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500 Pages Later, This Ain’t the Mueller Report
The Portland Police Bureau released the transcript of their investigation into the officer shooting of a mentally ill man on the streets of Portland. The 555 pages of investigation work is far more important than the Mueller Report and the amount of time that has been spent on trying to nullify an election. The will full ignorance, and misplaced compassion of refusing to address the problems of the mentally ill by turning them loose on the streets is a national disgrace. It is not only a disgrace, but it’s also dangerous.
The story from OregonLive:
A Multnomah County grand jury on Monday found no criminal wrongdoing by a Portland police officer who fatally shot 31-year-old Lane Christopher Martin in an alcove of a Southeast Portland apartment complex on July 30.
The grand jury determined the shooting by Officer Gary Doran was “a lawful act of self-defense and/or defense of a third person,” according to the District Attorney’s Office.
The fatal shooting occurred after Martin had threatened a security guard with a knife and hatchet in a parking lot as he was caught breaking into a Jeep, walked off yelling at bystanders and swinging the hatchet down a busy city thoroughfare, was shot by police twice in the legs with two less-lethal sponge-tipped munitions, ultimately dropped the hatchet and ran to an apartment complex where he was cornered by police, according to 555 pages of police reports released late Monday afternoon.
Mr. Martin’s family has filed a Federal Civil Rights lawsuit against the Portland Police Bureau. They are grieving, and angry-I understand that. According to one family member Mr. Martin was on a new medication, but she suspects he may have been using meth as well. Self-medicating is not unusual, and feeling that they are smarter if they are not taking the prescribed medication is not unusual as well.
Not all mentally ill persons are a danger, but there are some that are. Police officers have intervened before someone is in a full blown crisis, and there are times when they have to intervene when someone is on the ragged edge. As a former police officer, I’ve had experiences in both of these situations.
Police officers have an obligation to try and deescalate a situation when they can. Police officers also have a responsibility to protect the public and themselves in these types of situations. It doesn’t hurt any less to be stabbed with a knife or to receive a blow from a hatchet from someone who is mentally ill than it does from someone who has run of the mill anger management issues.
The sad thing is that it’s almost impossible to get a civil commitment for families that are trying to get help for a mentally ill family member. That needs to change.
I have provided links to the PPB Investigation, as well as the OregonLive article. I skimmed through all 500+ pages of the PPB report. Officer Doran’s interview with detectives was not scheduled to be released until the Grand Jury decision was made public. The decision has been made public now so I imagine Officer Doran’s interview will be released in a few more days.
Published in Policing
Switching medications for mood and thought moderation can have unexpected consequences that manifest mentally and not just physically. A chemical shift in the brain can instigate confusion, irritability, depression, hallucinations, even psychosis. In other words, a disturbed but non-violent person can become dangerous. One’s history of behavior is not always indicative of one’s present state of mind.
This has been a problem in Oregon for almost fifty years. With progressives firmly in charge, I see little hope for change.
Indeed, and there is a percentage of paranoid schizophrenics that are not helped, or respond to any prescribed medication.
We cannot blame the Left exclusively for this problem. Our Libertarian and Conservatarian friends are also to blame.
Libertarians and Conservatarians take the view that whatever a “consenting adult” decides to do is morally acceptable. I know this, not only from hearing this from friends, but because I used to hold these views. The general motivation, in my own life, was a desire to behave in immoral and self-destructive ways, without interference.
The result is that Libertarians and Conservatarians support freedom at all costs. Even freedom for the mentally ill drug abuser who is destroying himself, and who is a danger to those around him. This prevents a strong consensus to deal with these serious and difficult issues.
There is a legitimate place for Libertarians and Conservatarians in the discussion, as they have good points to make about the cost of restrictions on liberty. For example, there are serious costs involved in a “war on drugs,” in terms of law enforcement and legal costs and the expense of incarceration, as well as the deprivation of liberty imposed on convicts. Unfortunately, liberty is not a panacea, either.
I can assure anyone regardless of their personal political beliefs that there is no dignity in living on the streets. When the east wind blows out of the Columbia Gorge in January, and February the temperature drops down into the teens and lower. I’ve tried to convince individuals that are sleeping in some doorway to go to a warming shelter. I couldn’t force them to go, so I would check on them during the shift from time to time to see if they were still alive. That might have done nothing more than allowing me to fix an approximate time of death on an Incident Report.
We called it Winter Kill, but you do what you can. Compassion, and dignity arguments are tough sell for me because my view of life on the streets is a bit skewed.
What we need are massive amounts of state and locally funded assisted-living facilities for mentally ill people.
That missing community-based, decent and humane, housing and medical-care element is the biggest reason the judges hesitate to commit people unless they have committed a serious crime. Most of the time, these facilities don’t even need to be locked wards. People will stay of their own volition if the places are well done.
Sadly, the hidden result of deinstitutionalization was that the states and cities and towns were gleeful to not have to spend money anymore on the care of mentally ill people. The federal government was suddenly the sole financial support through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. SSI is not part of the Social Security system with a source of income from people’s paychecks but rather money that comes out of the general tax fund, even though it is administered by the Social Security Administration. The federal government also upped its Section 8 and other federal housing assistance programs, and Food Stamps. The result has been that states and cities and towns have made out like bandits with deinstitutionalization. Between that and the environmentalists’ interfering with all new building projects–it’s a problem that gets worse with each passing day.
People need to look behind the curtain to see who is hiding there whenever this subject comes up because this is a local issue. It can be solved.
It seems to me that mental illness is not an excuse to be violent. I know a schizophrenic that has said he could probably get away with murder. He’s smart enough to know how the law works anyway. I know that the push for mental illness to be covered in Obamacare assumes it can be treated like strep throat, etc., and I don’t think it can.
If they committed the dangerously mentally ill, there wouldn’t be enough brownshirts left on the streets to fill a quorum at Cider Riot. In places like Portland, that’d probably give Antifa grounds to sue.
[Edited for clarity.]
Great point. This is a discussion worth having. My “libertarian” stance on the issue is that law enforcement can step in once public safety is threatened. Homelessness not only leads to violent crime and health hazards but it also decreases property values and can drive down business sales. I’m fine with my tax dollars going towards preventing and eliminating situations like this.
My counter to the extreme libertarian stance that everyone can do whatever the hell they want is to quote James Madison: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”