Police Reform During the Culture Wars

It’s a common situation: Homeless man babbling loudly, maybe urinating on the street, maybe roughly grabbing a passerby to demand spare change. Someone calls 911. An armed officer appears. The man becomes belligerent. He gets handcuffed, maybe after a fight.

“911 always leads to the police,” said Marvin Wilmoth, vice mayor of North Bay Village. “Is that the right procedure?”

Maybe not. At the Miami-Dade County Commission, in North Bay Village and in cities around the country, political leaders are now wondering if social workers would be a more appropriate choice to handle certain types of calls that are answered by police.

“We are starting to explore those conversations,” said Wilmoth.

Commissioner Barbara Jordan has begun those discussions at the county level.

“We’ve expected police officers to become everything,” Jordan said. “About 5% of police calls are mental-health related. …. Someone in a clinical jacket or an EMT can say, ‘How can I help you?’ and understand the behavior of what’s happening. I think people get upset when they see a police officer coming.”

Indeed, of the 1,000 or so persons killed each year by police in America, about a quarter have mental health issues, according to a Washington Post survey.

Among the many proposals on police reform that have emerged in the aftermath of nationwide demonstrations following the death of George Floyd in May, the increased use of social workers appears to be one of the most doable, primarily because it’s already been shown to work.

Eugene, Oregon, has successfully operated a program for three decades that uses three roaming vans of trained mental health counselors and medics to manage nonviolent situations, including those involving the homeless and mentally ill. Houston and Madison, Wisconsin, have considerable experience using trained mental health workers who team with armed officers.

Other cities are picking up on the concept. St. Petersburg, Florida, was scheduled to start using social workers for “nonviolent, noncriminal calls,” on Oct. 1. A spokeswoman for its police department told the Tampa Bay Times that research has shown the move is expected to reduce dangerous confrontations.

“We see that calls sometimes turn violent because police officers are there,” Yolanda Fernandez said. “If someone without a weapon comes then results may be different.”

Austin, Texas, a progressive college city, recently removed $150 million from police coffers to fund social workers and other alternatives to law enforcement. In August, New York City shifted almost $1 billion out of its police budget, reportedly in part to do the same.

In Miami-Dade County, some wonder how to discuss the social worker issue in a way that is acceptable to county commissioners, many of whom have expressed strong opposition to any suggestions of defunding or reducing police funding.

Said Tom Petersen, a retired Miami-Dade judge who has worked for decades to reform the criminal system, “The issue has to be reframed so it’s not one more part of the culture war.”

Wilmoth agrees: “I think taking money away from police is an incorrect framing.”

Support & Dissent for Defunding

County Commissioner Sally Heyman said she isn’t sure where Jordan is headed with her proposal, but she is adamantly opposed to any “politically expedient” ideas that have sprung from recent protests. Heyman, who has worked for police departments and teaches criminal justice courses, is against any defunding efforts. She said the county has already done plenty to train police officers how to deal with mental health cases.

Jordan knows that the topic can be explosive without proper explanation.

“I think the one thing that has triggered this negative response about defunding police is that it’s been without proper explanation of what we’re talking about,” she said.

She’s starting carefully. Jordan has asked the mayor’s office to prepare a report about the possibility of increased use of social workers and was expecting to see it at the end of September. Once she had the report in hand, she said, she will determine how to shape a recommendation for the county commission. But the clock is ticking. Term-limited out, Jordan will leave the commission around the end of November.

Her idea is likely to continue moving forward through others, however, because it has strong local support, most notably from Miami-Dade Judge Steve Leifman. For 20 years, he’s been working to improve care for those with mental health issues by emphasizing treatment over arrest and incarceration.

Leifman says Jordan’s focus on adding social workers is “a great idea.” He views it not in a context of police reform or cutting police budgets, but as “one piece of a larger plan” to provide proper care for the mentally ill.

“We need to think of it as just another illness,” he said.

Leifman’s work has already led to 7,600 officers over the past decade getting 40 hours of training in crisis intervention team (CIT) policing, which teaches officers how to defuse heated confrontations and find ways to handle the mentally ill peacefully. In the last 10 years the program has resulted in 18,608 mental health cases diverted from jail, he said.

A centerpiece of the plan is a large treatment facility located at NW 7th and 22nd Ave., a $40 million structure that is scheduled to open next year.

“Twenty percent of those arrested are so sick, and right now there’s no place for them,” Leifman said.

Putting social and mental health workers on the streets is simply another part of this plan.

“Let’s say an 18-year-old girl has a psychotic break,” Leifman said. “She’s handcuffed and thrown in the back of a police car to be transported to a mental health facility. The stigma is horrific.”

Leifman, who led a large police courts effort to stop jails from being used as dumping grounds for the mentally ill, is convinced a consensus can be found to make a social worker plan viable.

“I think we have to work at the details,” he said. “But this is going to happen.”

The Case for Social Workers

Among his strongest supporters in the past have been both Jordan and Heyman. Someone else who likes the idea is Lonnie Lawrence, who spent 22 years in the Miami-Dade Police Department, rising to the rank of major. He was also for a time head of the Progressive Officers Club, an association of Black cops.

“I think that’s a great idea,” Lawrence said. “When a uniform shows up there’s a whole new thought process. The skill is to know how to de-escalate.”

The most notorious recent death involving mental health issues was Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Black man found running naked in the streets of Rochester, New York. He died after police put a “spit hood” over his head. Lawrence doesn’t want to pass judgement on those officers’ actions – “not knowing exactly what led up to that situation” – but he suggested it might be better in these kind of cases if a mental health professional was on the scene working with the police.

“The idea that maybe even if law enforcement is dispatched, let them not be the initial contact,” Lawrence suggested. Armed officers could be standing by, to come forward only if needed. “People going through mental situations, you don’t know how they’re going to react. They might see armed officers and think the devil is trying to take them away,” he said. “There needs to be a rethinking of law enforcement.”

“But it doesn’t have to be that big a shift,” said Kenneth Kilpatrick. He heads the Brownsville Civic Neighborhood Association and is executive director of The Alternative Programs, which provides alternatives to jail for nonviolent offenders.

He points out the county already uses unarmed aides to handle many nonviolent situations, and that perhaps their roles could be expanded or create a new kind of aide. As an example, Kilpatrick cites the killing of Rayshard Brooks.

An Atlanta Wendy’s called police because Brooks had fallen asleep in his car, blocking the restaurant’s drive-through lane. Brooks’ conversation with the officers was peaceful for 40 minutes. It got out of hand only when an officer tried to handcuff him.

Kilpatrick said that if there had been a de-escalation specialist there – some kind of social worker – he or she could have said, “Sir, you can’t drive. I’ll take you home.” There was no reason for an arrest, no reason for handcuffs, and the situation wouldn’t have exploded as it did, ending with Brooks being shot in the back.

Lawrence also thinks it makes sense to keep such workers within the police department. He said police already employ social workers, who often serve as liaisons with sexual abuse victims. It could be easy for law enforcement departments to hire more and expand their activities.

Petersen suggested that adding new social workers within the police department could lead to increased police funding, gaining support of “law-and-order” commissioners.

In fact, in St. Petersburg, it’s the police department that is funding 18 to 20 non-gun-carrying workers with $3.8 million that was originally intended to hire additional officers.

Finding the Right Plan

Jordan believes that putting social workers in place through police departments would be a false “camouflage.” She thinks such workers should be employed through “a medical center or a mental health program – a private entity.”

“I have a lot of confidence in our police director,” Jordan said of Alfredo Ramirez III, who leads county police. “But you’re not always going to have great people,” and she wants a system set up that is independent of police control.

Carlos Martinez, Miami-Dade’s public defender, suggests that if there is a shift to using social workers as an alternative to armed officers, “there should be a transition period,” as leaders try to figure out what kind of cases are likely to be nonviolent and what kind could be explosive, if it’s possible to determine such distinctions in advance.

The Houston model has mental health workers working right alongside armed officers, while in Eugene, the teams work for CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets), an independent agency.

What’s best for Miami-Dade? That’s where research comes in.

“We are fully exploring the CAHOOTS model in Oregon and the Houston model,” Leifman said.

At present, “I don’t think Miami-Dade wants this,” he said, meaning police employing social workers. Among other issues, there are more than 30 departments in the county, and it might make the most sense to have an independent agency handle the hiring of social workers for all. One possibility is Thriving Mind South Florida, a mental health nonprofit supported by Florida’s Department of Children and Families.

Whatever the final model, Leifman believes firmly officers must continue to be trained in crisis intervention, but that “most calls do not need law enforcement involvement. Handcuffing a person who is sick but did not commit a crime is both cruel and stigmatizing.”

UPDATE

James McVay, the North Bay Village police sergeant who was the lead example in last month’s police story, has at last been officially fired after a monthslong appeals process, reports Police Chief Carlos Noriega.

Last December, McVay was spotted driving his police cruiser, lights flashing, on the wrong side of the road in Broward County and was charged with driving under the influence. The story reported that “village taxpayers continue to pay McVay for doing nothing.”

Noriega has clarified that McVay had been suspended without pay, but continued to collect money from the village by using his sick leave time bank.

The chief added that he has cleaned up the department by terminating three other officers in the past year, out of a force of 27 officers. In doing so, he said he had to overcome the “challenges” of a lengthy union-mandated arbitration process.