Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Police Chief James White, speaking Wednesday at the Mackinac Policy Conference, tapped into the city's mental health division as an example of ways to address crises.
The panel on Michigan's "greatest challenge" gathered an audience to watch excerpts from the Detroit Police Department's bodycam footage showing how police addressed mental health runs. Since taking the role as chief, White has pushed for a mental health division to provide officers training on managing stressful or tragic runs.
"When the state's mental health system fails, people have psychotic breaks. You know who deals with them in this state? Police officers, every single day, and in Detroit, Chief White actually built a mental health division within the Detroit Police Department because it's what he had to do to cope," Duggan said, asking attendees how many of them understand how the mental health system works in Michigan, garnering only two hands raised.
White's journey to law enforcement started at a young age. His uncle was murdered and after police showed up at his grandmother's home to relay the news, his grandmother cried and White, then 8 years old, cried in the arms of an officer.
"He held me and talked to me, and that made an imprint on my heart. When I got older and decided I wanted to help and contribute to society, I thought back to that moment in time and decided to become a police officer," White said.
Troubled residents lead to frequent 911 calls
White went on to pursue a master's degree in mental health counseling, later connecting it to policing. In their presentation, White and Duggan showed various clips of incidents involving individuals holding weapons with police officers using tactics by telling them they did a "good job" after dropping a weapon, or in another video of a man with a gun in his pants, an officer slowly approached telling him, "You're good bro, you good” while taking the weapon away.
"I thought those last four to five steps had to be scary, and they didn’t hesitate," Duggan told White.
"They didn't, and that's from training, and what you didn't see is the first officer who was concentrating on him, had he went for the gun would have addressed him," White said. "The second officer is working off the first officer, and once he builds that rapport, he's then giving him the signal to come in and get the gun. It worked to perfection. It doesn't always work to perfection, but that's what this training does."
Addressing mental health runs also involved building a database of addresses that have been flagged for mental health issues to notify officers of the incident history. More than 1,000 residents with ongoing mental health concerns average three or more 911 calls to Detroit police each week. The city also averages one barricaded gunman intervention per week.
White recalled his former officer Loren Courts, who died in the line of duty after responding to a "shots fired" call, wondering what would be if he knew about the individual's history.
'We're reinstitutionalizing county jails'
"Think about if Loren Courts knew. Think about if he knew not to drive up to that building. We know that this person has been aggressive with the police. We know what type of medication they're on, what their triggers are. So it's very impactful. But the biggest thing to come out of this is that we've got a mental health call responder civilian on the 911 call. So when that family member calls 911 and says, 'My loved one is in crisis,' we've now got a mental health professional that can start to triage process right then and there," White said.
Duggan emphasized the need for more community treatment centers and 72-hour psychiatric units.
"You say we're going to cut down state psychiatric beds because we want to deinstitutionalize. We're reinstitutionalizing county jails. In the rural jails, 34% have serious illness, 23% of state prisoners, and when under federal Medicaid, when you go into prison, the feds stop paying for the treatment," Duggan said.
He suggested Michigan shift 2% of its $3 billion on prisons and jails to expand mental health services for incarcerated individuals needing treatment. Duggan praised Sen. Debbie Stabenow for driving Medicaid access in mental health clinics and bringing the state to 30 community care clinics.
"I think if you can address the mental health crisis, you will see reductions in everything from domestic violence to drug use and drinking, because these people are self-medicating because of the feelings that they have, the emotions that they're going through, I think you will see a downturn across the board if we are able to do this," White said.
Dana Afana is the Detroitcity hall reporter forthe Free Press. Contact: dafana@freepress.com. Follow her:@DanaAfana.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mike Duggan, James White push for mental health at Mackinac Policy Conference
