The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday on behalf of a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization alleging that the city’s reliance on police response to mental health emergencies violates federal law on disability.
According to the court caseWashington Police Department routinely sends armed officers to respond to 911 calls related to mental health crises instead of sending mental health professionals trained to handle these emergencies.
The lawsuit alleges that the practice violates the Americans With Disabilities Act, or ADA, and the Rehabilitation Act, as it “denies people with mental health problems the benefits of the district’s disaster relief programs and services and does not give them equal access to those services.”
The lawsuit alleges that people with mental health disabilities and those experiencing a mental health crisis do not receive the same resources as those experiencing a physical health crisis, despite an equal opportunity obligation. under the ADA. Only 44 community response team members have been hired to handle mental health emergencies, compared to the 1,600 emergency medical technicians hired to handle physical health emergencies, the suit said.
The Metropolitan Police Department and the Department of Behavioral Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
Non-profit organization says it bears the costs
In June 2021, Washington launched a mental health emergency program working with the Office of Unified Communications and the Department of Behavioral Health to route 911 calls to mental health specialists. Under the program, community response teams of mental health clinicians and certified peer support specialists would be dispatched to handle mental health emergencies, instead of police officers.
“This initiative strengthens the clinical response to all mental health crisis calls, including those that come in direct [Department of Behavioral Health]as well as those through the 911 system to get people the best, most appropriate treatment and support they need,” said Barbara J. Bazron, director of the Department of Behavioral Health in a rack in 2021.
But according to the indictment, the city has provided insufficient funding, training and coordination to support and staff community response teams, resulting in less than 1% of mental health emergency calls receiving a response from mental health professionals.
“More than just illogical and dangerous, DC’s emergency response system doesn’t provide the same level of care for people in mental health crises as it does for people in physical health crises,” said Susan Mizner, director of the ACLU’s Disability Services. Rights Program, said in a statement. “This is exactly the kind of inequality that our disability rights laws should protect against.”
“The most effective response to a mental health crisis is to provide empathy, support, and a calm, safe environment.”
– Tracy Knight, Bread for the City
This isn’t the first time the ACLU has called for improvements in Washington’s mental health response. Following calls for additional resources in April, the Department of Behavioral Health said staff would soon be working at the 911 call center. The department too told NBC Washington that it would continue to train police officers in dealing with mental health crises.
The plaintiff in the new lawsuit is Bread for the City, a nonprofit organization focused on providing food, health care, legal aid and social services to underserved Washington communities. Sheppard Mullin’s law firm is representing the plaintiff along with the National ACLU and DC ACLU
“The most effective response to a mental health crisis is to provide empathy, support and a calm, safe environment,” Bread for the City executive director Tracy Knight said in a statement. “While the district employs some mental health providers to respond to crises, it has not invested the necessary resources or provided them with the support necessary to be effective and broadly deployable.”
According to the lawsuit, customers often have mental health crises at Bread for the City’s facilities. To avoid calling 911, the nonprofit relies on staff to de-escalate the crisis, which has resulted in a loss of revenue, diverting money spent on training and resources away from the nun’s mission profit organization.
“If calling 911 resulted in mental health professionals responding quickly to a mental health crisis, Bread would be able to redirect significant resources back to its core programs,” the lawsuit reads.
The pressure to move away from police response to mental health crises
Experts have recommended that the police are not the default response to mental health crises, as they are more likely to make the problem worse then relieve.
Studies to reveal that police across the country are 11.6 times more likely to use force against people with serious mental health problems than other individuals, and 16 times more likely to kill people with untreated mental health problems than other individuals.
“There are people who don’t call crisis shelters because they’re afraid of what will happen if the police show up,” said Alex Rifwald, a member of a Tennessee deputy response team. told Knox News in May. “We really need a response that is not tied to police officers because it has shown that the presence of a police officer can escalate someone into a crisis.”
For years, advocates have been urging communities to create alternatives, such as crisis response teamsto deal with mental health crises instead of relying heavily on law enforcement
“We need to build community resources that can respond and resolve a crisis without law enforcement being involved. If we build the crisis response system, i.e. non-law enforcement, we will get more people to connect before it reaches that level of danger,” Ron Bruno, executive director of Crisis Intervention Team International, a group working to improve the response to mental health crises, told NPR in 2020.
According to the new lawsuit, officers in Washington are taught to always be prepared to defend themselves against attacks and to adopt a tactical mindset, but are not trained to maintain “a clear, open, and non-threatening attitude.” take when dealing with someone who has a mental health crisis.
A 2021 report from the DC Health Matter Collaborativea coalition of local healthcare providers, states that police officers undergo training that provides only a superficial understanding of best practices for dealing with mental health.
“Police are not the right people to respond to someone going through a mental health crisis, and we should stop expecting them,” Ashika Verriest, a senior staff attorney with ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project, said in a statement. “As a matter of safety and equity, DC and communities across the country must invest in a robust and appropriate crisis response so that all of our neighbors receive the proper care they need.”