More money will be dedicated to enhancing the capabilities of a police team called on to deal with people with mental health issues, Walnut Creek Police said Tuesday, in hope of lessening the chance of future use of force scenarios with persons in crisis.
Captain Jay Hill told the city council the department would allocate $100,000 to its crisis intervention team, ensuring that trained personnel would be available around the clock to respond to mental health emergencies.
Selected personnel would have additional training “to better equip them to handle the sort of crises that we’re faced with,” Hill told the council via Zoom.
The move comes after a violent domestic incident escalated into a lethal confrontation between Walnut Creek police and a local man diagnosed as schizoaffective in June 2019.
Family, lawyers and a group have been asking for change in police procedure since Miles Hall, 23, was shot multiple times with non-lethal and then lethal rounds after rushing a group of officers with a double-ended pry bar near his family home last year.
His mother, who had called police that day that day to report her son’s erratic behavior and to ask that police remove him, has since argued police overreacted and needn’t have shot her son.
Scott and Taun Hall sued the city in September 2019 on the grounds that police had prior knowledge Hall suffered from mental illness and could have used methods other than lethal force to subdue him.
Walnut Creek police have issued a detailed video breakdown of events that day, which remain officially under investigation.
How is it going to be used? Another person maybe or more training? That’s only salary for one person.
Feel for everyone in this one — family, the man killed, and the police here. I don’t think its right that the police get so many of these calls and then have people criticize the response. The reality is we have no effective method of treating these people when they have ther breaks so we send the police. Not fair and not right.
Civilian position or sworn police?
Spear tipped metal bar becomes “garden tool.” Hafta love the lawyers.
Ok.Listen to the grandmother. Listen to the mother. Watch the video. How would YOU have handled this? Guys in white suits? Nets? Guys in coats with patches on the elbows and pipes? Talking him down? Right now it’s just a familiar pattern – give it to people who don’t want the job, then criticise and sue them when things go bad. I”m not a Back The Blue person but this isn’t right.
Five-foot-long pry bar being run full speed at officers. Lethal. Few options.
Maybe two burly ex Marines have options, not vanilla officers, and surely not female officers, even though it ain’t PC, its the truth.
I’d love a special crisis team to, but how do you pay for it? Who do we get to do the dirty work? I don’ t think we’re going to solve this anytime soon and while a hundred thousand is not small change I think it’s a drop in a reall big bucket.
Not near enough. How much to make a real crisis team?
If there are any mental health professional out there I’d be really interested in hearing how they think this should have been handled. Are we equipped to take care of all the people who are sick out there?
Throw all the money you want at the situation — the police shouldn’t have to deal with the mentally ill. They’re not psychiatrists.
I hope we can come up with a better way.
I see no easy answers. Mental illness is a huge issue and episodes are common. I’m not sure we know how to help people.
Wow. False reporting much? I feel like trump himself wrote this because it’s full of lies. 1) There was no “violent domestic incident” 2) Miles did not rush a group of officers and 3) He did not have a double ended pry bar. Good God.
If you know anything about mental illness you know that if someone does not know they are mentally ill (as Miles did not) and they are over 18 and not taking their medication then the only option for a family is to criminalize your own child in order to get a 5150 hold. Only after a series of these holds will you be able to gain custodianship of your child and get them help.
Anyone who watches the video (the uncut video, not the made-for-TV movie the cops put together) can see Miles was trying to run PAST them HOLDING (not brandishing or threatening) a garden tool given to him by his neighbor. He needed medical help and compassion, not violent cops.
His family has lived in that neighborhood for over 18 years and they had a relationship with the police department. They trusted the police. And the police (2 rookies who should have never been there) murdered him.
The leading officer (who was also at the murder of another WC resident 7 years ago) “forgot” to assign one of the rookies to use a taser.
Also, coming into a situation like that where someone is in a mental health crises with guns pointing and yelling at Miles only escalates the situation. The cops literally did everything wrong that day. They knew Miles, they knew he had a mental illness and they shot him down in his own neighborhood. He wasn’t a criminal, he wasn’t violent.
And $100,000 to a mental crisis response team is an insult. It can be done and it has been done but Walnut Creek needs to step up in a big way for murdering one of their own and ensure that this doesn’t happen again.
So what did we hear clanging to the ground when he fell? And where is the whole video you mention?
Yes is there an altnertative video? The neighborhood cam does appear to show him running toward police. He does veer away but is that from the beenbag gun??? And are the calls from his grandmother and mom faked or something?
While I sympathize with your pain, and I am appalled by the police violence we are seeing on a regular basis, I don’t see this tragic incident the way you do. How can you say there was not a “violent domestic incident”? I heard the 911 calls. Were they all lying about the threat he posed?
As for the $100,000, it is peanuts compared to what WC will pay for killing the erratic, mentally ill person running from what? to what? time after time. The police are obviously not trained for this, generally don’t empathize with and don’t understand the sick person, and we the taxpayers (and the shooting victims) will pay. Spend some money helping these sick people. Everyone benefits!
A garden tool? You mean a deadly weapon…
People see what they want to see. I have seen what I perceived to be excesses or failures by police on occasion and I believe reform and retraining is required but I’m not seeing what you are seeing in this horrible incident. Horrible for that poor man, his family, and for the police who it appeared to me were doing everything they could to get him to stop.
So those weren’t real calls for help from his family?
Situations such as these, present difficult issues and ultimately devolve into a Rorschach Test. Anyone weighing in will see what he/she wants to see, based upon their political leanings,
Will the family be donating som eof the millions they got from the city to fund the civilian mental health response they want?