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.

So, Snyder had a gun and held the officers at bay for fourteen hours. It's hard to argue with this one on an immediate tactical level. Instead, we'd have to look at the failings of our mental health systems that let matters escalate to this level.

Last November, a Shelby Township man suspected of psychiatric disability barricaded himself inside his house and held police at bay for over two hours. He fired three shots, but was taken peacefully into custody. Now:

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.

That's one day's news.

Lately, I've been told that the intersection of policing and disability is a niche issue, not a big societal concern. I've had trouble getting traction for some of my stories and pitches as a result.

It's not, though. The niche is us. The niche is humanity. We're all in it, and if not today, then tomorrow, or the next one, as our bodies age and change, as family members are diagnosed, as we come to understand the limitations our conception of normal.

Tomorrow, there's going to be more news, and whether it makes the news or not, soon another death.

Portland Police

The Portland OR police department has been sanctioned by the DoJ for its handling of cases involving people with psychiatric disabilities. There's been too many deaths, too many tasings, too much violence, too much ignorance.

Now, Portland has announced a new policy.

The Portland Police Bureau has drafted a much-expanded policy that stresses the need for officers to recognize behaviors "characteristic'' of mental illness and safely de-escalate encounters.
The new "Mental Health Crisis Response''directive requires officers to use special skills to avoid unnecessary violence and potential civil liability.

As Scott Kaufman writes over at Rawstory:

According to the new policy, police “are not expected to diagnose mental or emotional conditions, but are expected to recognize behaviors that are indicative of persons affected by mental illness or in crisis, with a special emphasis on those that suggest potential violence and/or danger.”
If officers judge that the person is suffering from a mental illness or is in an acute state of crisis, instead of confronting them, they are strongly encouraged to disengage and reevaluate the situation with the assistance of a supervisor or a member of the Enhanced Crisis Intervention Team (ECIT).
“Non-engagement or disengagement are tactics that can be used if the member determines that contact or continued contact with the person will result in an undue safety risk to the person, the public and/or members,” the new policy states.
“A police report will be written documenting the following: details of the call; reasons for non-engagement or disengagement; actions taken to deescalate the situation; actions taken to promote safety; follow up plans and referrals made, and whether the address is flagged” in a database containing the names of people who have previously had mental episodes.

 Scott calls this: "just back off."

I've written about this a lot over the last two years. So many incidents would not have gone wrong if the officer took steps backwards instead of steps forward. Once they are close to a person in mental health crisis, especially if they have a knife or even just their hands, officers feel threatened, and once they feel threatened they can use force. The only solution is to back away.

The problem is this - backing away runs directly counter to the cult of compliance, so training is critical. It's got to kick in early in an incident (and there are many law enforcement trainers working on just this).

I'll be watching the comment period and how this plays out closely.

Disabled Black Man Holding Spoon Killed by Police. Racists Cheer.

In Texarkana on Monday, a woman called 911 (click for the call) at around 2 AM to report a person in her garage. The woman was frightened and said that she heard banging on the windows from the person in the garage. A police office came to investigate, and found an African-American man holding something in his hand. The officer said the individual came at him in an aggressive manner, and so fired at him, killing him.

The man was Dennis Grigsby. From the article, "Family members say Grigsby had mental problems." He was holding a spoon, the officer said with the handle up, and the officer thought it was a knife.

The local NBC affiliate reports:

"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."

His mother said.

"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.

I don't have any information on Dennis' disability, but readers of this blog know how these stories play out, because they happen again and again and again. In this case, Dennis wandered from his house, ended up in the garage, and then started making noise. Perhaps he was trying to get out and was confused. Perhaps he merely was interested in the spoon and the windows. We don't know.

The police officer demanded he comply and shot him when he didn't. It's fairly clear to me that the police officer followed his training, although a man alone in a garage with a metal object is, I believe, someone you could back away from instead of forcing compliance. That's a police strategy point I come back to a lot. There are often other options unless someone is in imminent danger, but we lack the details to judge this one right now.

UPDATE: Notice, though, how the police are reporting the story. Scott Eric Kaufman (of RawStory, but in an email conversation, and quoted with permission), said: "And really, "shank of the spoon"? They're pre-weaponizing it to make the shooting more plausible."

So, another person with disabilities killed by police, as is true of at least 50% of all people killed by police. This one had a spoon. Whether or not the officer should be held accountable is a question I can't answer, but I can demand that this be considered a tragedy and that our thoughts be with Dennis and his family.

That's not, of course, what's happening, at least not in some places. I want to focus now on the combination of hate, mistrust, ignorance, and ableism in this Facebook thread from the local news, in which some white folks show just how much they either don't get it or don't care. You can click on their profiles, see their beautiful children, their boats, their love of football, their pretty lives, all while reading their lack of empathy for Dennis.

It's a morass of pro-violence speech, reinforcing the #cultofcompliance, saying that if you don't obey a cop, you deserve to die. One says she feels so sorry ... for the cop. Few express sadness for the victim. Many bluster with bravado, saying that if someone broke into their home, they'd kill them before the cops had a chance (and I believe them). Lots of comment trashing liberals and the liberal media. Lots of comments linking this killing to Garner and Brown and so many others.

It's loaded with ableism, people saying that if Grigsby was so "mentally challenged," he should have been in a home. Here's a sampling.

Brandy Thorn If he was that mental then he should have been in a home not someone else home!

Jo Ann Hill Odom Thank you Brian , if he was that mentally challenged , why was he not in a facility that could take care of him ? Does not make sense that he was able to make the decision to even break into someone's house if that mentally ill . Mental illness is a very bad thing for any family to deal with and sometimes they can not control the person with the mental illness because they get out of control , so I do understand the hurt that his parents and family are feeling ! I do understand both sides if this story and I think Channel 12 is doing a great job with this story cause they are covering both sides of it with all the details they have ! We have to have officers on the street to protect us ! If not what would this world be ???? Just saying ......

Dakotah Klein Put you damn hands up!!! It's not that hard. Even go to the ground. You retards wanna play badasses till you get 3 in your chest.

And then there's this.

Ray says - call a crackhead if you hate cops. 

Stuart, in what I think is a libertarian critique, shows a picture of what is likely Nazi (or other fascist execution), saying "Never forget that this was legal at the time ...what unjust actions has your government codified into action?"

Then Kenny says that everyone on death row should be treated this way, pistol to the back of the head. Save the taxpayers some money. 

This is the divide in America. That even in a situation when police kill a black man with intellectual disabilities who was only holding a spoon, there's no sympathy, no empathy, and certainly no second thoughts. The Cult of Compliance lives on in these people. 

Sheehan vs San Francisco

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) took the case of Sheehan vs San Francisco.

In 2008, Sheehan, who has schizophrenia, threatened her social worker with a knife, then threatened the two police officers who came after. They called for backup. Before backup arrived, the police broke into her apartment, pepper sprayed her, then shot at her 5 or 6 times. Sheehan survived and was charged with assault, but sued the police department and the city under the Americans with Disabilities Act, claiming that the decision to go in without backup was not reasonable given her disability.


A federal judge threw out the case (he's the brother of Justice Breyer, who will recuse himself), but the 9th Circuit said it should go to a jury. Now SCOTUS will rule.

Here's what I wrote for CNN in August about police violence and disability:

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?

So now SCOTUS is going to rule, more or less, on that question. I am not optimistic, but I am not a SCOTUS expert or a legal scholar or a lawyer. I have no real idea how this question will fit into the general legal opinions of the various justices.

But I am glad the argument is getting its day in court. I'll hope that at least someone writes a pro-accomodation opinion that I can use, even if it's a dissent. We need to shift the rhetoric.

I'm going to try and go to DC to hear the arguments in the spring and will report back.

UPDATE: Think Progress has a good summary of the case here.

#CultofCompliance - Bessemer, AL - Intersection of race and disability.

Donald Ray “Hambone” Wilson, an African-American man has schizophrenia. This fact was known to the police. He was shot in the chest.

In this video, he is surrounded by police as he holds a steak knife. He is clearly in mental health crisis and as the police engage into close proximity, they become in danger of being stabbed. Until the police got so close, no one was in danger.

At one point he makes a little fake lunge, then stands still. He is then shot.

As I have written about before (Milton Hall in Detroit, Kajieme Powell in St. Louis), a psychiatrically disabled person with a knife presents intense complications for the police. Shooting the individual, however, has to be an absolutely last-ditch response.

The first response should be to keep distance and employ patience.

The second response should be to use non-lethal force: takedowns, tasers, beanbag rounds. To me, these are a DISTANT second. To a law enforcement professional whose opinion I respect, they are a closer second. Either way, they come LONG before shooting someone in the chest.

I see these stories every week, sometimes multiple times a week. They frequently, though not exclusively, involve people of color, and I do not want to erase that. These are stories about the deadly (or near deadly in this case) intersections of race and disability. They need to be put together so that the patterns emerge, rather than the individual cases standing out as aberrations.

That's my plan for the next 6 months. Put these stories together. More to come soon.

Tanesha Anderson - Another Disabled Person Killed by Police

So here's the pattern. The family of a person with psychiatric disability decides that they need help. The disabled person isn't taking their medicine. They are perhaps seeming violent or might become violent. The family calls the police to ask for help getting the person to the hospital.

Police arrive. The person with the disability behaves in an unpredictable manner. The person with the disability behaves in a stubborn manner, not complying with orders the way a neurotypical person might. Police get violent. The person who the police were there to help dies or gets seriously hurt.

Add race to the equation, and the likelihood of that violence intensifies.

The newest victim of this pattern is Tanesha Anderson.

The Family calls for help:

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.

The police say:

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."

Anderson's brother says:

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.

Here's the thing I want to emphasize: At no time was anyone in danger. At no time was Anderson a danger to herself or others. The police just decided that because she wasn't complying, it was time to tackle her and she died. An accident, yes. The police didn't intend for her to die.

They just intended to control her to the ground, and now she's dead.

Police and Psychiatrically Disabled Individuals with Weapons

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

And then followed a lively Twitter conversation.

I follow Lowery due to his great work in Ferguson, and am glad someone @mentioned me in the conversation to draw me in. The case in question is about the Justice Department not finding anyone culpable in the 2012 shooting death of a man with a penknife who didn't comply. Regular readers will know my phrase - "the cult of compliance" - which comes into such striking clarity in events like this.

What's interesting, and tragic, to me, is that when someone gets beaten or killed in a situation like this, the emphasis is always on the final moment. Police surround or approach an armed individual with mental illness, demand the person comply, they don't comply, and then they kill him or her. The officers are then usually exonerated by the justice system, because at that final moment, there was a real threat to the officers.

But it's possible to re-imagine a strategic approach to such situations to make that threat less likely to occur.

1. Is there a threat? I contend that a man with a knife standing nowhere close to other people is not an imminent threat. Officers who are aware of the mental illness component have to respond differently than they might in other circumstances. For example, here's a video/reports of a drunk white guy with a rifle - police are very careful not to push it to an aggressive confrontation and the situation gradually de-escalates.

Compare that to this case, in which police swarm (warning, video is disturbing) to try and take control, resulting in death.

Part of this is, surely, racial.
Part of this, too, is the knife vs gun. It's less threatening but also seems to mandate a fast response.

I'll be interested to hear what my police readers (yes, I have police readers, smart folks who really want to build better police procedures) say.

2. If there is a threat, what is the least violent way of dealing with it? I am no fan of TASERS, but they exist precisely for situations like this. Police are, however, legally authorized to use their firearms when confronted with a threat to themselves, and a person close by with a knife is a threat.

The 2012 story in Michigan keeps playing out. I talked about it in this CNN piece on 4 police killings in August.  It's the story of Kajieme Powell, who had a small knife. Michelle Cusseaux, who had a hammer. It's the story of every mentally ill (I prefer the term psychiatric disability, for reasons I spell out in the article) individual, especially people of color, who are holding a weapon, are not an imminent threat, but who get killed.

I argue that once police engage and create a dynamic in which the person with the disability has to drop their weapon and comply, or be shot, being shot is inevitable. I wrote, "In each case, police demanded that a disabled person choose between not being disabled or getting shot. Now four more people are dead." And more people will die.

Looking at the whole, I conclude:

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.

I'm increasingly sure that while CIT - AKA the "memphis model" -  provides training and resources for LEOs who take the classes, this particular set of training doesn't save the life of armed mentally ill individuals. Instead, the police have to decide that shooting is the genuinely last resort and avoid creating the "comply or die" or rather "be not disabled or die" situations.

When shooting is genuinely the last resort, and no one is at risk, you don't charge in to take command of the situation, but rather keep maximum space between you and the individual. You deploy maximum patience. This goes significantly against standard police training, but ... it's possible.

And here's the final piece - all of these procedures that might save the lives of people with psychiatric disabilities, they could save your life too. They should become standard.

#CultOfCompliance - Thought Crime and Involuntary Commitment

Today's stories about compliance take a different spin. Thankfully, no one is being shot or tasered by the police in these examples. Two men have, however, been involuntarily committed for what they might do in the future.

One is an English professor. His case has not made the news but he was involuntarily committed and tweeted about it. I understand there has been some misinformation and definitely misinformed speculation (I was responsible for some of it). It's put the issues of involuntary commitment front and center, especially given the next case.

The other wrote science fiction set centuries in the future. He worked at a school. His story was set at a future school, beset by violence. And then he was taken for a mandatory emergency psych eval, his home and school were searched for weapons and drugs, and as far as I know he remains un-free. More details below.

When police justify violence, they often speak as follows: I told the person to comply, they didn't comply, so I felt there was an imminent danger to me, I felt at risk or threatened, so I had no choice but to shoot/taser/beat the individual. I'm sure I have hundreds of those justifications in my file by now.

In my work on the cult of compliance (click here for the overview), though, I am arguing that such incidents reflect a broader cultural veneration of compliance, a decreasing tolerance for risk, and the rise of authoritarian strains more generally in our society. As people with disabilities often behave in unpredictable ways, a compliance-driven society will tolerate such unpredictability less and less, which is my point of entry into the broader issue.

Involuntary commitment is predicated on incarcerating someone for actions that they have not taken yet. It's based on predicting imminent danger. As such, it's subjective (though there are medical requirements), it's been historically subject to immense abuse, and it's one of the topics on which my research is going to focus over the next few months.

Involuntary commitment is an important tool for law enforcement and mental health treatment. The problem is that it has frequently been abused as a way of enforcing social norms or even for eugenic purposes. Deviancy often gets classified as a mental illness, mental illness gets classified as a danger to society, a danger to society requires incarceration, and into institutions the deviant is forced.

Here's an excellent overview of the history of involuntary commitment. People familiar with Queer history are very much aware of the dangers here, because homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder subject to psychiatric treatment and commitment and such things as shock therapy (i.e. torture to remove homosexuality). Here's an upbeat piece on "danger" redefined, saying things are pretty good now (and they are much better). Here's a consumer factsheet on your involuntary commitment rights from HHS (that word consumer baffled me).

Alicia Curtis, the author of the overview, notes some of the complexities of the situation. She writes:

Dr. Paul Chodoff, who has written several articles on the topic, points out that the focus of the involuntary commitment law on "imminent harm" as the main criterion for commitment, leads psychiatrists to feel frustrated that their work is aimed more at serving the police state in keeping dangerous people off the streets than in carrying out the aims of psychiatry. He argues that the involuntary commitment law should be broadened to allow commitment of those with a mental illness who need hospitalization due to the severe state of their illness, whether they are dangerous or not.

Chodoff is right to some extent. For a long time, people with psychiatric disabilities (for illness vs disability, see here. When I use "illness" I am intentionally mimicking common use, not endorsing it) were routinely committed. Then we as a society moved away from that model, leading in some cases to better inclusion in communities. In too many cases, though, it's led to homelessness and the rise of prisons as the de-facto institution for the mentally ill.

Moreover, every time there is a mass shooting in which "mental illness" is involved, politicians and law enforcement call for looser involuntary commitment laws (see Sandy Hook). In fact, right after that event, a teacher was committed for buying a gun and claiming that the government was behind the massacre. Maybe he was a danger; I don't know. He denies it. And I don't agree with his conspiracy theory, of course. Still, I see involuntary commitment function, in many cases, as a tool of social control. And that worries me.

So these are the debates. What is the best way to manage situations when we perceive a risk of harm to self or other by someone who cannot, by themselves, seek help? How can we avoid the abuses of the past?

Here's the recent story.

Patrick McLaw writes science fiction. He teaches, well, taught, language arts at a school in Cambridge, MD. One book, The Insurrectionist, tells the story a huge school shooting in the 29th century (i.e. 900 years from now). McLaw is black. He is 23. He writes under an alias.

As near as I can tell, based on reports, he was suspended from his job, banned from school property, and involuntarily committed. Law enforcement swept the school and his home, finding no weapons or explosives.

And then there's this.

With school starting Tuesday, some parents tell WBOC they are concerned about safety, but both Wagner and Phillips said there is nothing to worry about.
"There will be a Cambridge Police Department presence at Mace's Lane middle school for as long as we deem it necessary," Wagner said.
"I think that the various police agencies that we have, working in conjunction with the board have a handle on the situation and I think we're going to have a safe and happy opening day of school tomorrow," Phillips said in an interview Monday with WBOC.

Reaction to the case from Reason, DailyKOS, The Atlantic. There's been lots of links made to Soviet practice of incarcerating dissident artists, but I think that's not what's going on here.

Rather, this is about a demand for thought-compliance. To think about a school massacre is to create the possibility that one might do it. Any evidence of violence must be met with overwhelming response - loss of freedom, loss of job, public exposure.

And then the kids can have a "safe and happy opening day of school" in our zero tolerance, and highly compliant, world.