Mental Health Issues and Law Enforcement

On the street, there are easy ways and hard ways for Law Enforcment to help those with mental health issues.

The hard way, yet proper way, is to get a "Green Warrant" or Temporary Detainment Order.  This requires the Officer/Deputy to spend hours and hours of their time attempting to get Mental Health Officials to find a bed somewhere for this individual.  This is the long, hard way.  This often will involve their time and keep them off the street and unavailable for calls for up to twelve hours.  This will lead into overtime, or more likely "trade time" so the counties don't have to pay extra.  Understandably, most of the deputies/officers will tell us that their supervisors discourage them taking this course of action.

Unfortunately, the easy way is to arrest the individual.  It is quite easy to drum up a reason to help arrest an individual whom has an altered mental status.  Once the individual is under arrest, then it is up to the jail to get the new inmate assistance on their mental health issues.  The Officer/Deputy spends no more than an hour (often less) tied up with the arrest, and then they are back on patrol.  However, if you are the son of an influential politician (Say, Gus Deeds) then local law enforcement tend to treat you with kid gloves.  

Sometimes it is easy, such as getting their previous medical history and getting them back on their medications.  Sometimes the inmate needs to be seen by mental health and they will diagnose and medicate them while they are incarcerated.  Sometimes the inmate needs to be transferred to the state forensic facility in order to receive proper treatment...  but there are only a handful of state forensic facilities capable of handling inmates.   This is a long process for most inmates.

We had one inmate who was HUGE!  And he was dangerous.  Any time we dealt with him we had to pull multiple officers, we had to restrain the inmate, et al.  This inmate was assault and destructive.  Mentally, the best way to describe him as if there was no one home upstairs.  His behavior was random, and often he would not acknowledge other people.  We delt with him for a year, yet mental health kept claiming that he was faking the entire time.  It took a year of his behavior in jail (whereupon the judge kept kicking him out of court) before the forensic facility took the inmate.  That inmate is still in that facility.

But we had one inmate who's dad was a lawyer.  The kid was a little snot.  He took a small amount of a medication that I will not identify due to liability reasons.  That inmate refused his medications for a long time, and we knew that he was doing so in order to act out in court.  (This trick is a common trick among inmates.)  Well, he acts out in court and due to him having a well connected father and a well paid lawyer that inmate was in the forensic unit the next day.

Money talks.

What was odd to me was that the inmate came to court directly from the forensic unit, and got a slap on the wrist sentence.  The inmate still got jail time, just not much of it.  It was passed on from the security unit that the inmate tried to spit out his medications undetected in order to "freak out" in court a second time.  The way the news reported it, our facility neglected to give him proper mental health treatment.  We got the blame, because under HIPPA we can't make medical statements.  (I doubt that the media bothered to contact our agency in the first place, or if they did it was a last minute call and we didn't have time to prep a statement.)

Our mental health system is screwed up.  Part of the problem is that people don't want to work hard (or are discouraged from working hard) and do their job properly.  But often the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

We protect the guilty. But what about the innocent?

I merely must vent my frustration in that the criminals have more rights than us law abiding citizens.

While I shall not go into the details of the issue at this time, I will state that it looks like everything has turned out in my favor.  Unfortunately the whole situation has left a sour taste in my mouth.

That is all.

"Earning Respect" is not what you think it is.

I work in Corrections.  I've been at my agency for a pretty long time.  I've been involved in a lot of the operations at my facility and I'm cross trained in just about everything.

Suffice it to say, I get transferred around a lot.  A lot of the supervisors want me in their section.  I work hard and I try to not push stuff up the chain of command unless it warrants it.  I have a good reputation at my agency and I do my best to uphold it.  

However, the down side of being transferred all over is that I don't normally get much time in a section.  I stay in each section for approximately a period of two years, so I'm often the "new guy" in the group.  

What irritates me is that there seems to always be a group of people with whom I have to "prove" myself to.  I have to show them that "I've got it."  

Guys, I've got a message for you.  I was dealing with drunks and 10-96's before you were out of high school.  I've dealt with some variation of just about every issue that we could have at our facility.  (I will admit that I've not experienced everything that could happen, and for that I am thankful.)  

But there are those that think everyone needs to "earn their respect."  Nothing I do is good enough to satisfy their ego.  If I'm working with an officer, I give them time to prove themselves.  If they make mistakes I work with them and help them improve.  

Recently we had a situation where an inmate had a shank.  (A shank is slang for an improvised knife.)  Two of the officers who demanded that I earn their respect and I were on scene dealing directly with said inmate.  They rushed on in and were hopping about and shouting, just out of arms reach of the inmate.  I'm behind them and I'm taking note of the scene.  I direct other responding officers into locking the other inmates on the unit down and I directed my focus on the inmate with the shank.  

The inmate had the shank in their hand, but their body language was not threatening.  As a matter of fact, the inmate was not saying anything at all, while my two irritants of an officers were gesturing and babbling like baboons.  

First lesson to take from this.  Concise verbal commands help greatly.  If you are shouting and panicking and talking over someone else, no one knows what you are talking about.  I pulled the first officer behind me and stopped the second officer from talking.  I addressed the inmate quite simply.  "Sir, it's not a good idea to have a weapon in the unit.  Do me a favor, please turn around and place your hands on the wall."  Voila!  Compliance.  The baboons did not realize that the inmate had gotten in over his head and wanted an easy way out.  

Second lesson.  There is the "21 foot rule" for edged weapons.  It's the reaction time against an attack.  My fellow officers had gotten just outside of arms length   They did not even position themselves with the tables between them and the inmate.  I had to put myself in a disadvantaged position just to protect two morons.  

Third lesson?  I'll write more up later, as it's getting late.  

After the incident, my to co-workers come up to me and let me know that I've earned their respect.  Really?  I'm so happy that I now have the respect of two fools who put me in danger.  

I tried to explain to them what they did wrong...  but they would not listen.  They didn't care.  I was hoping that our supervisors would light in to them...  but it was all grins and handshakes.  

I don't need your respect.  Do you think that was awesome?  I've had worse shank encounters the first year I was working!  I've got the scars to prove it!  OK, the scars are really tiny and only show up if I've got a deep tan...  but you get my point.  

Training in DT's.

I recently attended an advanced Defensive Tactics course.  It was rather informative and I walked away with some concepts that I'll definitely pass on.

I would like to state that when training in DT's, things may get a little rough.  I expect some pain, some bruises, and maybe even some bleeding.  It will happen. what I don't expect is other DT Instructors whining about people being too rough.

Seriously, I was asked to "go soft" a few times.  (Generally we go about 20% of full force for training but some want even less force used.)  Now, those same people would then resist the take down maneuver and laugh that I didn't have it.  When I applied additional force to lock in the take down, people would get upset.

If you want to resist, really resist and don't just pretend you are getting one over on me.  A few of the Instructors were very good sports and we did go at it a lot harder.  We actually had to use skill in order to get down to T-3.  That was a lot of fun!  There was one Instructor whom I will admit was stronger and much more skilled than I was, and I had a blast training with him.

Training.  Do it for real.  Don't just attend.

Field Training Officer

I've been training a new officer at my agency.  Seems OK, a little nervous but that is what training is for.

My only complaint?  Keys.  The key ring only has a limited amount of keys on it.  If you do not know which key opens a door, try all of them.  IN ORDER!  Don't pick one random key, then another random key, then on and on.  You will never find the key.  If you start with one key and work your way through then you will have tried all the keys.  And one will work!