Washington County's Mental Health Response Team key part of ...

When Washington County announced a 2.6 million-dollar settlement last month with the family of a teen fatally shot by sheriff's deputies in 2006, the Sheriff's Office made a bold assertion: If deputies were to encounter a similar situation today, "the Sheriff's Office would anticipate a different outcome."

The settlement marked the conclusion of a high-profile case in which a federal jury found deputies violated Metzger teenager Lukus Glenn's Fourth Amendment rights.

Washington County Sheriff Pat Garrett said Monday that he stands by that assertion and listed a series of mental health training changes the Sheriff's Office has made after Glenn's death and other mental health incidents.

The changes include creating a Mental Health Response Team, requiring mandatory crisis intervention training for all patrol deputies and increasing the amount of scenario-based training that involves a mentally ill person, among other steps. Beanbag shotguns have also been replaced with 40mm sponge rounds to avoid serious injury and Taser devices have been issued to patrol deputies.

"That's really what we are talking about," said Garrett, referring to why the office would expect a different outcome. "(The changes) are part of our evolution."

Of the all the changes, Garrett said he views the Mental Health Response Team as the most important. Though the team would be unlikely to be the first to respond to a situation like Glenn's or others involving a weapon or imminent threat, Garrett said it was part of the Sheriff's Office "evolution" in how it approaches mental health situations.

For county mental health workers, the Mental Health Response Team filled a much-discussed void.

"It was an idea that had festered for a while," said Kristin Burke, the county's Adult Mental Health Services supervisor, who worked with the Sheriff's Office's mental health coordinator to implement the program. "It was the right direction for the county and the Sheriff's Office to take."

The Sheriff's Office first piloted the Mental Health Response Team program in fall 2010, sending a county-contracted clinician into the field with an officer for one shift, four days a week. Deeming the pilot program a success, the Sheriff's Office and the county's contracted mental health services provider, LifeWorks Northwest, agreed to extend the program in February 2011 to seven days a week and to add more clinicians. The clinician side of the mental health team is funded by $200,000 a year that the county pulls from state mental health grants.

So far this year, the Mental Health Response Team has "de-escalated" more than 570 incidents in the county without force, according to the Sheriff's Office. On average, the team responds to about 20 calls a week.

"The idea is force is absolutely a last resort," said Deputy Pat Lahr, who is one of the two officers who rides with a clinician.

The majority of the calls the team responds to are welfare checks, requests put in by relatives, neighbors or friends about an indvidual's well-being.

Often the individuals, even if visibly suffering from a mental-health problem, are unwilling to seek help, Lahr said.

It's a job that is rewarded with small and infrequent victories.

For example, Lahr recently responded to a man whom neighbors have repeatedly called police about. The man believes people are constantly breaking into his house and goes outside yelling, Lahr said, but he is not a threat to anyone else.

After a recent incident when the man was destroying parts of his home, Lahr calmed him down and offered him his business card. Two weeks ago, Lahr said, the man sought medical help on his own.

"A lot of it is about giving them a familiar face, someone they don't find threatening," said Lahr, who one day wants to join the hostage negotiation team. "We want to connect them to resources, but that's not always easy."

The clinician's role in a mental health situation is to help offer strategy or a way to approach a person, clinician Karen Stewart said. Also a reserve police officer, Stewart asked to serve as a clinician with the Mental Health Response Team because it merged her two career interests.

"We had a little difficulty finding clinicians at first because there's an obvious risk there," said Kris Miller, who is in charge of coordinating clinicians for the team. "There were some people not interested in going to scenes because they can be unsafe or traumatic. It's a tough job."

But Miller said those who were interested in the job were passionate about the opportunity. Though clinicians are offered training for threatening situations, if a weapon is present, the clinician stays in the car and offers guidance over the radio.

What clinicians and officers can't predict, of course, are situations that turn unexpectedly volatile. ?

In two instances Stewart said she has had to take cover on scene.

"Yes, there's risk involved and that was a consideration for me," Stewart said. "But, ultimately, I have faith in the Sheriff's Office and I really believed this was an important program."

The program is modeled after mental health response initiatives used by San Diego and Los Angeles Police departments, Miller said, but on a smaller scale and tighter budget.

Both Miller and Garrett said they'd like to see the program expand to meet increasing demand. The program is a subgroup of the county's existing crisis response team, which responds to mental health situations but does not have the ability to get to scenes quickly because they do not ride with officers.

"There's a real need for this in the community," Lahr said. "That's the one thing we keep seeing: there are so many situations that benefit from having the response team."
- Katherine Driessen
Rebecca Woolington of The Oregonian contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2012/12/washington_countys_mental_heal.html

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