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Los Angeles Police Department training and mental illness
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Los Angeles Police Department training and mental illness
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Los Angeles Police Department Training and Mental Illness Stefanie De Leon Tzic Master of Arts (SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM) University of Southern California August 2017 2 Abstract This paper explores how the Los Angeles Police Department trains its officers to engage with individuals dealing with mental illness. From 2011 to 2015, the number of mentally ill people shot by the LAPD increased. Police use of force and mental illness have become part of the national conversation after several high-profile shootings in Los Angeles – including the shooting of Ezell Ford, which became a pivotal turning point for the department in the way it equips its officers to interact with those dealing with mental illness. In an effort to be more transparent and better track police use of force, Police Chief Charlie Beck commissioned a comprehensive report in 2015 that would provide a demographic breakdown of those incidents. The report revealed that more than a third of people shot in 2015 had a mental illness. It’s unclear why the number of mentally ill people shot at the hands of police increased, but Chief Beck suggests the increased homeless population could be contributing to the numbers. As a result of the report’s findings, the department has implemented new policies and training courses that could prevent potentially violent encounters between police and people with mental illness. 3 Contents: Shooting of Norma Guzman........................................................................................................... 4 Police Stops and Mental Illness: A Deadly Combination............................................................... 5 The Turning Point for LAPD.......................................................................................................... 6 Changed is Promised...................................................................................................................... 8 LAPD and Mental Health Training.................................................................................................9 New York Police Department……………………………………………………………………13 Shift Toward De-escalation.......................................................................................................... 15 LAPD Commitment to Mental Health...........................................................................................16 References………………………………………………………………………………………..17 4 Shooting of Norma Guzman When she wasn’t high on methamphetamines, Norma Guzman was easygoing and caring. Her modest manner captivated Rufino Muñoz when they first met in 2001. “She would listen to me and I would listen to her,” says Muñoz in Spanish. They found companionship in each other. But when Guzman was high, she became a different person. She would talk to herself and was capable of lashing out. Muñoz says Guzman used drugs to escape her tragic life. She was separated from an abusive husband, who once tied her up until a neighbor found her. He says Guzman didn’t press charges for the sake of the son they had together. Guzman’s mother was also abusive toward her, says Muñoz. “She would beat her like you beat an animal,” he says. “I don’t know if she was like that with everyone else.” The stress of her life and addiction drove Guzman to the streets of Historic South-Central in the South Los Angeles region. The neighborhood is mostly Latino and black and most residents, approximately 74 percent, over 25 have less than a high school education, according to data gathered by LA Times. On the morning of Sept. 27, 2015, he heard shots outside his house. Police were responding to a call about a woman acting erratically, holding a knife. When the police arrived, Officers Samuel Briggs and Antonio McNeely saw Guzman walking toward them with an 8-inch knife, according to a news release issued more than a month later by the Los Angeles Police Department. In a span of 10 seconds, the two officers had shot her. Footage from a nearby security camera revealed Guzman collapsing to the ground immediately. Guzman was not alone. She was one of 14 mentally ill people shot by Los Angeles police in 2015 – a year that saw a 19 percent increase in the number of mentally ill people shot from the prior year. These shootings have increased dramatically between 2011 and 2015, according to the department’s 2015 use of force report. Guzman was known in the community as someone who was mentally ill. In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against the city by her family, she is described as “completely harmless.” 5 Guzman would often visit Muñoz when she wandered the streets. The two would talk over coffee before parting ways. “I think she was coming to see me when they shot her,” he says. When LAPD Chief Charlie Beck presented the findings from the use of force report to the Police Commission on March of last year, he noted the sharp increase in officer shootings of individuals with mental illness. The report was one of the most comprehensive review of police use of force put out by the department, detailing demographics and a breakdown on what type of calls it receives. During the meeting, Beck said officers had also experienced an increase in interactions with people with mental illness as the number of homeless people continue to rise in Los Angeles. In 2015, the city’s homeless population rose to 25,686, up 9 percent compared to 2011’s figures, according to reports from the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count. That same year, an estimated 32 percent of homeless people in the city were mental ill, says last year’s Homeless Count report. Police Stops and Mental Illness: A Deadly Combination Two months after Guzman’s death, a national study found mentally ill people are 16 times more likely to die from a police encounter than other civilians. The study from the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national nonprofit that seeks to extend services for people who have mental illness, said mentally ill are overrepresented not only in fatal law enforcement shootings, but in all areas of the criminal justice system -- “from the calls made to local police departments to the isolation cells of prison.” It’s not hard for people with mental illness to get sucked into the criminal justice system, says Camilo Cruz, director of the Community Justice Initiative at the city attorney’s office. He says the amount of tickets issued out to the city’s homeless people, some of who are mentally ill, is 6 overwhelming to an already backlogged system. These tickets include municipal code violations like jay walking, riding a bike without a light or urinating in public. “We’ve got cases that involve tickets, lots of tickets for homeless people where they accrue penalties and fines because they never show up to court to deal with these issues,” says Cruz. “Because they don’t go to court, there’s bench warrants out for them. We have people that have $80,000 or $120,000 in fines and fees for these tickets. It’s crazy what’s going on.” His office is tasked with clearing up low level, non-violent misdemeanor cases that clog up the court system. Rather than issuing out punitive fines and or jail time, the office offers educational alternatives instead like drug counseling, job training or parenting classes. These programs target offenses that are “more rooted in socioeconomics of the person versus their ‘violent tendencies.’” Cruz says. The majority of clients who are part of the Homeless Engagement and Response Team program are mentally ill, he says. Apart from focusing on fatal shootings, the Treatment Advocacy Center study also looked at the rampant underreporting that occurs when there’s a deadly shootings involving law enforcement. It criticizes the lack of a centralized database saying, “We can learn the average prenatal litter size of feral cat in America, but not the number of civilians killed during encounters with law enforcement.” In an interview with Democracy Now!, a news program, John Snook, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, also criticized the shifting role of law enforcement to act as mental health professionals. “I think one of the things we need to think about is this idea of, when someone is having a medical emergency, why are we requiring law enforcement to step in? We don’t want to be in a situation where we’re having to say, ‘Law enforcement, you need to address this person’s needs,’ because they aren’t mental health professionals. They haven’t been trained.” The Turning Point The fatal shooting of Ezell Ford, a South Los Angeles man who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, garnered national attention about the way the LAPD handles suspects who are mentally ill. On Aug. 11, 2014, two veteran gang unit officers were patrolling the South Los Angeles area 7 when they saw Ford walking on 65 th Street, according to a department’s news release. It’s unclear why he was stopped in the first place, but police noted that he “made suspicious movements, including attempting to conceal his hands,” after the two officers tried to talk to him. One of the police officers attempted to detain Ford, but a scuffle ensued and he and Ford fell to ground. Ultimately, the officer’s partner and the officer who fell to the ground shot Ford and handcuffed him. He was pronounced dead later that night. His shooting came on the heels of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, further fueling the debate over police use of force. Seven months later, the LAPD would face another scandal; the death of Charly “Africa” Leundeu Keunang, a homeless Skid Row man. Keunang’s death, like Guzman’s, was also caught on video. On March 21, 2015, the LAPD responded to a call of attempted robbery and battery. According to Beck’s final report of the shooting, the incident began when Keunang got into an argument with another homeless man in the tent next to him and hit him in the head with a bat. When police arrived and began questioning surrounding witnesses, Keunang came out of his tent and stood in front of it. The LA Times reviewed footage from one of the body cameras worn by officers, where Keunang is repeatedly heard saying, “Let me express myself.” The officer cuts Keunang off several times by saying, “You don’t tell me how to do my job,” and “We’re going to do this my way.” Keunang is then commanded to move away from his tent and stand next to a wall, but refused and, according to the report, “assumed an aggressive stance by making a fist with his hands” and began yelling. Responding officers threatened to use a taser if he didn’t comply and called for backup. That’s when Keunang went back inside his tent. As backup arrived and after various orders to get out of the tent, police surrounded his makeshift home and entered the tent to arrest him. As police struggled to control him, an officer shot Keunang with a taser dart, but with no effect, according to the report, which has been redacted. Keunang continued to move toward the officer and was eventually knocked to the ground. Video footage recorded by a bystander shows four officers trying to subdue Keunang. Moments later, an officer is heard yelling something about his gun, but the audio is unclear. Then, six shots followed. According to the report, Keunang had grabbed hold of an officer’s holstered gun and was tugging at it, says the report. Video shows officers shooting Keunang, who was laying on the sidewalk. According to the autopsy report obtained by the LA Times, Keunang had methamphetamine in 8 his system. Keunang was a 43-year-old Cameroonian immigrant who served a 14-year sentence at a prison psychiatric hospital for robbing a bank. The report detailed where he was shot – twice in his chest, twice more on his torso and two more times on his left arm. The two gunshot wounds to his chest were at a such a close range that it left soot inside, according to the report. Keunang’s family and other critics have questioned why it took six officers to arrest him. His family called for an investigation from the LAPD, which found that all officers were within the department’s use of force policy. Melina Abdullah, a Black Lives Matter organizer in Los Angeles, wrote in an email that the “LAPD is not equipped to handle mental health emergencies” because they “are not mental health professionals.” Abdullah is also the Chair of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. In Ford’s shooting, a 10-month investigation by the Police Commission found one of the two officers acted out of policy for stopping him and setting off the chain of events that led to his death. In the case of Guzman, more than a year after her death, the commission found one officer out of policy in his use of deadly force. a Ford’s and Keunang’s deaths were widely protested by the Black Lives Matter movement in LA. Mounting pressure from activists and community members forced the LAPD to change its tactics when approaching suspects with a mental illness or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. LAPD Chief Beck has since called Ford’s shooting, “an important incident in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department.” Change is Promised In light of these shootings, the department has taken steps to better equip officers when they come across a situation where mental illness is a factor. In the summer of 2015, the city’s estimated 10,000 officers were all required to go through a retraining course on what’s a legitimate use of force. The “Public Trust and Preservation of Life” class, mentioned in the department’s 2015 use of force report, was a 5-hour re-training course that focused on building public trust and the preservation of life, teaching de-escalation techniques when officers use force, approaching mentally ill people and reviewing basic arrest laws like consensual encounters where individuals can refuse to talk to police. 9 On October of that year, the LAPD required all sworn personnel to take a 10-hour “Use of Force Update Class.” The course emphasizes de-escalation and critical thinking in different scenarios, especially those involving individuals with mental illness, according to last year’s use of force report. It also included training on how to use less-lethal weapons like beanbag shotguns and Tasers. As of last year, 77 percent of police officers, or 7,153, have completed the course. The rest are expected to complete the training by the end of May this year. In the case of Guzman, it’s unknown if Briggs and McNeely, the two officers who shot her, had completed the 5-hour retraining course. One of the officers was a training officer and the other a probationary officer, a rank assigned to rookies who just left the academy. The LAPD will not disclose which officer shot Guzman or their corresponding rank. In the federal suit against the city, Guzman’s family alleges that police didn’t do enough to avoid using deadly force. Six days before Guzman’s death, a change in policy required “all on-duty uniform officers to carry a Taser” with them at all times, according to a use of force summary of the incident put out by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners. The commission found that one of the officers had violated policy by leaving his Taser in the trunk of the patrol car At a news conference, Arnoldo Casillas, the family’s attorney, criticized the police for not using less lethal force. “Where’s the Taser? Where’s the pepper spray? Take a step back. Show some reverence for human life.” LAPD and Mental Health Training Despite these shootings, the LAPD has been leading the way in mental health training. The department’s Mental Evaluation Unit has been nationally praised for de-escalating potential 10 violent encounters and for being one of the largest mental health policing programs in the country. Its partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health to help those in the throes of a mental illness has been used as a model for other law enforcement agencies. On the sixth floor of LAPD Headquarters in downtown, the unit prepares for a busy shift ahead the three-day Memorial Day weekend. The unit has been responding to mental health emergency calls around the city since the 1970s, when it was first introduced. Officer Daniel Jones says every officer here is hand-picked. In ordered to be part of the unit, officers can’t have “too many complaints or use of force incidents.” Most officers in the unit wear “soft” uniforms, says Det. Calvin Dehesa. He has been with the LAPD for 23 years and supervising the unit’s Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Team (SMART) for the last year and half. SMART teams, known by its acronym, are made up of a clinician and a specially trained officer. When a call merits a response, a team is deployed to assist officers in the field It’s policy that patrolling officers who come in contact with anyone who is mentally ill call the unit before taking any action. (The unit was not involved in Guzman’s, Ford’s or Keunang’s shootings.) The calls are answered by the MEU-Triage desk where a specially trained officer, who has access to the MEU database, can advise the calling officer on what to do next. Triage desk operators log every call into the database to track past interventions. It helps officers approach future individuals who have already have a history with the unit. On average, they receive at least 75 to 100 calls a day, according to Det. Dehesa. They respond to 20 to 25 of them. On this day, a call comes in to the MEU-Triage desk from patrolling officers about a 14-year-old boy who is suicidal. His mother called the police after an argument with the teen. She tells responding officers that he left the home with a handful of sleeping pills and threatened to take them. Police find him walking in the area and detain him. Rather than to take him back to his mother’s, the triage desk directs officers to take the teen to the Olympic Police Station, where a SMART team will meet them. The LAPD has been deploying SMART teams since the model was first implemented in 1993. Once at the station, the teen is placed in a juvenile detention room while the SMART team speaks with the arresting officers. 11 “It’s typical teenage drama,” says one of the arresting officers. “It’s behavioral, but the parents aren’t doing their job. The mom is pregnant and the boyfriend just left her.” After talking with the arresting officers, the SMART team gathers that the teen’s biological father is a meth addict who is frequently in and out of jail. The boy left his mother’s home three months ago because of the arguments and has been with his grandmother since. He was there to check in on his siblings, as he usually does. When he’s not with his grandmother, he sleeps on the street. The corresponding clinician, who has access to mental health databases, finds that the teen has a history with Department of Children and Family Services for homelessness. “SMART teams gather a lot of information before they talk to the person,” says Det. Dehesa. With this information, they are ready to talk to the teen. He admits to taking the pills, but says it was an empty threat. He says he tossed the “little green pills” at a group of “crack heads” after he left the house. He opens up to the SMART team about his troubles with his girlfriend and mother. He says he’s tired of his mother and wants to be emancipated. “[My mom] puts her man before kids. She forgets about her 1-year-old and me...what does that mean for me?” he asks the team. After more than half an hour later, the co-responding clinician and officer emerge from the room. The clinician makes her recommendation and begins to call surrounding psychiatric hospitals for an available bed. The teen won’t be going back to his mother instead will be placed on a psychiatric hold. The types of calls the unit receive vary, according to Det. Dehesa. Another call comes into the MEU- Triage desk, this time about a man who thinks he’s being followed and is threating to kill himself. The arresting officers detain the 25-year-old and take him to the Hollywood Police Station. Once there, he’s placed in a detention room. Officer Dennis Nguyen and his clinician partner respond to the call. 12 After talking with one of the responding officers, they find out the man was threatening to kill himself and accusing pedestrians of being FBI agents. With a clinician in tow, Officer Nguyen cracks open the door to the detention room and introduces himself as part of the LAPD’s Mental Evaluation Unit. The man becomes aggressive and uncooperative and accuses Nugyen and his partner of being Armenian. A search in the MEU database shows this isn’t the man’s first interaction with the unit. “He’s a paranoid schizophrenic,” says Nguyen, who has been with the LAPD for 18 years and with the unit since 2009. Nguyen says in the past, the unit has been called twice in 2015, once in 2014 and again today. He says the delusions could be making him uncooperative. The man continues to shout through the glass window of the detention room, as the responding clinician looks for an available bed in a psychiatric hospital that is covered under his insurance. But on a Friday night, that’s unlikely, says Nguyen. If no room is available, he will have to be transported to a county hospital like the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Tonight, he’ll be staying at Exodus Recovery Inc., a county mental health hospital. Just as the SMART team gets ready for its next call, the MEU-Triage desk has already lined up another request from nearby patrol officers. Nguyen and his clinician partner will assess the next call in the same station. Calls like these have increased over the last three years. In 2014, the unit received more than 14,200 calls from patrol officers asking for guidance on how to handle a mentally ill person. Out of those, the unit responded to 4,724 of them and saved the department more than 6,600 hours of patrol time, according to the LAPD’s 2020 plan. The following year, the number of mental health emergency calls jumped to more than 16,400, 5,552 of which required SMART team assistance. As a result, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti increased the number of SMART teams from 7 to 17 units per day to better “Help Angelenos in crisis who are battling mental illness.” He praised the unit’s model for its de-escalation tactics and for diverting mentally ill people from the criminal justice system to mental health services. The unit also has a Case Assessment and Management Program, which helps individuals who come in constant contact with the unit and connects them with services. Any person who has been placed on at least six mental health holds per year, attempted suicide by police or becoming 13 more aggressive can be referred to the case management program. Although the LAPD’s mental evaluation unit has served as a model for other states, some critics at home believe it’s not enough. Pete White, executive director and founder of the Los Angeles Community Network, an anti-poverty advocacy group in Skid Row, says despite the high number of people with mental illness living in Skid Row, SMART teams “are rarely, if ever, deployed,” to the area. Skid Row is home to 13,00 - 15,000 residents, of which an estimated 40 to 60 percent resident have mental health condition, according to a proposal issued by the organization to better improve mental health care and decrease police arrests. It also criticizes a county diversion program created in 2014, which is also supposed to reduce the number of people with mental illness who are incarcerated. The $756,000 initiative, however, operates out the of LAPD’s Valley Bureau and has only helped 15 people, according to the proposal. It also called for an end to the city’s “Safer Cities” initiative, which it says only exacerbates interactions between police and people who have mental illness. New York Police Department Almost 3,000 miles away, the New York Police Department, with a force of more than 34,000 officers, is also grappling with how to train its rank-and-file to respond to mental health emergency calls after a number of high-profile police shootings where mental illness was a factor. In September of 2012, Hawa Bah was visiting her son from Guniea. She found her son, Mohamed Bah, depressed and half-clad in his Harlem apartment. She tried to take him to a hospital, but he refused. She stepped outside and called two private ambulances with no response. She then called 911 for an ambulance to transport her son. Instead, an Emergency Service Unit was dispatched to the scene, where Mohamed Bah had now locked himself in. Before the officers entered the apartment, the mother met them outside the building and asked to speak to her son instead, according to a lawsuit filed by Mohamed Bah’s family. In his initial response, the department’s then-chief spokesperson, Paul J. Browne, alleged that Mohamed Bah opened the door and tried to stab the officers as police tried to push him back into the apartment to subdue him. Amid the commotion, one of the officers yelled, “He’s stabbing me! Shoot him.” Officers shot Mohamed Bah eight times, with one of the gunshots entering the left side of his head, at close range, according to the autopsy report. Speaking with the New York Times, Browne said one of the officers received “a small puncture wound” on his arm. 14 But several of the officers’ initial accounts about what happened have since changed. In a sworn deposition, the officer who was allegedly hurt and treated for “stab wounds” says that he doesn’t remember being stabbed. What he mistook for a knife was instead the stun of a Taser gun from one of responding officers, which prompted him to yell that he was being stabbed. In a revised lawsuit, the family is suing the city for $70 million. The suit is also asking the city to “institute and implement effective policies and procedures with respect to police responses to situations involving emotionally disturbed persons” and to adopt a crisis response model, like the one employed by the LAPD, to better respond to these calls. New York police guidelines dictate that “Deadly physical force will be used ONLY (sic) as a last resort and consistent with Department policy and the law.” But a scathing report issued by the NYPD inspector general three years later found that the department’s use of force policies was vague and undefined. During a news conference on Oct. 1, 2015, Inspector General Philip Eure said the NYPD was, “Living a little bit in the dark ages in respect to its use of force policies,” in comparison to more updated policies already in place at the Los Angeles and Seattle Police Departments. The inspector general’s report recommends that the department: use clear language to define force and enforce de-escalation techniques, when possible; create a reporting and record- keeping mechanism; train officers on force and de-escalation; and implement a disciplinary system for officers. Similar recommendations were issued out in the final report of the President’s Task Force on 21 st Century Policing. The force was assembled by former President Obama in response to the civil unrest in Ferguson, MO., after the Michael Brown shooting. Its goal is to strengthen relationships between law enforcement and the communities they serve. The president’s task force findings, which included 59 recommendations, have been available for police departments to adopt since May 2015, four months before the release of the inspector general’s report. The LAPD is one of the departments that “embraced” the recommendations 15 from the President’s Task Force on 21 st Century Policing, according to a department news release. Shift Toward De-escalation Today, all LAPD recruits are required to complete 15 hours of mental health training. But this is a recent change, implemented two years ago by the Commission of Peace Officer Standards and Training, which sets the curriculum for the state’s law enforcement. Before Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 11 and SB 29, the Commission only required recruits to complete six hours of training. Under SB 29, training officers are also required to receive at least eight hours. This is meant to fill the void between new recruits and officers already on the field. But much of what recruits learn during the academy cannot (I think you mean cannot) prepare them for a real life scenario, like talking a suicidal person out of jumping from a building, says Officer Carlos Martinez, who is in charge of developing training for the LAPD’s Mental Evaluation Unit. He helped create the mental health curriculum taught to police officers now. In 2006, former police chief William Bratton hired Dr. Luann Pannell as the director of Police Training and Education. Pannell is responsible for the complete revamp of the LAPD Police Academy curriculum that followed in 2008. The overhaul was meant to mirror the shifting attitudes and needs of police officers in modern times. Her approach was different from the traditional military-style training that characterized the department for so long. Instead, she focuses on teaching emotion. In an interview with Los Angeles Downtown News, Pannell said “emotion serves as the base of police. They need to understand the emotions of everyone involved in an incident.” According to the use of force training manual from the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, recruits are refocusing on managing emotions like anger and fear in dangerous situations. Encounters like these happen all the time, says Officer Jones, who works with the Mental Evaluation Unit. He has noticed the department’s shift toward de-escalation in the last few years. “People with mental illness, they don’t know what they’re saying. They can say a lot of nasty things, but none of that is personal,” he says. “Traditional law enforcement tactics don’t always work with someone who has a mental illness.” 16 Jones, whose youngest daughter is mentally disabled, says he tries to empathize with the families he encounters when he works with the SMART teams. Every officer in the unit has worked in the field and the MEU-Triage desk. He says working with the unit is a “different feeling.” “In regular police work, you are arresting someone or taking their freedom away,” he says. But when he goes out with the unit, it’s more about connecting families with resources. “I just try to remember the alternative to not having [a unit] like this,” Jones says. LAPD Commitment to Mental Health This last April, the Police Commission approved changes to the LAPD’s use of force policy that requires officers to use de-escalation “whenever it is safe and reasonable to do so.” The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank and file officers, endorsed the policy. In the past, it has defended police use of force. In its 2015 study, the Treatment Advocacy Center made one recommendation throughout its report. “The most proven and predictable practice of all for reducing fatal police shooting and the role of mental illness in fatal shootings – and throughout the overwhelmed criminal justice system – is far more straightforward: treat the symptoms and avoid the encounter altogether.” Still, Officer Martinez believes the department is better equipped to respond to these situations than any other agency. “I feel that we’re a lot better trained than we were than when I was going through, 14 years ago,” he says. Meanwhile, life without Guzman has been a hard adjustment for Muñoz. “I miss her the most at night and on the weekends,” he says – the times they would run errands together. “When they leave, you can’t see them anymore.” 17 References “Less Than High School.” Los Angeles Times June 2009: n. pag. Los Angeles Times. Web. 30 June 2017. <http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/education/less-than-high- school/neighborhood/list/>. Los Angeles Police Department. Newsroom. Officer Involved Shooting in Newton Division NRF083-15ma. Official Site of The Los Angeles Police Department. Los Angeles City, 4 Nov. 2015. Web. 25 June 2017. <http://www.lapdonline.org/november_2015/news_view/59612>. Los Angeles Police Department. LAPD Use of Force Year-End Review Executive Summary 2015, 2016. Web. 26 June 2017. Los Angeles Police Department. LAPD in 2020: Community Focused. Data Driven, 2015. Web. 26 June 2017. Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count 2016, 2016. Web. 26 June 2017. Fuller, Doris A., Et Al. Overlooked in the Undercounted: The Role of Mental Illness in Fatal Law Enforcement Encounters. Arlington: Treatment Advocacy Center, 2015. Web. 23 June 2017. Peters, Mark G. and Eure, Philip K. Police Use of Force in New York City: Findings and Recommendations on NYPD’s Policies and Practices. New York: New York City Department of Investigation Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD (OIG-NYP), 2015. Web. 26 June 2017. Los Angeles Police Department. Newsroom. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Provides Preliminary Update on Officer- Involved Shooting in Newton Area NR14311as. Official Site of The Los Angeles Police Department. Los Angeles City, 28 Nov. 2014. Web. 20 June 2017. <http://www.lapdonline.org/newsroom/news_view/56794>. Beck, Charlie. “Officer Involved Shooting Fid No. 018-15.” Message to the Honorable Board of Police Commissioners. 7 Jan. 2016. E-mail. White, Pete. “Re: Mental Health Emergency Response in Skid Row.” Message to Stefanie De Leon Tzic. 21 June 2017. E-mail. Holland, Gale and Richard Winton. “LAPD body camera video of skid row shooting raises questions on tactics and training.” Los Angeles Times 24 Sept. 2015: n. pag. Los Angeles Times. Web. 25 June 2017. < http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-body-cam-keunang- 20150925-story.html>. Victims of Police. “Charly Leundeu Keunang killed by Las (sic) Angeles Police.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 9 Apr. 2015. Web. 13 June 2017 18 Mather, Kate. “Autopsy for Charly Leundeu Keunang.” Los Angeles Times 29 July 2015: n. pag. Los Angeles Times. Web. 25 June 2017. < http://documents.latimes.com/autopsy-charly- leundeu-keunang/>. Los Angeles Police Department. LAPD Use of Force Year-End Review 2016, 2017. Web. 26 June 2017. Estate of Norma Guzman Et Al v. City of Los Angeles Et Al. Casillas and Associates 5. United States District Court Central District of California. 19 Feb. 2016. Print. Estate of Oumou Bah Et Al v. City of New York Et Al. Newman Ferrara LLP. United States District Court Southern District of New York. 9 Dec. 2013. Web. United States. Los Angeles Police Department. Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners. Abridged Summary of Categorical Use of Force Incident and Findings by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners. Los Angeles Police Department, 20 Sept. 2016. Web. 29 May 2017. <http://assets.lapdonline.org/assets/pdf/083-15%20PR%20(OIS).pdf#page=7>. President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. 2015. Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Web. Los Angeles Police Department. Newsroom. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and Law Enforcement Leaders in Washington, D.C. NR15360jr. Official Site of The Los Angeles Police Department. Los Angeles City, 22 Oct. 2015. Web. 20 June 2017.
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
This paper explores how the Los Angeles Police Department trains its officers to engage with individuals dealing with mental illness. From 2011 to 2015, the number of mentally ill people shot by the LAPD increased. Police use of force and mental illness have become part of the national conversation after several high-profile shootings in Los Angeles—including the shooting of Ezell Ford, which became a pivotal turning point for the department in the way it equips its officers to interact with those dealing with mental illness. In an effort to be more transparent and better track police use of force, Police Chief Charlie Beck commissioned a comprehensive report in 2015 that would provide a demographic breakdown of those incidents. The report revealed that more than a third of people shot in 2015 had a mental illness. It’s unclear why the number of mentally ill people shot at the hands of police increased, but Chief Beck suggests the increased homeless population could be contributing to the numbers. As a result of the report’s findings, the department has implemented new policies and training courses that could prevent potentially violent encounters between police and people with mental illness.
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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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De Leon Tzic, Stefanie
(author)
Core Title
Los Angeles Police Department training and mental illness
School
Annenberg School for Communication
Degree
Master of Arts
Degree Program
Specialized Journalism
Publication Date
07/27/2017
Defense Date
07/26/2017
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University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
African American,Charlie Beck,community policing,LAPD,LAPD cadets,Latino,Los Angeles Police Commission,Los Angeles Police Department,Mental Evaluation Unit,Mental Health,mental health training,mental illness,mentally ill,Norma Guzman,OAI-PMH Harvest,officer,officer-involved shootings,police shootings,police use of force,policing,President Obama,Skid row,task force,Training
Format
application/pdf
(imt)
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Suro, Roberto (
committee chair
), Kurzban, Seth (
committee member
), Muller, Judy Marie (
committee member
)
Creator Email
deleontz@usc.edu,stefie.tzic@gmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-418070
Unique identifier
UC11214785
Identifier
etd-DeLeonTzic-5649.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-418070 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-DeLeonTzic-5649.pdf
Dmrecord
418070
Document Type
Thesis
Format
application/pdf (imt)
Rights
De Leon Tzic, Stefanie
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA
Tags
Charlie Beck
community policing
LAPD cadets
Latino
Mental Evaluation Unit
mental health training
mental illness
mentally ill
Norma Guzman
officer-involved shootings
police shootings
police use of force
policing
President Obama
Training