[Peace] Champaign Police move a step forward

[Kimberlie Kranich]

Hello, All.

Back in March 2004 when we rallied together to research and present facts about Tasers and to put pressure on the Champaign City Council to reject a proposal to buy Tasers for their officers, one of our reasons was that Tasers would be used on those who are mentally ill or high on drugs.  We had discovered that these folks often received injuries when Tasers were used on them while they were in-custody.  Well, City Manager Steve Carter did withdraw his proposal to City Council to purchase Tasers in 2004 after our considerable grassroots education and direct engagement campaign. And now, according to today's News-Gazette article, police officers and others in Champaign County are being trained in how to better handle people with mental illness.

I believe that it was the unfortunate death of Greg Brown in 2000 after a struggle with many police officers (mentioned in the article below), our work around Taser education and direct engagement with our officials and other factors that this good training is now part of what police officers learn.  That is a good thing!

~Kimberlie

Officials train in ways to head off in-custody deaths
        
          By
            
                    Mary Schenk
                    
          
          Sunday, June 15, 2008 9:46 AM CDT
          
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        Not
too long ago, the following call might have made a 911 operator roll
his or her eyes and maybe even chuckle: a naked man pounding on doors
yelling incoherently.
Police dispatchers and officers in Champaign County now know those
are the warning signs of a medical crisis, not necessarily a crime in
progress.
Thanks to training spearheaded by Champaign police Lt. Michael
Paulus, all police dispatchers and officers in Champaign County, as
well as emergency medical responders and emergency room care providers,
are familiar with the concept of "excited delirium."
Paulus has developed a protocol, endorsed by the area departments,
to deal with people who might be in the throes of the condition in
hopes of saving the person's life. The protocol will be ready for use
in about a month, once all area police have completed training.
"Champaign and others have taken it upon themselves to use very
responsive, proactive measures, from all facets, beginning with
dispatchers to emergency medical services providers," said Darrell
Ross, chairman of the Western Illinois University College of Law
Enforcement and Justice Administration and a nationally renowned
researcher on the subject of excited delirium.

"It underscores the whole concept of community policing. This is
undertaken out of their own volition to provide the best police
response and services to the community. This is the extreme violent
confrontation that police do not want to have," Ross said.
How it started
In October 2000, Champaign police got into a struggle with an obese
man in an alley in the central part of the city. It took several
officers – as many as 14 were on the scene – to deal with the seemingly
superhuman strength that Gregory Brown, 45, was using to resist their
efforts to get him under control.

In less than an hour, he was dead. Autopsy results put the cause of
death as a heart condition with stress caused by his struggle as a
factor.

In September 2007, Urbana police found James Pelmore Jr., 33, in a
"highly agitated" state and "acting erratically" as he pounded on the
door of a home on North Division Street. He told police he'd been using
drugs and needed help.
As he was being prepared for transport to the hospital, Mr. Pelmore
stopped breathing. His cause of death was found to be cocaine
intoxication.

While hardly common, the common threads in those incidents struck a
chord with Paulus, who had attended a conference in Las Vegas two years
ago, sponsored by the Henderson, Nev.-based Institute for the
Prevention of In-Custody Deaths.

"We've seen this and aren't addressing it, and we should," Paulus
said to himself and his supervisors, who in January gave him the
approval to develop a protocol and to train fellow officers.
Paulus took it a step further. He also got the following groups to
join in the training: police dispatchers, ambulance crews, firefighters
who provide emergency medical care, emergency room doctors and nurses
from Carle Foundation Hospital and Provena Covenant Medical Center and
even some prosecutors.

"I have repeatedly advised the area chiefs that I do not guarantee
that we will save anyone, as I don't know when we come into the
timeline of this person and their syndrome. But what we are, and have
been, doing has not brought the appropriate resources to what we call
'a medical emergency that presents itself as a law enforcement
problem,'" Paulus said.
"You don't have the tools on your belt or in your car to deal with this," Paulus told officers at a recent training session.

The symptoms
Paulus said someone in an excited delirium state might display
bizarre behavior like walking naked in the street, refuse to cooperate
with police commands, have trouble breathing, sweat profusely due to
high core body temperatures, have dilated pupils, shake uncontrollably,
foam at the mouth and/or have unlimited endurance "until it stops,"
usually with death following immediately.

"The person will struggle before, during or after the restraints.
The longer the struggle, the worse it is," he said, adding that typical
police restraint tools like a baton, pepper spray, Tasers, or just
piling on of officers all might be ineffective because such persons
usually don't feel pain.

Paulus said the affected person – in nearly every case, it's a male
between 31 and 44 – commonly suffers from mental illness, drug or
alcohol abuse, or a combination of those and might have been on a
dayslong binge. He may not know where he is, how he got there or be
able to understand a simple command.

Struggling makes the situation worse, Paulus explained, because the
exertion builds up lactic acid in the muscles, which has an injurious
effect on the whole system. It also wears out the officers, making them
more susceptible to injury.

Dispatchers for the Metropolitan Computer-Aided Dispatch center
(METCAD/ 911), who send all police, with the exception of Rantoul, to
calls for service in Cham- paign County, will be listening for those
characteristics, said operations manager Ann Panthen.
"We have decided to send, although we're still in discussions, three
or four patrol officers, a patrol supervisor and an ambulance. There
are some times when we may over-respond, which is fine with everyone
involved. It's fine to back out," she said.

It also means that if a person in Fisher or Tolono is in such a
condition, officers from other jurisdictions are willing to provide the
necessary help, which Panthen calls "a huge change in jurisdictional
cooperation."

The response
The police response needs to be calm, reassuring and fast, Paulus counseled.
If the naked man is in the street, try to corral him to a safe area.
There's no need to rush in and grab him. The officer needs to
repeatedly tell the person he or she is there to help.
"Unless there is an immediate safety need, wait until you get the resources there to deal with this," he said.

The next steps are to control, sedate and transport, Paulus said.

There need to be enough officers to grab and hold each arm and leg
and get the person restrained as quickly as possible. Then an emergency
medical technician is to inject the person with ketamine, a general
anaesthetic that almost immediately puts the recipient out.

"It's the only way to get the person to the emergency room alive," Paulus said.
Emergency room doctors Thomas Scaggs of Carle Foundation Hospital
and James Ellis of Provena Covenant Medical Center heartily endorse the
protocol.

"This is a potentially deadly disease in that the system is revved
up to such a point that the patient essentially kills himself with too
much acid in their bloodstream due to intense adrenaline that is
occurring," said Scaggs, Carle's EMS medical director.

"What you want to do with these patients is protect them by restraining them chemically. That's the best way to do it."

Ellis, chairman of emergency medicine for Provena Covenant in Urbana and United Samaritans in Danville, agreed.

"This is a really, really rare occurrence as far as we can tell.
>From a medical standpoint, this is a no-brainer. We're going to take
care of these patients. It's such a huge risk and a high-profile case
whenever it (an in-custody death) happens to police," he said.

"Regardless of what started this chain of events – being overweight,
hot, having cops on them, cocaine abuse – our job from a medical
standpoint is to get in there and stop it and go from there," Ellis
said.

Champaign Police Chief R.T. Finney said the development of the
excited delirium protocol was an outgrowth of community discussions
about concerns over the use of Tasers and the treatment of mentally ill
people by police.

He and Urbana Assistant Chief Pat Connolly praised Paulus for his
research of the subject and his enthusiastic training of colleagues.
Other Illinois police departments have asked to borrow Paulus, Finney
said.

Connolly said while such extreme cases might be rare, they are not new to Champaign and Urbana.

"Whatever you call it, we all are approaching it from the same way.
Maybe our officers will recognize it and it may save someone's life,"
he said.



      
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