Trading crisis for caring

By LANE DeGREGORY

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 6, 2001

Increasingly, police officers intervene in crises involving the mentally ill. Everyone's edgy, scared. But one program brings both groups together to heighten each other's understanding.

LARGO -- A dozen law enforcement officers are sitting behind a long table. Thirty schizophrenics are in front of them, fidgeting in plastic chairs.

No one is making eye contact. No one has said anything for a while. The clock above the Coke machine is clicking over the loud silence.

Finally, a woman in an oversized T-shirt stands up. She's 30-something, slightly disheveled, with unbrushed hair and crooked glasses.

"Why does it take six of you, six cops, to take me in, when it's just me wandering around being weird or something?"

“I want to learn to be less intimidated by you cops. I need to get less defensive. It scares me, because I’m already confused and upset, and you all come at me at once. And I might have to hurt you sometimes, and that scares me. You might have a gun.” -- Tom, a schizophrenic who has been arrested 20 times

All around her, other patients at Directions for Mental Health start nodding. Every one of them -- from the teenager who was taken away for disrupting his high school to the gray-haired woman who was picked up circling a bus stop bench -- has been confronted by police officers. They're suspicious of the uniforms, the handcuffs, the guns.

It's hard to tell who is more scared of whom.

"Well, I guess it's just because we don't know what to expect. We don't know what's wrong," a Pinellas County sheriff's deputy answers. "One officer might not be able to handle it if he went in alone."

"Well, maybe one of you could go in first and try to talk to me, figure out what's up, and the rest could hold back."

"Well, we have to rush the scene. Then, when things calm down, we can back off."

"You rush me with six cops and I'm not going to calm down. I'm going to get worse," the woman warns. "I'm going to go crazy."

Tom tears out his apartment walls when he hears voices screaming from the drywall. Linda is so afraid of being followed that she locks herself in her bedroom for weeks. Victoria forgets who she is, where she is, how she got here.

The patients come to this day treatment facility for group therapy, life lessons and counseling.

The officers are here from 10 agencies throughout the Tampa Bay area, from Pasco County to St. Petersburg, from Dade City to the Florida Highway Patrol. They came as part of a weeklong training session to learn about mental illnesses, how to handle people who are feeling persecuted, and to meet some schizophrenics.

Both sides are struggling to understand.

"I want to learn to be less intimidated by you cops. I need to get less defensive," says Tom, a burly 43-year-old schizophrenic who has been arrested 20 times. "It scares me, because I'm already confused and upset and you all come at me at once. And I might have to hurt you sometimes, and that scares me. You might have a gun."

"We're paranoid people, too," says a police officer. Like many officers at the seminar, he didn't want his name in the newspaper. "We don't want anyone in our space, either. You'll never see a cop sitting in a restaurant with his back to the door: We got to see who's coming.

"We have our own phobias and rituals and fears, just like you all."

That's why specialized training is so needed.

Last year, Pinellas County sheriff's deputies took more than 1,000 people to psychiatric wards. "Baker Acted" them, as officers say, involuntarily committed them.

Almost half of the area's police calls involve someone with a mental illness. More than 15 percent of the inmates in Pinellas County jails are schizophrenic, according to the local chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. Hundreds of others haven't been diagnosed.

Just this week, a man with a history of mental illness was charged with attempted murder after he came at a Brooksville police officer with a pickax. Jails are the first place many mentally ill people are brought, the last place many are left.

And as officials prepare to close G. Pierce Wood in Arcadia, one of Florida's four state mental hospitals, advocates for the mentally ill wonder where these dysfunctional folks are supposed to go -- and how many more will wind up behind bars.

"We need cops who know how to handle these people," Lt. Gary Herbein of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office tells the law enforcement officers on their first day of training. "It's not that difficult. It's just doing what you all said you wanted to do when you filled out your applications to become cops: helping people."

In July 1997, workers with the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the Mental Health Coalition of Tampa Bay, the state Department of Children and Families and a half-dozen local law enforcement agencies got together to educate police officers about dealing with the mentally ill.

The goal is to return non-violent schizophrenics to their homes or institutions where they can get treatment -- instead of automatically sending them to jail.

So far, 220 Tampa Bay area officers have received Crisis Intervention Training. Some of the officers volunteered to attend, others were told to go. The most recent class finished in late March.

"A lot of what they learn here is the opposite of what they're trained to do in the law enforcement academies," says Donald Turnbaugh, who helped start the CIT program. "We tell them to be calm, not come on with their guns out; to tell the subject what they're doing, not be sneaky; to be gentle instead of authoritative.

"We can't tell them what to expect.

"But we can help them find better ways to react."

In the back of the room at the day treatment center, a 30-something man with dark hair and wild eyes is watching. He hasn't said anything all morning. He has been shuffling a deck of cards over and over in his lap, getting out of his chair every so often and crawling around the floor.

Now he starts running to the long table where the law enforcement officers are sitting. He's waving something over his head. He's shouting something no one seems to understand.

During the training, officers watch videos in the Pinellas County EMS Station, hear parents describe searching for their schizophrenic children in junkyards, meet people who have gotten out of mental hospitals and on with their lives.

Michelle Scarpa, 31, of Clearwater, who attends the Adult Day Treatment Center, explains to law enforcement officers in the group what it’s like living with mental illness.

They hear from a Vietnam vet who used to be a Pinellas County deputy. One night, he says, his wife came home and found him dressed in fatigues, shooting squirrels with his pistol, shouting about helicopters and incoming enemies and friends he had zipped into body bags. The next week he woke up in a mental hospital. "It can happen to anyone," he says, "even cops."

They hear from a schizophrenic called "Johnny No Home" who spent his teenage years living in Clearwater's sewers, who was terrified of sunlight, who thought evil spirits were telling him to kill himself. "Police officers are the lifelines for me, just like on Who Wants to be a Millionaire." he says. "I call 911 when I don't know where I am. They help me figure it out, help get me somewhere safe. But why is it that you all have your guns all out and you're all fired up with attitude when I'm the one who called you for help?"

They hear from a woman named Terry who used to be married to a police officer, who decided to be a stripper after he left, who once gave her son's surgeon a six-pack and a dead cat.

"I started writing my life story on the walls, spray-painting my windows black," she says. "I remember dancing in my big birdcage, filling plastic baggies with pencils and pieces of paper and hairbands so I wouldn't have to keep walking from one room to the next. One night I got mad at my neighbor, dressed up in a cowboy hat, boots and a bikini, stuffed some mace into my belt. I asked myself: "What's the worst thing you can do to a man?' "

The cops look nervously at each other. She takes a deep breath, glances at the ground, lets the dramatic pause linger . . .

"Blow up his truck!"

The officers sigh in relief. Some laugh. Terry explains how she rigged fire bombs with O'Douls bottles and kerosene from her grill, how her neighbor doused the explosion with a garden hose, how he called the cops and she was committed.

"It was scary," says Terry, who lost her young son -- then got him back after stabilizing on medication.

"I was scary. I was scared."

The officers learn that mental illness is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. They learn that some schizophrenics can be treated, hold jobs, care for houses and families. They learn many can never be cured -- they'll grow old in group homes and hospitals, never escaping their tortured minds.

"My brother-in-law is convinced he's Barry Sanders from the Detroit Lions," Turnbaugh tells the officers. "He used to walk away from his assisted-living facility all the time, telling people he was going to play football. Families get worn down, they don't know where to turn. They give up hope."

Medication can cost up to $400 a month. Most schizophrenics don't work because they'll lose Medicaid benefits. Many wind up living on the streets because they can't afford group homes, or the waiting lists are too long, or they don't like the rules.

The officers want a database to tap into, so they can figure out who already has been committed. Or they want schizophrenics to wear a medic alert-type bracelet, so they might know what's wrong when they're called to a crisis. Or, at least, they want someone to call -- someone they can turn mentally ill people over to when they're falling apart.

Finally, they learn about Florida's Baker Act, which permits police officers to commit involuntarily people who are a danger to themselves or others.

"Being bizarre is not a criteria to admit someone," says Marcy MacMath of Boley Centers for Behavioral Health Care. "Walking in circles, going through the trash, being confused doesn't count.

"You can't commit those people to a hospital. And you can't just take them to jail.

"But there are things you can do."

You can talk slowly and calmly and repeat yourself often; ask them if they're on medication or if they have a case manager or if they're seeing or hearing things no one else is; tell them you're here to help.

"I'd be battling the devil. I was Jesus' sister. And all these police would be up in my face grabbing at me and trying to take me away," says Pat Curtin, a schizophrenic who works at Boley. "They wouldn't tell me I was being arrested or why or what they were doing. If they had explained, it would have depowered my fear."

"Most people, if you tell them you're going to handcuff them, they resist more -- they won't let you," an officer says. "That kind of goes against what we'd normally do."

"Then maybe you could at least explain yourselves after you do it, after I'm already in cuffs in the backseat."

"Yeah, maybe."

"And maybe you could try to identify with what I'm feeling."

"How?"

" "Oh, the Russians are after you? You must be pretty scared. Oh, you have insects crawling up your arms? That must feel pretty awful.' . . . Don't tell me I'm wrong or it's going to be okay. Ask me questions so you'll know where I'm at. Then maybe an involuntary commitment could become a voluntary one."

The man with wild eyes is named Drew. He wants to talk to the police, to the audience, to anyone who will listen. He's waving a playing card over his head, shouting about things lost and found, making too much noise for the conversation to continue.

A supervisor from the day treatment center calmly steps in front of the table. Drew starts turning in circles, thrashing his arms. The other patients are smiling, waiting to see what will happen next.

So are the cops. This isn't a demonstration.

The supervisor puts his arm around Drew's shoulders and stops him from spinning. Slowly, he eases the card out of the man's trembling hand. Drew whispers frantically in the supervisor's ear, gesturing and glancing nervously around the recreation room.

"Drew would like for me to share with everybody that he found the king of spades and, somehow, that kept him from feeling lost," says the supervisor.

Drew nods. The other patients cheer: "Yeah, Drew!"

"Yeah, Drew!" Drew whispers. He raises the king card over his head and walks slowly back to his seat. "Yeah, Drew!"

Then Tom blurts out a question. "I just want to know," he says in a low, measured voice. "Do any of you all actually like your jobs?"

The officers don't answer. The clock above the Coke machine keeps clicking.

"Well, since there aren't any more questions," the supervisor says, "we'll break for lunch, then meet over at Windsor House."

Windsor House is a co-ed home for 24 schizophrenics. The officers are supposed to tour the house and talk to the residents. At 2:15 the police are waiting on the doorstep.

The residents aren't around.

So the officers sit around the kitchen, telling stories about strange calls they've answered. "One lady had a spaceship in her garage," a Pinellas Park officer says. "It was the dome light she left on in her Buick. Now, she'd done nothing illegal. So what could I do?"

Another officer had worked the late shift for years. He had one lady who called at least 10 times a night, every night, usually for no reason. Was she paranoid or just lonely? He couldn't tell. What could he do?

"If you just take the time to talk to someone with a mental illness, they're just like you or me. But life got too much for them," says Tammy Kirby, who runs the group home. "Just talk to them."

So where are they? That's why the officers are here, isn't it? To tour the house, to talk to the residents?

"Well, you can't take a tour because they're all hiding in their rooms. They're scared," Kirby says. "They thought you all were inspectors."

No one told the paranoid people that a dozen police officers would be coming to their door. No one told them that, this time, the officers just wanted to talk, not take them away.

As the other officers are leaving, a Clearwater cop pulls Kirby aside.

"Do you think, maybe, if I came alone or sent just one of my guys over, it would be easier for your residents that way? That maybe they'd feel more comfortable?" he asks.

"That might help," she answers. "I'm sure it would."

So he promises to set up a time. And she promises to prepare her residents.

And both hope they won't have to call each other in a crisis before then.

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