Shandi Elliott refused to call the police when her teenage son had a mental health crisis. She doesn’t want her son to get arrested or get hurt. Instead, she’s pinning her hopes on the state’s mobile emergency response force to step in and help de-escalate the situation, even in emergencies.
“I’ve always tried not to call the police even though I was told I should,” Elliott said.
Ever since her 17-year-old son was diagnosed with mental illness five years ago, Elliott has taken proactive measures to prevent a crisis, including keeping a knife in her Wilmot home. She avoids calling 911 even if she feels her own safety is at risk.
“I know they’re trying to get us trained,” Elliott said of police. “He was so destructive and belligerent and out of control that I was afraid people would show up and arrest him.”
As a former paramedic, she knows firsthand that police intervention doesn’t always lead to positive outcomes in mental health crises. She believes in a different approach. It’s a no-help approach that risks arrest or the use of deadly force against her son.
“That’s my son and I love him. And I know that when he’s not bad, he’s very sweet and kind,” Elliott said.
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When it comes to changing the way emergency response systems handle incidents like hers, she had a message for law enforcement: “Be open-minded.”
When law enforcement is called upon to intervene in a crisis, the consequences are often costly for all involved.
Roughly two-thirds of people killed by police in New Hampshire over the past decade suffered from mental illness, according to a Monitor analysis. Similar trends have been observed in Maine and Vermont, where commissions of law enforcement, mental health advocates, and citizen voices with first-hand experience investigate all such cases from a preventive perspective. Recommendations are made for systematic improvements.
In New Hampshire, despite momentum to create such an organization, nothing has materialized.
“Sorry, no one noticed that,” said Bob Giuda, a former state senator who tried unsuccessfully to create one while in office. “The attorney general’s review is being done solely from the perspective of whether the shooting was justified. Was it unnecessary? Could something have been done differently?”
New Hampshire will pass legislation in 2022 that would create a committee of lawmakers to consider whether the state should establish a mental health incident review board, along with increasing funding for crisis intervention training for police officers. It was approved.
With input from law enforcement, mental health advocates, and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, the study committee concluded, “The establishment of such a committee is important to ensure that all parties involved, including police officers and individuals involved in the incident, It will be beneficial for the.” And both families too. ”
Under the committee’s recommendations, the review board would not overlap with other reviews, such as reviews by the attorney general or departments, and would not have any disciplinary powers. Aimed at prevention, it will focus on examining the mental health aspects of incidents in which police use deadly force and “developing best practices for law enforcement and mental health services.”
However, establishing such a review committee would require new legislation. No such bill has been introduced since the committee completed its work.
“I don’t know if we’ll find any senators or representatives who understand many of the issues and are willing to introduce legislation,” Giuda said.
Since the bill was introduced in the Legislature, five people in New Hampshire who are mentally ill or in crisis have been fatally shot by law enforcement. Three of the cases occurred after the inquiry committee recommended setting up a review committee.
Law enforcement and health care systems have turned the recommendations of review boards in Maine and Vermont into far-reaching and commonplace changes.
“I think the commission helped the state develop a new use-of-force policy that takes a little more time to de-escalate the situation and considers someone’s mental health to the extent possible,” Berlin Police said. said Director General James Pontbriand. Members of the Vermont State Police Department and the Vermont Mental Health Crisis Response Commission. “This has definitely restructured our training significantly to focus on de-escalation and mental health.”
In Vermont, certain police departments have integrated mental health officers into their operations. With new use-of-force policies in effect, police officers may first contact an individual experiencing a mental health crisis by telephone if they are in their home and increase their willingness to access mental health resources, depending on the situation. and attempt to ensure appropriate responses. Safety of all involved. However, if the person is in a public place, the officer will attempt to make direct contact.
Pontbriand acknowledges the reluctance of police officers, but sees these panels, like domestic violence review boards, as essential tools that “can be used as a lesson learned” tool.
In Maine, more than 60% of police departments involved in incidents reviewed by the Deadly Force Review Board reported adopting its recommendations at the end of 2022.
Building trust with law enforcement through communication is a big part of that, says Francine Garland Stark, executive director of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence and former chair of the Maine Commission. He says he fulfilled his role.
“On the law enforcement side, there is a degree of caution that this panel will harshly criticize law enforcement and make comments, recommendations, and observations that will make life even more difficult for law enforcement during an already very difficult time. I think there was some concern,’” Garland Stark said.
The panel’s discussions are completely confidential, but it releases a report after each incident and at the end of each year, which Garland Stark said is shared directly with departments across the state.
The recommendations “were not judgments, they were informational,” she said. She said, “Once the departments started looking at them, it was like, ‘Actually, these are very interesting observations and interesting insights.'”
The committee began its work in 2019. Although its scope extends beyond mental health-related incidents, the majority of the approximately 30 incidents investigated fall under mental health.
As a result of recommendations by the Lethal Policing Commission, the Maine State Police will increase officer awareness and training on engaging people with mental health concerns and develop less-lethal officer intervention strategies. Added supporting equipment and strengthened relationships and communication with local mental health agencies. The commission’s 2022 annual report said it has added mental health professionals to staff and improved support and stress management for officers who use deadly force.
“We worked hard to ensure that all observations and recommendations were thoughtful, articulated, fact-based and practical,” Garland Stark said. “Our job was to investigate this incident and see what else we could learn.”
It’s unclear how New Hampshire law enforcement leaders feel about the proposal. Most of the people The Monitor reached out to for this story, including representatives from the New Hampshire State Police Department, Department of Safety, and Police Chiefs Association, did not respond to interview requests, and those who did did not have any real knowledge of the concept of policing. I didn’t make any meaningful comments. review board.
“Interacting with people in mental health crises and the health of our employees is very important to me,” Safety Commissioner Robert Quinn said. “Our goal as a department is to provide the best possible service to those in need and support efforts to provide safety for Granite Staters.”
In testimony to the commission in 2022, law enforcement officials expressed concern about their intentions and said they are already implementing measures in the state, from local awareness efforts to increasing the number of participants in crisis intervention training. Pointed out existing improvements that have been made.
The system is already failing both parties when a police officer uses deadly force against someone, according to the minutes, said Russell Conte, a state police major and health coordinator. told the meeting. Review boards should focus on building better bridges with the health care system, rather than judging how first responders acted in the moment.
John Shippa, director of the New Hampshire Police Standards and Training Council, told the panel that the decision to use deadly force is a life-changing decision for a police officer.
He went on to say that if a review board says what an officer could have done better and that information is made public, police transparency could be hampered.
“For the commission to sit down and make that distinction could be detrimental to the commission’s mission,” he said, according to the commission’s report.
When asked about the Mental Health Case Review Board in an interview, Mr. Shippa said, “I think this concept certainly deserves further consideration.”
Sen. Tim Lang sponsored the New Hampshire Exploratory Commission Act of 2022. Lang said he and Sen. Sharon Carson, who chaired the review committee, have been working to draft and introduce legislation to implement the review committee since the committee’s recommendations were released.
Mr. Carson did not respond to requests for an interview about this story.
Lang, who formerly worked for the Northfield Police Department for nine years, said he believes the review board will improve the existing process of updating law enforcement policies and training.
“But it’s not just law enforcement,” Lang said. “The overall vision of that commission would be to not only cover the lack of law enforcement, but also the lack of mental health care.”
Susan Stearns, executive director of the National Federation of State Chapters, said existing reviews like the attorney general’s review are thorough, but they focus only on whether law enforcement’s response is legally justified, and the review committee He said it did not capture the broad range of perspectives that the association could offer. About mental illness.
Mental health review boards play a key role in identifying potential improvements to mental health care, including how to allocate resources and how to better identify early signs of mental illness in educational settings. Probably.
“What we really miss is what happened that day to put law enforcement in that position,” Stearns said. “How can we learn from these tragedies to prevent them?”
Lang said navigating both privacy laws and the state’s public access laws are the main obstacles to creating a commission of inquiry in New Hampshire.
“This is still a bill that I want to pass,” Lang said. “Just because we’re not there yet doesn’t mean we won’t get there.”
