New Police Policy Urged After Slaying : Law enforcement: Some say officer could have avoided shooting the mental patient. County closes the ward from which he escaped.

In the aftermath of a fatal shooting of a club-wielding mental patient, advocates for the mentally ill Tuesday called for changes in police procedure, and county officials closed the ward from which a Santa Paula man escaped minutes before his death last weekend.

Arguing that Ventura patrolman Brian Hewlett could have avoided shooting 28-year-old Ernesto Garcia on Sunday, local leaders of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill insisted that the Police Department should alter its regulations so people with mental problems are treated like patients, not criminals.

Alliance President Irene Watts said officers dispatched to situations involving escaped patients should carry non-lethal weapons, such as shotguns that discharge canvas bags of pellets, as their primary weapons if force becomes necessary.

Officers should also be trained to keep their distance from suicidal patients, she said, so they are not forced into violent confrontations, as witnesses say occurred on Sunday.

“You can’t go around shooting people like they’re wild dogs,” Watts said. “They’re people born with mental illness and are incapable of doing anything about it.”

Meanwhile, county mental health officials closed a five-bed ward from which Garcia--who had attempted suicide and was being held 72 hours for treatment--fled Sunday before scaling a 5 1/2-foot-high fence.

With the closure, patients would have to climb an 8-foot wooden perimeter fence to escape the Ventura County Medical Center on Hillmont Avenue.

“We’re reducing our capacity from 35 [patients] to 30, and we’re doing it immediately,” Mental Health Director Randall Feltman said.

About two patients a month escape from the psychiatric facility next to the county hospital in central Ventura, he said. It was not designed to house unstable patients, and fire codes prevent most doors and windows from being locked, but alarms sound when a patient tries to escape.

A $7.1-million mental health building where patients can be properly contained is under construction and expected to be completed by next spring.

Still, despite community concern about fleeing patients, none has ever harmed a member of the public in the 25 years the facility has been open, Feltman said.

“This isn’t about dangerous mentally ill people who get out and hurt someone else,” he said. “They get out and hurt themselves.”

Two escaped patients, however, have committed suicide in the last three years. Another mental patient escaped from the adjacent county hospital--not the mental health unit--in 1992 and fatally stabbed a 90-year-old woman in the surrounding neighborhood. That sparked resident outrage and prompted construction of the 8-foot-high wooden fence around the clinic.

Mental health advocates said Tuesday that the county still has done too little to make the unit secure.

“Why aren’t they using their resources, instead of relying so much on the police?” asked Lou Matthews of the Alliance.

She and others also said that Garcia’s tragic death highlights the lack of training by Ventura police officers, despite frequent calls for their assistance at the mental health facility.

“When they’re called they know it’s the mental health unit, so why would they send a fellow out there with a gun,” said Betty Ryerson, a past president of the 100-member Alliance, whose members are usually parents of the mentally ill.

After a preliminary inquiry, Ventura police officials disagreed. Though still investigating, they have tentatively concluded that Officer Hewlett had no choice but to use deadly force to protect himself.

Police officials also have found that Hewlett acted within department policy when he shot Garcia as the man moved toward him, quickly closing from 15 to 20 feet away to about six.

Department policy--and statewide law enforcement training standards--allow officers to use deadly force when they fear for their lives or the lives of others.

But Watts, the local Alliance president, said Hewlett should have stayed further away from Garcia until the sandbag shotgun he had requested arrived--about one minute after the shooting, as it turned out.

“That stun gun does work,” she said. “He had no business being that close. It’s improper training.”

Dan E. Weisburd, past president of the statewide Alliance for the Mentally Ill and a lecturer at the sheriff’s training academy in Los Angeles County, said Watts is right.

“I think her recommendation is absolutely correct,” he said. “Time is on the officers’ side. . . . Essentially, they should speak softly, take their time and give the patient a lot of space.”

About two years ago, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department embraced Weisburd’s proposal to pair deputies and mental health workers to respond to confrontations with mental patients.

Six teams have been formed at a start-up cost of $900,000 with a yearly operating budget of $400,000, officials said. The program has drawn nationwide interest, they said.

Program coordinator Nancy Boyd, a mental health nurse, said that the county has saved money overall by assisting psychiatric patients instead of putting them in jails or expensive hospitals.

And over the past 18 months, the special Mental Evaluation Teams have intervened in more than 150 standoffs, and not one has led to violence.

“We’re dressed in plain clothes and ride in unmarked cars. There is not a weapon showing.”

Her counterpart with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, Sgt. Barry Perrou, said the key to the program’s success is that officers know they have a backup team skilled at defusing situations--and are not reluctant to use it.

“If it’s a bomb, he’ll call in the bomb squad. If it’s a person who’s mentally ill, he’ll call in our team,” Perrou said. “I’m sure there are situations which are far beyond talk, but we haven’t had any.”

Perrou, who also teaches crisis containment techniques at the Sheriff’s Academy, said he could not comment on Garcia’s death in Ventura County.

“But suicide by cop is becoming very common,” he said. “So we have to guard not only our safety but the safety of the patient or suspect.” He said that, in general, officers responding to suicidal mental patients should use the same techniques as his crisis teams--making sure the public is not in danger, and calming down the patient.

A spokesman for the Ventura Police Department said Hewlett did exactly that last Sunday. The officer trailed Garcia by about 20 feet, talking calmly and compassionately, but was still close enough to react if the patient moved to the roadway to swing his three-foot board at a car or toward a nearby house, Lt. Pat Miller said.

“It was a very calm, collected approach,” Miller said. “I just cannot fault those tactics.”

Local mental health officials said they also think Hewlett acted professionally and well.

“Our employees did not see anything the officer could have done differently,” said Penny Matthews, chief of acute care services at the mental health unit. “The officer was trying to back away, but he wasn’t allowed [by Garcia] to back away.”

However, Matthews said she would like to see Ventura Police policy changed so that all patrol cars are equipped with a shotgun rigged to fire 1 1/2-ounce canvas bags used to disarm unruly suspects in situations similar to Sunday’s.

A mental patient who had climbed atop the mental health building last year was subdued by police using such a beanbag gun, she said.

Lt. Miller, however, said that the Garcia shooting revealed no gaps in training, nor the need for more non-lethal weapons.

The $800 beanbag shotguns are placed only in supervisors’ cars because the department does not want the controversial, experimental weapons used without a supervisor’s second opinion.

“We want to be real careful how we use these,” he said.