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Her mentally ill son had grown increasingly agitated, so Barbara Nadir yelled at a neighbor to call 911. An hour and a half later, Peter Nadir was dead.
By LANE DeGREGORY
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 27, 2003
SAFETY HARBOR -- Barbara Nadir rolls her wheelchair to the kitchen table and stubs her cigarette into an overflowing ash tray. The table is buried in papers, mail, forms and releases she's supposed to sign. She had piled them by Peter's seat so it wouldn't look so empty.
She sparks another Ultralight. Shakes her head.
"Unnecessary," she says softly, sending up a cloud of smoke. "Totally unnecessary."
Three days ago she called the cops about Peter, her mentally ill son. He was running around screaming about the space shuttle blowing up and the United States going to war with Iraq and what would happen to Israel. Police told her to wait in her house while they handled things outside.
Then, after two agonizing hours, an officer knocked on her door.
"Just like that, he said it," she says. "And. Then. He. DIED."
That was Saturday. It's Tuesday now.
"I still don't understand," she says. "This didn't have to happen. . . ."
Her sister, Phyllis Willner, hands her a steaming mug of tea. "Now, drink this. Then you'll have to go get dressed. The funeral starts in an hour." Barbara sucks her cigarette.
"I just want to know what happened," she says. "What went wrong?"
Gone are the days when men in white coats came to cart off people to mental hospitals.
Gone, for the most part, are mental hospitals.
These days, officers in dark blue uniforms come to take them away.
Sometimes to a mental health center. Usually to jail.
Encounters between police and mentally ill people are almost always dangerous. Often neither knows what to expect or what to do. Officers get injured trying to make arrests. And an alarming number of mentally ill people are getting hurt -- or killed.
Nobody keeps track of the numbers. But news accounts show that at least six Tampa Bay area residents with a history of mental illness had died during encounters with police over the past 10 years. Most of them threatened officers with weapons. One used a shovel, one a barbecue fork, and another brandished a BB gun. Peter Nadir, who did not have a weapon, was at least the seventh death in 10 years.
"There is still a lack of training for police on how to deal with someone in crisis," Miami Judge Steve Leifman wrote last month. Leifman co-chairs the Mental Health Committee for the 11th Judicial Circuit. "It is no wonder that, since 1999, 10 people with mental illnesses have died in (Miami-Dade) County during an encounter with police.
"While the police certainly didn't create this problem, they have been burdened with the unintended consequence of the deinstitutionalization of state psychiatric facilities."
Since the Kennedy administration, the mental health community has worked to "mainstream" mentally ill people: move them out of hospitals and into society. Some end up in group homes or day treatment facilities. Many wind up on the streets. Or behind bars.
Because there's nowhere else for them to go.
Today "there are more than 300,000 people with mental illnesses in our jails and prisons and another 500,000 on probation," the judge wrote.
Across the Tampa Bay area, almost half of all 911 calls involve someone with a mental illness. Since January, Tampa police have responded to more than 3,400 calls involving mentally ill people or people threatening suicide.
Under the Baker Act, police may -- and often do -- take people into custody if they are deemed a threat to themselves or others. If a psychiatrist determines that they need treatment, a hospital can treat them for up to three days without their consent.
Police invoke the Baker Act to take people into custody almost as often as they make arrests for drunken driving. Clearwater police, the department that responded to Peter Nadir's address, took in 667 people under the Baker Act last year and arrested 798 for DUI.
Law enforcement officers and mental health experts around the country are looking for new strategies for dealing with mentally ill people. They're forming task forces, lobbying for legislation that would create separate mental health courts. They're trying to train police, prison guards and even emergency operators about mental illness.
"It's not against the law to be crazy," says Donald Turnbaugh, a former Baltimore cop whose brother-in-law is mentally ill. He and his wife retired to St. Petersburg to be closer to her brother's group home.
Four years ago, as a member of the Pinellas County chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Turnbaugh helped start a Crisis Intervention Training program for Tampa Bay area law enforcement officers. He has helped train more than 350 people.
"Their whole approach shifts," Turnbaugh says. "They learn to speak calmly, clearly and slowly when dealing with someone in a mental crisis. They learn how not to raise the level of upset, how to de-escalate situations instead of just jumping in."
Nobody knows whether the Clearwater police department's treatment of Peter Nadir had anything to do with his death. The case is being investigated. The cause of death has not been made public.
This much is clear: The day before Peter started shouting about going to Israel, 27 Clearwater police officers graduated from Turnbaugh's weeklong training.
The next morning, when Peter's mom needed help, none of those officers was on duty.
Peter Gregory Nadir was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. He suffered brain damage and didn't walk until he was 3; he didn't talk or become toilet trained until he was 5. He had trouble balancing. He kept bumping into things. His IQ was 89. "Dull, normal," the doctor told his mom, using the diagnostic language of the day.
His parents and older sister tried to help. His dad coached a soccer team for special education students. His mom started a Cub Scout troop for them. His sister took him skiing, showed him how to slide down the bunny slope.
"He always wanted friends. And, especially, a girlfriend," says Barbara, who's 65. "He wanted a job and a car and to be like all the other boys his age."
Peter's parents got divorced after he graduated from high school in Long Island. He and his mom moved to Florida. He started acting strangely.
Barbara thought it was the stress of all the changes. But Peter's mood swings increased. He'd be frantic one moment, sobbing the next.
"Bipolar," a psychiatrist proclaimed. Peter started taking medications when he was 21.
"I'd spread all his pills on the table every night, after dinner. I'd kid him that I was a pusher," Barbara says. "I'd watch and make sure, so I'd know he got them all down."
Peter was tall and big-boned. The medications seemed to increase his already healthy appetite, making him gain weight even faster. By his last birthday, when he turned 31, he had grown to more than 350 pounds.
His mom made him switch to diet Coke, tried to get him to eat salads, helped him find clothing that fit. "Food became his crutch," Barbara says. "It was one of the only things he could do that really made him happy."
After Peter's dad died five years ago, he and his mom took cruises to Alaska and Mexico, drove to Star Trek conventions, explored amusement parks. They went to clown college together -- and graduated with flying colors. He swam with the dolphins at Sea World while she took pictures.
Two years ago Barbara had to have her right leg amputated below the knee after an artery burst. But that didn't slow her or her son. "Oh, he wheeled me everywhere," she says. "He took care of me. We got out a lot. He liked to go do things."
Neighbors say they seldom saw Barbara and Peter apart. He'd push her through the Countryside subdivision, down to the cluster of metal mailboxes, over to the pool. Sometimes, Peter would stop neighbors to talk about God or the starship Enterprise.
Barbara can't fit her wheelchair into her bedroom closet. So every morning Peter would pick out her clothing and help her get dressed. He cooked dinner every night, roasting chickens, steaming broccoli. Then they'd sit around smoking, watching Animal Planet or Larry King and talking about the news.
"He spent a lot of time worrying about the world," his mom says.
Peter was hospitalized once, four years ago, when he wouldn't take his medicine. He had never been violent. Or gotten arrested.
On that last, long night, Peter's mom heard his heavy footsteps as he paced around the house.
He wandered into the Florida room and let his ferrets, Cookie and Angel, out of their cage to play. Then he walked into the living room, where he flipped on the Fox News Channel. Every hour or so, Barbara heard him in the kitchen, scooping Edy's chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream into bowls.
The eating didn't bother her. The pacing did.
He had taken his medications to control his mood swings. Plus pills for his high cholesterol and blood pressure.
But he was so agitated, so uncontrollably anxious. His mom had never seen him like that.
"He'd been upset all week about the space shuttle blowing up. And he'd been worrying a lot about going to war with Iraq," Barbara says.
"He woke me up about 6 a.m., thrashing around the hall and yelling. He wanted to go to Israel. Right now. Before the war ruined everything. His dad was from Israel. He had to go now, he said. He was getting really wild."
She tried to calm him. But he wouldn't listen. She rolled back into her bedroom and tried to call police for help.
But Peter tore down the door, his hands ripping off pieces of pressboard. "We have to go!" he kept shouting.
Somehow, Barbara wheeled past him, down the hall, out the front door. He chased after her, still screaming. When she stopped to try to talk to him, he upended her wheelchair. She spilled onto the street just before 7:30 a.m.
"A neighbor woman was walking her dog. I yelled at her to call 911," Barbara says. "I didn't want him taken to jail. I wanted police to get him to a hospital."
Clearwater police won't release transcripts of the neighbor's call to 911 because they're looking into what happened. The five officers involved in the case can't talk about it.
"We've got three investigations going on over this," says Wayne Shelor, the police spokesman. Detectives are conducting a criminal investigation into Peter's death. The internal affairs department is looking into the officers' conduct. And the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office is conducting an inquiry. Shelor says he expects results in a couple of weeks.
"When the first officer came, I tried to tell her I wanted Peter Baker Acted. I tried to tell her he was bipolar and was having an episode," Barbara says.
"But the cops just kept telling me to get back inside. Let them handle it."
The first officer radioed for backup. Then more. By 8 a.m., five officers were struggling to control Peter. At 8:09 a.m., one of the officers called for an ambulance, according to dispatch records for Sunstar EMS, Pinellas County's service. "Injured person," the officer told the 911 operator.
"My understanding is that Mr. Nadir became immediately combative with the female officer. There was some sort of a struggle," Shelor says. The female officer was hurt and is out on medical leave.
"The officers tried to handcuff him in front, because of his size. Then he suddenly went limp," Shelor says.
Paramedics got to Peter at 8:24 a.m. They loaded him into the ambulance and sped away at 8:44. Ten minutes later, a doctor at Mease Countryside Hospital declared Peter dead.
"He didn't have a gun or a knife," his mom says. "I still don't know what happened. I didn't get to ride in the ambulance with him. I never even got to tell him goodbye."
Police don't want to have to respond to calls about mentally ill people. They don't know what to expect or how to handle them.
Mental health advocates wish they had someone else to call in a crisis.
But because this is the way the system is set up, both sides are trying to make it better.
At least two of the Clearwater officers who were trying to restrain Peter had received some training in working with mentally ill people.
The first female officer who responded, Tania Alich, had taken a three-hour class called "Understanding the Mentally Ill" in 1998. Last year she was named Clearwater's Police Officer of the Year for "the gutsy resolve she showed" in talking down and disarming a suicidal man.
"One of the other officers who was dealing with Mr. Nadir also had taken that three-hour course. And eventually, all 269 of our officers will take the Crisis Intervention Training," Shelor says.
"But regardless of a person's mental health, if a person becomes violent with a police officer, then all the rules change.
"This was a very physical struggle with a very large man."
Turnbaugh agrees that police have to subdue violent suspects. And he knows that just seeing an officer with a gun is enough to make a paranoid person more frightened.
"There's no question in my mind that the State Attorney's Office will rule this a justifiable homicide," Turnbaugh says.
"But couldn't there have been another ending?"
On the last day of his training sessions, Turnbaugh asks officers and mentally ill people how to improve the system.
Maybe people who have been hospitalized under the Baker Act before could wear an identification bracelet, someone once said, like a Medic Alert bracelet for diabetics, so officers would know they have a history of mental illness.
But, someone else asked, wouldn't that further stigmatize a group struggling for acceptance?
Marianne Pasha, spokeswoman for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, encourages caregivers of mentally ill people to call police before a crisis. Tell them "how we can help if we have to approach them," she says. "We can put that information into our computer base, like we do for Alzheimer's patients. That way, the dispatcher can relay the information to the deputies on the street."
But the most important thing, everyone agrees, is training. Across the country, mental health advocates and police departments are teaming up to provide police information about mentally ill people. Many training programs are based on a Memphis model for Crisis Intervention Training. In some cities, the 40-hour course is mandated for all officers. It's voluntary for most Tampa Bay area officers. Some squads decide to train all patrol officers because you never know who might have to handle a call. Some select an elite group to handle calls for people who could fall under the Baker Act. "It's too late for Peter Nadir," Turnbaugh says. "But there are plenty of other people out there like him who would benefit from some changes."
A half-hour before Peter's funeral, Barbara's sister helps her into a black blouse and silky black pants. She combs Barbara's black hair, which is short and shaggy. "I took a scissors to it that afternoon, after the police left," Barbara tells her. "I couldn't stand it. I had to do something.
"I was supposed to be the one who died first," she says, lighting another cigarette.
"That's my grave I'm burying Peter in today."
The service is at 3 p.m. in the Sinai Garden section of Curlew Hills Memory Gardens, beside the open grave.
Peter's sister, her husband and their three children are here, plus a half-dozen friends and other relatives.
Rabbi Shalom Adler stands beside the coffin. "We are here today to pay tribute to and remember a very special soul. A gentle soul. A kind soul," he says.
Peter's niece sniffles in the front row, then wipes her pink shirt sleeve across her nose.
"It's tragic that his life was too short. It's tragic that it never was easy," the rabbi says. "But very special souls are not destined to be here with us that long.
"So now we are going to return Peter to the earth from whence he came. His soul will be released."
It's quiet now. You can hear the wind slapping dry palm fronds. The grounds crew starts unfurling the canvas straps on the sides of the grave. Slowly, silently, the coffin sinks into brown dirt.
"Bless you," Barbara mouths from the front row.
The rabbi holds out an envelope filled with rich, black soil. "This earth is from the Holy City of Jerusalem," he says, pouring some into his palm.
Peter had wanted to go there.
"I know, as I pour this on, Peter will feel he's home."
-- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
-- To read Floridian's April 6, 2001, article about a program that helps police officers deal with mentally ill people, please go to www.sptimes.com/policetraining.