(Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)
An outside assessment of Salem police’s response to suicide calls from 2015-2019 found some city police reports lacked detail about officers’ actions and the outcomes. In comparison, reports were thorough when written by Marion County’s Mobile Crisis Response Team, comprised of an officer and a qualified mental health professional, which almost never had to use force in responding to suicide calls, the assessment found.
The assessment was mandatory as part of a settlement between the Salem Police Department and the estate of Chase Hammer, a man who police shot and killed in 2012 when he was in a mental health crisis, according to a complaint filed by Hammer’s estate.
Officers had responded to a call reporting Hammer was threatening suicide, possibly had a gun, had taken anti-anxiety and pain medications, and was not violent, “just sad,” the complaint said.
Hammer’s family sued the city, resulting in a $100,000 settlement in 2016 that required Salem to review and assess its police response to suicide calls over the previous five years.
An assessment team at Crisis Systems Management, a Missouri-based organization that offers training in crisis hostage negotiation, crisis intervention and suicide intervention for law enforcement, conducted the study.
The assessment team consisted of four members, all of whom are former law enforcement officers, said Deb McMahon, a senior instructor and curriculum developer for Crisis Hostage Negotiation and Peer Support Programs for the organization.
They focused on 132 crime and incident reports produced by Salem officers related to suicide calls over the five-year period, examining around half of the total reports produced each year.
The group found that the narrative portion of some police reports didn’t have detailed descriptions of decisions and actions made by officers and the outcomes of the incidents, according to the assessment.
Officers were consistently clear in reporting “objective” decisions and those based on standard procedure like handcuffing or submitting paperwork, but more “subjective” decisions like their interpretation of potential violence or self-harm were vaguer. The assessment said police reports give other officers who come in contact with the same person valuable information, and “the smallest detail” can impact de-escalating the situation or whether officers use force.
“I think that it is absolutely critical that officers give incredibly responsible detail in the narrative portion of reports, because so often, these officers are responding to these individuals time and time again,” McMahon said.
Documenting what worked and what didn’t work with a person in crisis can help prepare any future officers to respond effectively.
The clearest and most detailed reports, she said, were those written by members of the Mobile Crisis Response Team, who officers can call to take over and help de-escalate a person experiencing a mental health crisis.
The assessment said members of the team wrote clearer descriptions of the behavior of the person in crisis, why they resisted intervention, previous interactions with them and outcomes.
“Reports of this quality left few questions,” the assessment said.
Lt. Debbie Aguilar, Salem police spokesperson, said officers are often taught to write reports based on facts, not their opinion, but subjective details can be important as well.
She said the department can account for that by training supervisors to to point out lack of detail when they see it. “This is another area where we need to make sure that we encourage officers that it’s okay to make those observations and then document those so that that’s clear in the report what they were seeing,” Aguilar said.
The assessment found that Salem police using the Mobile Crisis Response Team to respond to people in crisis was “the best possible effort toward successful outcomes” and resulted in less frequent contact between people in crisis and law enforcement. Assessors found the team showed “a knowledgeable and patient approach” and almost never needed to use force.
Assessors recommended Salem continue to use the Mobile Crisis Response Team and choose the right people for the position, “those who are motivated, possess important communication skills and who have the willingness to patiently intervene with persons in crisis.
Aguilar said the assessment’s findings have already informed some changes to the department’s training of officers. There are now questions they’re expected to ask dispatchers before arriving, such as whether the Mobile Crisis Response Team is on duty and can start heading to the scene. In case police presence on scene may escalate situation, officers are also trained to suggest talking on the phone to build rapport.
She said Salem police would love to have more members of Mobile Crisis Response Team available, but the positions are funded by grants that support a limited number. Oftentimes, Salem police have multiple calls that would benefit from the team responding but they don’t have enough staff.
“There are a lot of response models that don’t include this partnering, and so they’re an option as well that we would definitely be open to looking at,” Aguilar said, pointing to crisis response programs separate from police but that officers can call, such as CAHOOTS in Eugene. Ideally, she said, multiple options should be available when responding to people in crisis, including a place to take them like a navigation center or sobering center.
“We recognize that a lot of these calls for service are not police calls for service and then oftentimes when we respond, we only make things worse,” she said. “And so any time that we can support a program where you’re getting immediate help to people who need it, yeah, that would absolutely be something that we would support, she said.
McMahon said she personally believes having a crisis response program that pairs an officer with a mental health professional is “the way to go.”
“So many people who are in crisis, do incredibly dangerous things, and even if their intent is self-harm, or suicide, they place others at risk as well,” she said. “If those two people showed up together, they’re going to accomplish a lot more than the mental health professional who ultimately ends up having to call the police.”
The assessment also found that police reports occasionally showed “inconsistent and sometimes inappropriate terms” when describing aspects of a response to a person in a mental health crisis. Examples listed were describing people as “throwing a tantrum” instead of “threw himself to the floor where he shouted and kicked his feet for several minutes.”
Cases over the first three years also showed people in crisis referred to as “mental” either in the call type, or descriptively as “a mental” or “a mental person.” The department was required as part of the settlement to stop using the term “mental,” the assessment said.
“It’s the same with use of force, so officers get in the habit of using terminology like, ’He appeared aggressive.’ Well, what does aggressive mean?,” Aguilar said. “It’s just reminding officers that, try to be more descriptive. Don’t use these vague terms that are open to interpretation, really describe what you are seeing.”
Contact reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian: [email protected] or 503-929-3053.
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