Nine Dead in Two Years in NYC and No One is Listening

Nine Dead in Two Years in NYC and No One is Listening 
By Carla Rabinowitz, Advocacy Coordinator, Community Access, Project Coordinator, Communities for Crisis Intervention Teams in NYC (CCINYC)
The Mental Health Community Demands Change

On Friday, February 23rd, 2018, dozens of community members gathered to mourn the lives of people lost in NYPD encounters in the last two and a half years.

At the memorial, we talked about the need to get the newly trained Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) officers to the scene of crisis calls.

We talked about the need for Mayor de Blasio to revive an old 2014 Taskforce to come up with other alternatives to police responding to these calls. Whether it is diverting calls to social workers or therapists to meet police on the scene, or trained peers responding in the community. We need alternatives to police responding to crisis calls.

But mainly it was a day for family, friends, and the community to mourn our nine losses.

We read the names of each life lost, and after each name was read, we popped a black balloon to signify their death.

Steve Coe, CEO of Community Access, implored the Mayor to revive the Taskforce, get all the experts in the room to figure out what is working, what is not working, and to fix this.

Below is my speech in full. At the memorial we spoke, and here we print the names of our community members so that we can remember them:

“Mario Ocasio was killed June, 2016. He was 51 years old. Mario was an uncle and a boyfriend. Mario, you are missed.

“Rashan Lloyd was killed June, 2016. Rashan was only 25 years of age when he died. Rashan was a construction worker and Rashan was raising his 4-year-old son. Rashan you are missed.

“Deborah Danner was killed in October, 2016. Deborah was well known in both the mental health and faith communities. Deborah was a regular member of Fountain House, a clubhouse in NYC. And Deborah was a long timelong-time member of Trinity Church. She participated in the poetry and knitting groups. Deborah predicted her own death at the hands of police on a blog she wrote. Deborah you are missed.

“Dwayne Jeune was killed July, 2017. Dwayne was a Caribbean immigrant. He died at 32 years of age. Dwayne was a devoted son, who often helped his mother with groceries and could sometimes be found dancing in front of a mirror in the hallway outside his apartment. Dwayne’s cousin said Dwayne was a soft-spoken, mild-mannered person who never bothered anyone. Mr. Jeune you are missed.

“Ariel Galarza was killed November 2016 when police mistook a hot sauce bottle for a knife. He was 49-years-old when he was killed. Ariel was described as a peaceful, hardworking man. Ariel was a role model for his nephews and loved dearly by his little sister. Ariel you are missed.

“Andy Sookdeo died in August 2017. He was only 29 years old. Andy took his own life when confronted with police. Andy had been a school bus driver before things fell apart. Not only did Andy die in this encounter, but police were injured as well. Andy, you are missed. 

“Miguel Richards was killed in September, 2017. Miguel was a college student from Jamaica living in NYC in an exchange program. He died at 31 years of age. Miguel was an IT expert with a bright future. Police had 17 minutes to talk Miguel down using de-escalation skills, but instead they just shouted commands at him, telling him they would shoot him if he did not comply. Maybe that’s what Miguel wanted at that moment. Miguel you are missed.

“Cornell Lockhart was killed in November, 2017. He was 67-years-old when he died. Lockhart had lived in a supportive housing residence for six years before his death. When police shot him, Cornell’s arms were down at his side and his back was against a wall. Cornell you are missed.

Dwayne Pritchett was killed in January, 2018. Dwayne was 48 years of age at his death. Dwayne was a barber. He was raising his 3-year-old son with his female partner., but left to live with his father about a week before his death. Mr. Pritchett you are missed.

Let these lives lost not be in vein. Let’s strengthen our resolve to continue the work to find new solutions to crisis calls that so many people in the mental health community face.

We demand the Mayor revive his Taskforce to find non-police responses to crisis calls before one more life is lost.

Is the NYPD the Best Response to New Yorkers in Crisis?

By Carla Rabinowitz, Advocacy Coordinator, Community Access, Project Coordinator, Communities for Crisis Intervention Teams in NYC (CCINYC)

Coalition Says the City Needs More Options

Recent police shootings of people in emotional distress have catalyzed our coalition of mental health advocates and organizations to further reform efforts. We testified about needed efforts at a recent City Council hearing, focusing on the need for alternatives to police responding to New Yorkers in crisis. On the day we testified, another NYC resident, Miguel Richards, was shot and killed by the NYPD. He was only 31 years old. Video of his shooting was recently released.

To create change, we need the Mayor to revive the defunct Taskforce on Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice. We need to bring all stakeholders together to build efforts to solve issues of community policing. And, we need the coordination of the Mayor’s office to find non-police alternatives to 911 calls of people in emotional distress.

We are planning a press conference for Wednesday, October 18, at the steps of City Hall in Manhattan at Noon. Everyone is invited to join us as we bring these pressing needs to the media to better inform elected officials.

My Testimony at the City Council Hearing on the NYPD Response to Mental Health Crises
“Thank you to the members of the Council for hearing this testimony today. My name is Carla Rabinowitz. I am the Advocacy Coordinator at Community Access and the Project Coordinator of CCINYC, a coalition of 75 organizations and stakeholders whose mission is to improve relations between the NYPD and the mental health community by advocating for a fully responsive Crisis Intervention Team approach and diverting mental health recipients away from the criminal justice system.

“Community Access is a 44-year-old non-profit that helps people with mental health concerns through quality supportive housing and employment training.

“CCITNYC and Community Access request that you revive the Mayor’s Task Force on Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice. This Taskforce met twice in 2014 and has since been defunct.
“We ask that you recommend the Mayor assign this Taskforce to the oversight of a Deputy Mayor.

“We need all stakeholders and all city and state agencies at the table to suggest alternatives to police responding to these EDP calls. Expanding co-response teams throughout the city, more mobile crisis teams, and pairing mental health peers with police to calm down these encounters are a few ideas to explore.

“Some of the contributions of the Taskforce have already been taken up by the city, including the implementation of CIT training for some members of the NYPD.

“The NYPD training is going well, though there is still a significant need for adequate training.

We ask that at least 15,000 officers be trained, especially since Rikers is closing and there will be more of these encounters. Countless people have been saved by CIT officers. CIT officers saved a child threatening his mom with a knife, and stopped many potential suicides.

“But CIT training alone is not going to prevent these recurring deaths.

“Since the NYPD started CIT training, at least 6 mental health recipients have died in police encounters:

“Mario Ocasio, age 51, in June 2015; Rashan Lloyd , age 25, in June 2016; Deborah Danner, age 66, in October 2016; Ariel Galarza, age 49, in November 2016; Dwayne Jeune, age 32, in July 2017; and Andy Sookdeo, age 29, in August 2017.

“We need to solve issues before mental health recipients get into crisis, and for that we need funding of community services.

“We need alternatives to hospitals, which recipients fear, like Respite care, where people in crisis can learn to recover and get connected to long-term support.

“We need to support the police by building diversion centers to provide a rapid handoff of New Yorkers in acute crisis from police custody to get immediate care and long-term connections to community resources.

“We need community forums with police and mental health recipients to reduce the fear in the mental health community when the police arrive.

“And most importantly, we need the Mayor to revive his 2014 Taskforce on Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice. And place this Taskforce under a Deputy Mayor, with the resources to get things done.

“We need all stakeholders and all city and state agencies at the table to suggest alternatives to police responding to these EDP calls. Expanding co-response teams throughout the city, more mobile crisis teams, and pairing mental health peers with police to calm down these encounters are a few ideas to explore.

“Therefore, we ask that you recommend the Mayor revive his 2014 Taskforce on Criminal Justice and Behavioral Health.”

Police Training and Community Diversion Centers

Police Training and Community Diversion Centers
By Carla Rabinowitz, Advocacy Coordinator, Community Access
Progress Report on Implementing Crisis Intervention Teams in NYC
Relations between the mental health community and the New York Police Department (NYPD) are improving through work to implement Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training for officers. CIT is a method of policing that prompts police officers to use appropriate tools to respond to incidents involving people in emotional distress. CITs ensure safe and respectful interactions between people experiencing a mental health crisis and law enforcement.
CITs are needed because the NYPD responds to 150,000 calls of those in mental health crisis a year. They call these calls EDPs(Emotionally Disturbed People calls). Progress has been made to train officers in effective handling of mental health crisis, but more must be done to impact NYPD response methods and build opportunities for diversion from the jail and hospital system.
Many officers now still respond to EDPs in a command and control approach based on their standard training. The primary way NYPD officers still try to gain control of a situation is by getting compliance from the person in distress by using force.
But that is all changing due to the work of Community Access and other members of the Communities for Crisis Intervention Team Coalition (CCIT), www.CCITNYC.org .
The NYPD has agreed to train 5,500 officers in a 36-hour training that supports police personnel in understanding the tools they need to use to effectively address those in mental health distress. So far, 300 NYPD officers have been trained using the model pioneered by the city of Memphis, TN in 1988.
But CIT is more than just training of police. CITs require coordination between the public health system, police departments, and the mental health community.
In addition to training, the NYPD—under the guidance of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene—is creating a small demonstration project pairing 10 teams of social workers and NYPD to work together. These teams will ride to shelters and other locations together as a co-response team.
The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) invited a few mental health service recipients to speak to the newly hired social workers on the co-response team. One of our main priorities continues to be that DOHMH and the NYPD go further and hire actual mental health peers to advise police.
The group of mental health leaders invited to the process also advised the co-response team that when they need to take a mental health recipient to the hospital, they might encounter a lot of resistance. Some mental health recipients, especially when they are in distress, will object to being taken to a hospital. Some recipients have had traumatic experiences at hospitals or just do not like being locked up. We advised the social workers that they will need to improve their de-escalation techniques for those people for whom a hospital is a place they dread.
The recipients at the planning meeting also advised the social work co-response teams that offering something to eat or drink or a blanket is a good gateway to a conversation with a person in distress.
The team also indicated to the co-response team the importance of being careful from where they receive information about the person in distress. We explained that talking to neighbors about a mental health recipient might not be the best idea as community members often harbor prejudice against mental health recipients. We also suggested that the co-response team be similarly cautious in talking with family members; some of us believed family members could offer information on the person in distress, but others felt family members could be the triggers for a mental health recipient, especially when the recipient is in distress.
This DOHMH co-response pilot project is exciting but not new. Houston employs a similar co-response team and has done so for 15 years. Many other cities have implemented similar teams that pair peers or clinicians with police officers, or established centralized communication centers where officers can access health information or access to treatment options.
Most importantly, CCIT continues to advocate for city-wide diversion centers where police can quickly drop off people in crisis and return to other police calls. The Mayor and DOHMH have promised to build two diversion centers but unfortunately those centers have not yet been procured or established.
These diversions centers are an essential part of a CIT response. Officers need a place to quickly drop off a person in distress or the officer will take the person into custody. A diversion center is less time-consuming and less expensive than time in jail or in the hospital, and there is evidence that diversion greatly benefits both the recipients and police officers. Currently, even the best-intentioned NYPD officers have no other choice but to take a mental health recipient to a hospital or retain them in another type of custody.
These promised diversion centers are slated to have complete mental health and drug addiction services. They will be open 24/7 and connect those being brought by police to community supports. Unlike hospitals, the focus of the diversion centers is to connect people in distress to outpatient services, a place they can apply for housing, a clinician they can talk to immediately, and other resources known to mental health community organizations. And we are assured peers will play a role in these diversion centers.
The CCITNYC coalition remains hopeful and vigilant that the NYC Mayor’s office invests resources in building diversion centers as an integral part of the CIT approach. We commend the efforts of the Mayor’s office, DOHMH, and the NYPD on their efforts thus far in supporting the best interests of New Yorkers who experience mental health crisis and emotional distress. We look forward to working together with all stakeholders into the future as CIT is expanded and enhanced with community supports.
If you are interested in upcoming events with the CIT Coalition in NYC, CCITNYC.org, please contact me at crabinowitz@communityacccess.org or 212-780-1400 x7726.

Mayor De Blasio Pledges to Implement Crisis Intervention-Team Model

Mayor De Blasio Pledges to Implement Crisis Intervention-Team Model
By Carla Rabinowitz, Community Organizer, Community Access, Inc.
Police Can and Should Handle People in Crisis with More Care
Three years ago Community Access and a few organizations formed the Communities for Crisis Intervention Teams in NYC (CCITNYC) to improve relations between the New York Police Department (NYPD) and New Yorkers with mental illness.
Our goal is to encourage the police to implement a new model of police training where police can identify someone in crisis and respond in a way that de-escalates the crisis, and recognizes that the person in crisis is mentally ill and not a criminal. We now have more than 75 organizations supporting us.
Fortunately, the mayor shares our vision and will create two centers where police can drop off people in crisis and will train 5,500 of the city’s 35,000 officers on identifying mental health symptoms and de-escalating crisis situations.
This is part of the mayor’s new Task Force on Criminal Justice and Behavioral Health. Other areas of change include post-booking diversion, CIT-like training for correction officers, and more help when people leave prison and re-enter the community. In all, the mayor has pledged $130 million for this effort.
A CIT (Crisis Intervention Team) is a method of policing that provides officers with the tools they need to respond to incidents involving people in emotional distress. CITs ensure safe and respectful interactions between mental health recipients and law enforcement.
CITs require coordination between the public health system, police departments and the mental health community. Police need a place to quickly drop off people in crisis and return to other police calls. This is why the mayor’s centers are so important. Without them, police could sit for hours in emergency rooms with each person in crisis.
CITs are needed because the NYPD responds to 150,000 calls of those in mental health crisis a year. They call these calls EDPs (Emotionally Disturbed Person calls). And today NYPD officers receive little training on how to handle these calls.
So what happens? A family member or a housing agency calls for an ambulance if a person is in crisis. Police show up and go into their routine training model of “Command and Control,” proving police are in control. Police may start shouting commands or say to the mental health recipient “do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?”
Right away the encounter escalates, and the mental health recipient who is in crisis becomes more upset. Sometimes all that happens is a long wait at a hospital or city jail. Sometimes, these encounters take a turn for the worse. In the last two years there have been several fatalities and beatings of mental health recipients by the NYPD. There are also the financial costs.
New York City has set aside $674 million to cover claimants' cases against it and expect to pay $782 million in 2016. Police misconduct, injury and civil rights allegations against the NYPD make up more than 1/3 of claims against the city. Just one of those shootings could cost a city millions of dollars.
The benefits of a CIT program are:
1. Less time for officers in between crisis calls. Chicago reduced this down time from eight hours to 30 minutes;
2. Fewer injuries to police and mental health recipients. San Antonio, which has trained 92% of officers, has not seen one use-of-force case since 2008. Houston, which trained 50% of its 5,200 officers, also reported a drop in cases of force;
3. Improved perception of police by mental health recipients and staff at mental health agencies. Many times families or mental health providers are the ones who call the police. They need to know they can trust how police will treat the people they are helping to care for;
4. Law enforcement’s better view of mental health recipients and better confidence working with mental health recipients;
5. More positive media relations for the NYPD and the mayor. In response to one recent police shooting of a person in crisis, the mayor said that he was going to put new training into place to better help address these incidents; and
6. Lends prestige to NYC. Before the mayor’s plan was released, NYC was the only one of the seven largest cities in the USA without CIT training of police.
Some cities like Houston and Los Angeles have social workers riding along with police. Houston has the social worker co-responder model, but does more. Houston trains all of its officers in the traditional CIT 40-hour training and has a telephone line for officers who are not trained in CIT to call in and get advice when the officer is handling an EDP call.
CITS are a win-win for police, the mental health community and the general public. I am excited that the mayor has embraced better training of police and more interactions with mental health community leaders.

Empty Spaces: Pushing Back the Boundaries by Virginia A. Tobin

Empty Spaces: Pushing Back the Boundaries

By Virginia A. Tobin

Reclaiming My Consciousness

Anything or anyone who demands your attention on a daily basis becomes personal to you. Before I became mentally ill, my personal identity was common place to myself and to the rest of society. Since then, my paranoid schizophrenia has demanded my attention generally speaking for approximately 19 years, and has demanded my attention at every level of my life for most of those years. My mental illness has occupied the empty spaces and has pushed back the boundaries so that the gaps of emptiness are much wider than that of a mentally healthy person. I have come to see that being passive about this invites the mental illness to become a parasite larger than the host. The time has come for me to push back the boundaries of emptiness and to allow little room for the uncommon demand.

My symptoms began in 1995, unbeknownst to me, creeping up on me with peculiar occurrences, all culminating in 2007 when I was hearing and seeing ghosts. The onset of my disability seemed to coincide with my one and only marriage to a man I had dated in high school. I only know this in retrospect because I had no clue I was mentally ill until being diagnosed in 2004. My suffering really commenced when my husband left me, without much explanation, after six months of living together as husband and wife. I had a profound feeling of not understanding, which stayed with me, growing for years to come. This feeling of not understanding eventually became about everything that I experienced on a daily basis and thus became MY personal definition of the self.

I would not say that I was lost. I wasn’t. It’s just that this feeling of not understanding became accompanied by beliefs that I adopted to explain the feeling itself. This is where I split from the common understanding of the truth. I began believing that everyone around me was talking indirectly about me or indirectly to me. Following this, I began believing that I knew things that the public did not know about local and world events. Everything I heard, and everything and everyone I met, soon seemed to be a part of a perfect world in which every last detail and generality was previously planned from the license plates of the cars around me to the changing names of countries on the world map. Putting it simply, I recognized everything in the world. It was like experiencing the awesome power of God from a demonic perspective.

One cannot imagine what this felt like, nor understand how demanding this was on my attention. I was in a continuous state of shock and not understanding. This is where my paranoia steps in. I believed that strangers around me knew who I was and that they were all in on some kind of great conspiracy concerning me. I believed that spies from all over the world were watching, listening and following me, that micro-cams were in my bathroom and a tracking device was inside my watch. I don’t know when I started to believe there was an implant in my thumb. This now all seems so gratuitous, of course, since whoever planned the world’s goings on was so advanced.

I was eventually caught be the authorities as only mentally ill people will truly understand. In desperation, I went to the police while I was delusional and traveling around the country thinking now that I was being chased and harassed by the mob. The police sent me to the public psychiatrist where I was officially diagnosed. I immediately noticed that I was now in a different class of people because I was institutionalized. I had just relinquished control of my entire life, as a prisoner would relinquish control to the authorities by being incarcerated. My instincts were correct. This was only to be the beginning of a long span of time spent in and out of the mental institution. It seemed that everyone viewed me as a mentally ill person whose sudden civic duty it was to control and detain. This is how my life crashed.

My paranoid schizophrenia voided my daily experience of true living and settled in with voices from the spirit world. My disability took on a new dimension as voices only came from people in the material world before this. These new voices took my time and my attention so that I was unable to measure my life and at some points unable to measure time. Life events were seemingly non-existent. The value and the meaning of life became shabby. Emptiness was my master and I was its slave.

During the time period directly following my life crashing, I began to finally gain a feeling of understanding through the spirit world voices. They explained a whole new domain of delusion to me which justified everything that I had previously believed. Finally, I began to relax because I no longer felt the desperation of not comprehending.

Currently, I have a more developed understanding and realistic relationship with my disability. The goal is to close the gap of emptiness with a hobby or interest that I can share with others and hopefully earn some money with. The concept that I am pursuing is to teach myself how to make wedding gowns and eventually to design originals. Of course, I will take this very personally as it will redefine who I am by what I think about and do routinely. My attention will be mine again.