Better Training for Police in Handling Mentally Ill Urged

Los Angeles City Council members called Tuesday on the Police Department to review and improve officers’ training in dealing with the mentally ill, including sending officers with special expertise immediately to the scenes of such confrontations.

Reacting to articles published in The Times this week, lawmakers said the department should rely on mental health experts and other professionals to determine the best methods of improving its training programs.

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg urged the department to thoroughly train a group of officers from every division and each shift, who could be called out immediately to any serious situation involving a mentally ill person and the police.

“We can’t just say, ‘Good luck, we hope you can handle this,’ ” Goldberg said. “It is not fair to ask the officers, whether they get four or 16 hours of training . . . to just go and do what people who get much more training as social workers do.”

The Times’ examination of police shootings found that a dozen mentally ill or unstable people were killed over the past six years in encounters involving questionable police tactics. Since 1994, LAPD officers have shot 37 people who were exhibiting irrational behavior, symptoms of mental disorders or adverse reactions to drugs; 25 of them were killed, according to police reports. LAPD recruits receive less than four hours of training on how to deal with the mentally ill.

As the council discussed the training issues with an LAPD commander who said he shared the lawmakers’ concerns, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks defended the department at a Police Commission meeting. Parks said he would give his civilian bosses a report addressing what he described as “graphic misinformation” in the articles.

The chief complained that in four of the five main cases analyzed by the paper, the victims’ irrational behavior was caused by “drugs as opposed to mental illness.”

One of those cases involved a man suffering adverse reactions to drugs; two others involved people with mental problems whose bloodstreams contained traces of drugs; a fourth case involved a dazed, suicidal man apparently experiencing an adverse reaction to a tainted marijuana cigarette; and a fifth involved an autistic man.

Some police use-of-force experts and mental health advocates said officers frequently don’t know whether a person’s irrational behavior is caused by drugs or mental illness or, as is often the case, both.

Regardless, “you treat them the same,” said D.P. Van Blaricom, a former police officer and police chief who frequently testifies as an expert on the use of force. “It sounds to me like [Parks is] just excusing it on the catch-all phrase of drug involvement. If that’s the official attitude of the Police Department, you are going to have more of the same.”

Others said that by focusing on drugs, Parks was ignoring the problems that the LAPD has in dealing with the mentally ill or unstable people. “They should be defusing violence not escalating it. And it looked to me like they made serious mistakes in each of those cases in escalating the violence,” said Richard Van Horn of the Los Angeles County Mental Health Assn.

Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, said: “The whole point is whether police are dealing with the mentally ill, not whether [the mentally ill] are on drugs. [Parks] owes those families an explanation, he owes the City Council an explanation and he owes the community an explanation.”

Cmdr. Willie Pannell, who oversees the Police Department’s training program, meanwhile, told the council that he too was concerned by the issues raised in the articles.

“I canceled my vacation this week to meet with experts and look at our training,” said Pannell, who voluntarily spoke to the council. “We’re going to be taking a comprehensive approach to training for our recruits, as well as our in-service training.”

In an interview, Parks also criticized The Times’ findings that LAPD detectives investigating the five shootings appeared to falsify information, distort witnesses’ statements or ignore damaging facts. “We will look into those issues, and when we find [The Times’] errors, we will report those,” he said.

Acting on a motion by Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who heads the Public Safety Committee, the council unanimously agreed to ask the LAPD to identify areas of possible improvement in its training program, including how officers can receive updated refresher courses throughout their careers. The department, Miscikowski said, needs a greater focus on dealing with the mentally ill and homeless.

The LAPD has a small group of specially trained officers who work with mental health clinicians, but they are not supposed to help officers in situations in which a suspect has a weapon. They make some visits to roll calls at police stations, but only one of these teams went to one of the 37 shooting scenes mentioned in The Times’ stories.

The Police Commission intends to consider a plan next week for a task force to examine LAPD tactics and training regarding the mentally ill.

The police shooting of Margaret Mitchell, a homeless woman in May, sparked an outcry. A report by the chief found that the shooting was within policy but that the officer’s tactics were poor, sources said.

Times staff writers Steve Berry and Josh Meyer contributed to this story.