Ex-Chief Speaks Out on Shootings of Mentally Ill

Outspoken former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates said Friday that the LAPD--along with city and county officials--needs to do more to prevent confrontations between officers and mentally ill and unstable people.

“Too often they wind up being killed,” Gates said of people in mental or emotional crises. “And it’s a tragedy. It’s a tragedy for them, it’s a tragedy for the officers, it’s a tragedy for the relatives . . . and we end up being sued. We can’t handle it.”

Gates, 74, who retired in 1992, decided to speak out on what he characterized as a long-standing problem after reading The Times’ two-part series on police shootings of mentally ill and unstable people. One of the series’ findings was that mistakes, bad tactics and poor training played a role in some fatal shootings of people who were mentally ill, unstable or on drugs.

In fact, Gates said such shootings “really weighed on” him during his 14-year tenure as chief.

“I’ve been there,” Gates said. “It is something I have internalized for a long period of time.”

Gates said he became concerned about such shootings in 1979, when two officers under his command shot and killed a woman named Eulia Love when a dispute over an unpaid gas bill escalated into a confrontation. That shooting, he recalled, created a firestorm of community protests, and “a lot of soul-searching” within the department.

Through the years, Gates said, his concern grew and grew “because many mentally ill people were being killed.”

“We can do things better,” he remembers thinking at the time.

Gates said he looked into the issue and found that officers in Los Angeles and elsewhere were unprepared for handling situations with people with mental disorders. He said that he tried to forge an alliance with county mental health providers so they could come up with a better response together, but that the many meetings ultimately “went nowhere.”

“We really tried desperately to get something going,” Gates said. “But the politicians didn’t follow up with money.”

One success cited by Gates was a partnership between the LAPD and the county Mental Health Department in the early 1990s to pair an officer with county mental health clinicians. The team could respond to police confrontations with the mentally ill.

But former county Mental Health Director Dr. Areta Crowell--who was a deputy director from 1971 to 1976 and again from 1979 to 1988--said that program was created by county officials and was only grudgingly accepted by the LAPD. In fact, she said, the LAPD under Gates resisted other initiatives suggested by mental health officials, including requiring officers to get more training in how to deal with the mentally ill.

Gates conceded Friday that he “could have done more”--and done it more quickly--in the wake of the Love shooting and similar fatal confrontations.

But, he said, budget cuts made such initiatives impossible, and reduced his force from 7,400 to 6,500 officers.

In any event, Gates said the LAPD, the City Council and the county should now use The Times’ reports--triggered by the May 21 fatal shooting of a homeless mentally ill woman, Margaret Mitchell--as an opportunity to make significant reforms.

Like current Chief Bernard C. Parks, Gates said county mental health officials should provide more outreach and response teams to aid people in mental crises, and to help the officers on the street who have to deal with them. They “have a responsibility here that’s as great as [that of the police], if not greater,” Gates said.

But the LAPD needs to do more, too, Gates said.

Now that it has about 10,000 officers and a bigger budget than in his day, Gates said, the LAPD should expand on its concept of having specially trained teams of officers and mental health clinicians who can defuse standoffs between patrol officers and mentally ill and unstable people.

The LAPD has only nine such Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Teams for the entire city, and they do not operate around the clock. Recently the LAPD resisted county efforts to provide money of its own to expand the program.

“You have to have them 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Gates said of the units.

Such units are not used to assist officers in most situations involving a person with a knife or other weapon. Gates said the LAPD should involve the special teams wherever possible, provided the civilian clinician’s safety is not jeopardized.

Gates also said the LAPD should consider creating a “cadre of highly trained” patrol officers in each division who would know how to defuse tense situations before they escalate to the point where deadly force is needed.

Those special officers could acquaint themselves with mental health outreach workers and advocates in the community, as well as the mentally ill people themselves so they can know their backgrounds and how to handle them.

“They’d be able to say, ‘That’s old Joe; he’s off his medication again. How can we deal with this guy?’ ” said Gates.

Such programs are at the heart of a highly touted program developed 10 years ago by the Memphis, Tenn., Police Department in response to the fatal shooting of a mentally ill man.

Other cities have created their own models of the Memphis program. Earlier this week, the Los Angeles City Council voted to consider developing such a program and requiring more training of Los Angeles police officers.

But such training is enormously expensive, Gates said, adding: “I’d tell the council to shut their miserable mouths and put some money in there where their mouth is.”