Crisis Skills Advised for Local Police

Ventura County law enforcement officers have fatally shot 32 suspects in the last decade, with more than half the cases involving a mentally ill person, according to a grand jury report released Tuesday.

With the elimination of mental health facilities--including the 1997 closure of Camarillo State Hospital--incidents involving mentally ill suspects will continue to rise, the panel concluded.

For this reason, grand jurors recommend police agencies increase their crisis intervention training for officers to help them better handle calls involving the mentally disturbed.

Such training will “decrease the number of police shootings,” the report concluded, and “the lives of citizens and police officers will, as a consequence, be saved.”

The panel’s recommendations include having peace officers attend 40 hours of specialized training before July 2003.

Additionally, 911 dispatchers should be included in the training, and refresher courses should be offered to those who already have been trained, the report determined.

“The police are becoming more sensitized to the issue of handling mentally ill patients and they understand they must deal differently with people who have these illnesses of the brain than with people who don’t,” said Supervisor John Flynn, a member of the county’s Mental Health Board.

Flynn agreed with the grand jury’s findings, but said the issue is far more complex. County officials, Flynn said, must do more to house and treat mentally ill residents instead of “locking them up in prisons and jails.”

Specialized Training Available at Academy

In its report, the grand jury acknowledged the county’s new Crisis Intervention Training Academy, which was established last year after the death of 56-year-old Thomas Patton of Thousand Oaks.

Patton was shot 26 times and killed by deputies after he confronted them with a knife outside his home. Authorities concluded that Patton was mentally disturbed and that deputies had acted reasonably.

Sheriff’s Capt. Kenton Rainey said Tuesday that all area law enforcement leaders have agreed to have at least 10% of their patrol forces attend the training.

In December, the first 25 peace officers graduated from the crisis intervention academy. Officials hope to conduct quarterly courses at the Ventura County Criminal Justice Training Center in Camarillo.

“Even before the grand jury finished its study, we were trying to do as much as possible,” said Eric Nishimoto, a sheriff’s spokesman.

To graduate from the crisis intervention academy, officers must attend four, 10-hour days of classes with instructors who include mental health experts, police officials and relatives of the mentally ill.

The officers learn details about various forms of mental illnesses and also visit a halfway house, where they speak with patients, Rainey said.

“This is a good thing,” Rainey said. “This training is so much more than what they get in the [county’s peace officer training] academy.”

That academy, held at the same Camarillo facility, offers cadets nine hours of training on recognizing and dealing with the mentally ill, Rainey said. The academy conducts a total of 957 hours of instruction.

The captain said he anticipated that a 10th of the patrol officers in Ventura County would be trained within two years. It is not clear whether the program will continue beyond that target.

Lobbying for a Higher Participation Rate

Supervisor Flynn said he would push to have all local peace officers trained.

“The number needs to be much higher [than 10%],” he said. “We have people out there, some schizophrenic, who are listening to voices and simply don’t know that what they are doing is wrong.”

Grand jurors compiled the five-page report after visiting the area’s police agencies and researching how officers and deputies respond to calls involving the mentally ill. In addition, each police agency gave the panel statistics on fatal shootings. Of the 32 suspects fatally shot since August 1992, at least 17 were people thought to be mentally ill, the panel found.

According to the report, Oxnard police had seven fatal shootings of mentally ill suspects during the time studied, the most of any area police agency.

Ventura City Councilman Neal Andrews, a former chairman of the county Mental Health Board, said the crisis intervention academy had already proven effective.

Andrews reviewed reports from seven officers who graduated from the program. They said that the lessons contributed to “positive outcomes” in several cases.

“This is a major advancement for law enforcement in this county,” Andrews said.