“I’m always going to regret calling the police…” Sister Didn’t Expect Police To Put Knee On Brother’s Neck During Mental Crisis

Angelo Quinto, 30, was handcuffed on the floor by police responding to a mental health crisis in December. He died three days later in a hospital. (credit John. L. Burris law offices)

(2-22-21) Images of a white police officer with his knee pressed against George Floyd’s neck last year set off peaceful protests and rioting amid demands for police accountability. What often has been overlooked is that individuals with serious mental illnesses are 16 times more likely to be killed by police and nearly half of all deaths at the hands of the police involve individuals with disabilities. D. J. Jaffe, before his death, reported that 120 police officers also had been murdered by individuals with serious mental illnesses.

While we continue to argue about alternatives to having law enforcement respond when someone is in the midst of a mental crisis, more individuals die. This recent example involves possible head trauma, something we are hearing more about with returning veterans and hits to the heads of pro football players. TBIs can lead to anxiety, depression, paranoia, and suicide. Regardless of whether a crisis is caused by a TBI or a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, we must find a better way to protect the lives of those in the midst of a crisis and those sent to respond. From The Washington Post:

Navy veteran in mental health crisis died after police knelt on his neck for nearly five minutes, his family says

By Tim Elfrink

The Washington Post 2-22-2021

Angelo Quinto lay facedown on the hardwood floor of his mother’s bedroom with blood pooling out of his mouth and his hands cuffed behind his back.

“What happened?” his mother, Cassandra Quinto-Collins, breathlessly asked two police officers huddled over his body in a video she shot of the Dec. 23 scene in their Antioch, Calif., home.

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Who’s To Blame For This Death? She Refused Help and Shelter

by Pete Earley

Photo from Reddit

(2-18-21) From My Files Friday: What becomes of Americans living on our streets when freezing weather blankets our country? I posted this blog nearly eleven years ago! Are any of us naive enough to believe that this preventible tragedy is not being repeated as we stay warm in our homes sheltered from the cold?

WHO IS TO BLAME FOR THIS DEATH?

The residents of Morrisville, Pa., got an insider look at our troubled mental health care system. Paulette Wilkie, a homeless woman with a long history of schizophrenia, was found dead from exposure. The 56 year-old woman’s body was discovered behind Ben’s Deli, a sandwich shop that she frequented.

Temperatures the night before had dropped into the mid 20s. But that was not cold enough to trigger the county’s emergency homeless plan. Temperatures must sink to 20 degrees or below for two consecutive days before teams can be dispatched to try to persuade homeless persons to come indoors.

Reporter Ben Finley, writing in the Bucks County Courier Times, noted that people who knew Wilkie said she likely would not have gone into a shelter anyway. The owner of Ben’s Deli said Wilkie refused help from people concerned about her safety and health.

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Slammed Trump Report Contains Worthwhile Mental Health Recommendations Despite Charges Of Political Bias.

by Pete Earley

(2-16-21) Recommendations by a Trump appointed commission studying ways to, among other things, improve law enforcement interactions with those in a mental health crisis are well-worth reading – despite heavy criticism aimed at the panel for being politically partisan and apparently violating federal open meeting requirements.

Shortly after the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice was appointed in January 2020, I warned in a blog that then-Attorney General William Barr was putting partisan politics above common sense in stacking the commission with pro-Trump officials or those who came from strong Trump voting districts rather than drawing from a wider swath of experts. A federal judge appointed by former President George W. Bush ruled last November that the panel was bias and had not notified the public about its meetings. He issued an order requiring it either to broadened its membership or include a disclaimer in its final report acknowledging his complaints. The panel chose to add the disclaimer.

Because of the political dust-up, the commission’s December report has been largely dismissed.

That’s a shame because several of its recommendations about mental illness are spot on.

Among them: create drop off centers rather than hauling those in crisis to jails and emergency rooms, make certain everyone booked into jail is screened for mental illnesses, increase police training about mental illnesses, do a better job triaging emergency calls, and create more treatment dockets.

The commission also called for ending the IMD exclusion, that prohibits federal Medicaid dollars from being used to reimburse facilities with more than 16 beds.

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My Only Sister Died. Nineteen Years Later, I Went Looking For Answers

by Pete Earley

(2-13-21) My only sister, Alice, died on this date fifty-five years ago after being struck by an automobile. I was 14 years-old at the time and it was my first experience with death. Nineteen years after her death, I awoke one night calling out her name. I realized that I had repressed most of my memories about Alice because her death was so painful. My good friend, Walt Harrington, who was an editor at the Washington Post, suggested I return to Colorado and investigate my own sister’s death as a reporter. The Post published my account in 1986. I am posting it today in her memory. With the passage of time, the hurt and memories fade, but in your heart, you still feel the loss.)

Missing Alice: The Story of My Sister

By Pete Earley for The Washington Post

Midway across Ohio, the man beside me on the DC-10 asked where I was going.

“Fowler, Colorado. A little town of about a thousand people near Pueblo.”

“Why would anyone go to Foouuller?” he asked, grinning as he exaggerated the name.

“A death. My sister.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled and turned away.

I was relieved. I didn’t have to explain that my sister had been dead 19 years. Alice was killed when I was 14. She was two years older and we had been inseparable as children.

I couldn’t talk about her death at first. My voice would deepen, my eyes would fill with tears. My parents would cry at the mention of her name, and we rarely spoke of her. Then it seemed too late.

After I left home, my mother would phone me each February 13 and remind me that it was my sister’s birthday. Year after year, I would forget — and find myself angry with my mother’s insistent reminders. It was just before last Christmas, as I shuffled boxes in the basement, that I ran across Alice’s picture and clipping describing her death.

“A tragic accident Tuesday, June 14, about 7:05 p.m., took the life of Alice Lee Earley…” I sat down on the concrete floor, closed my eyes and tried to picture her. I couldn’t. I tried to focus more sharply. Alice eating Sugar Pops beside me at the breakfast table. Alice washing the green Ford Falcon. Alice stepping on my toes while singing in Church.

The events I recalled vividly. Alice’s face I recalled not at all.

I could only see the girl in the photograph — an image I had never liked, the face being without joy or expression. But in my mind I found no other. For the next week, I seemed to think of Alice constantly.

One night I awoke in bed, turned to my wife, and said, “Alice, are you there?” It took me an instant to realize what I had done.

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Want Better Govt. Mental Health and Substance Abuse Programs? Let Us Help!

by Pete Earley

Bumper sticker on Pete’s old truck

(2-8-21) Let’s hope the Biden Administration takes advantage of a wonderful tool that could help the federal government better coordinate and prioritize its mental health programs.

The Interdepartmental Serious Mental Illness Coordinating Committee (ISMICC) was created in December 2016 by Congress to foster collaboration and shared accountability for the 8 federal agencies that deliver services to adults with serious mental illnesses (SMIs) and children and youth with serious emotional disturbances (SEDs) and their families.

Within a year, ISMICC’s first report was sent to Congress. Titled: The Way Forward: Federal Action for a System That Works for All People Living With SMI and SED and Their Families and Caregivers, the report offered 45 recommendations in five categories, that were drafted by ISMICC’s fourteen public members. As a parent representative on ISMICC, I focused on much needed criminal justice reforms.

Among the recommendations that I helped write:

support implementation of the sequential intercept model that identifies key moments when incarcerated individuals with SMI and SED can get into treatment,
support jail and prison diversion programs,
train all first responders on how to work with individuals with SMI and SED,
improve and streamline competency restoration services,
support therapeutic justice dockets for SMI and SED individuals,
require universal screening for SMIs and SEDs for every person booked into jail,
limit or eliminate solitary confinement, seclusion, restraint and other forms of restrictive housing for SMI and SED prisoners,
support post conviction recovery services,
support federal programs created to reduce incarceration of SMI and SED Americans.

These are lofty, but achievable goals.

After that report was issued, my 13 public colleagues and I got right to work with the 15 representatives from the government agencies and departments that administer SMI and SED programs.

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Is Conspiratorial Thinking A Psychiatric Sickness? What Are The Boundaries Between Rational Thought And Illness?

by Pete Earley

(2-5-21) In this guest blog, Joseph Meyer, the parent of an adult with a serious mental illnesses, ponders psychiatric illnesses, conspiratorial thinking, public policy and criminal justice.

Illness, Crime and Punishment

Guest Blog By Joseph Meyer

I think it was Ronald Reagan who said more than 40 years ago that some people make the choice to live homeless under bridges and in public squares. I have been reflecting on Reagan’s words and the history of psychiatric institutionalization as a political weapon used by authoritarian governments of the past. Together with a desire to cut taxes, a concern for the civil liberty of free choice is partly responsible for laws that make it difficult for family members of adults with psychiatric illnesses to get them off the streets and into treatment for delusions and their sometimes conspiratorial thinking that makes them reject help.

Whether motivated by free choice or psychiatric illness, conspiratorial thinking that preceded and catalyzed behaviors like the recent invasion of the US Capitol building is going to have legal or psychiatric consequences for the individuals actively involved.

Today, beliefs in conspiracies promoted by QAnon and like groups can be thought of as ‘delusional.’ Others often use that word in informal conversation to describe odd thinking and a Google search returns this definition from the Oxford English Dictionary:

‘An idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.’

During the political divide of the last four years or longer, that definition of delusional thinking would seem to fit conspiratorial thinkers, whether or not they have a psychiatric illness.

Recently, a large group of clinicians concerned about the psychiatric health of Donald Trump signed onto a letter calling for a rethinking of the Goldwater Rule that considers it unethical for psychiatrists to assess the behavioral symptoms of public figures who are not their patients from a distance and without a formal examination. Today’s conspiratorial thinking and activism raises questions about the difficulty of setting boundaries between what is normal and abnormal behavior.

How does one decide where the boundaries are between rational thought and clinical illness? How does the boundary affect public policy?

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Pete Earley

“I’m always going to regret calling the police…” Sister Didn’t Expect Police To Put Knee On Brother’s Neck During Mental Crisis

Navy veteran in mental health crisis died after police knelt on his neck for nearly five minutes, his family says