Earlier this month, a 21 =-year-old Los Angeles woman fell from a seventh story window outside Chicago's notorious Robert Taylor Homes. While the alleged perpetrator, Marvin Powell, age 23, was on trial this week for charges of sexual assault and unlawful restraint (Powell maintains that the woman jumped out of the window), many claim that the incident could have been easily avoided had the police handled the matter properly.
The victim's story starts at the end of her trip to Chicago on May 7. At Midway Airport the woman, a former UCLA student, got involved in a heated argument over the phone with family members in her frustration at being unable to board a flight back to California. Chicago police arrested her for disturbing the peace.
Taken to the Wentworth District women's lockup on the South Side and held overnight, the woman's family called the station from California, alerting authorities of her situation: the Los Angeles resident suffers from bi-polar disorder and her condition was worsened because she stopped taking her medication.
Fearing for her safety, the family allegedly pleaded to have the woman kept in police custody until they could fly across the country and take care of the matter. However, because her crimes did not warrant extended incarceration, the police released her. Lacking the judgment she may have possessed had she been properly medicated, the woman wandered into the Taylor Homes building at 5135 S. Federal St., the only remaining building of the of the once massive public assistance complex, near the lockup facility. The next morning the woman was found on the sidewalk in front of the Taylor Homes in only her underwear. She remains on life support in critical condition at John Stroger Hospital of Cook County suffering major internal injuries.
While some blame the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) for failing to demolish the final building of the once 28 structure Taylor Homes complex that has been plagued by drugs and violence for years— (the CHA website says that the building was to be evacuated by last year), others, including the victim's family, the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other advocate groups, have raised concerns over how the young Los Angeles woman's case had been mishandled by the police. They are demanding an investigation.
Considering her mental illness, immediate hospitalization would have been the appropriate choice for this woman. The Chicago Police Department has clear guidelines on how to handle mentally ill persons that follow such a protocol. But even with a call from the family explaining her condition, the proper procedure was overlooked.
So why did this lapse in effective officer procedure for a mentally ill person happen? "Traditionally it wasn't [the Police Department's] problem," says Suzanne Andriukaitis, MA, LCSW, Executive Director of the greater Chicago chapter of NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill), explaining that police involvement with the mentally ill is a relatively recent phenomenon.
According to Andriukaitis, up to thirty years ago people with mental illness were hospitalized long term. Due to a combination of an institutional movement in the 1970's which argued that mentally ill patients were often held against their will, plus advances in psychiatric medications and decreased funds for psychiatric inpatient facilities, people with mental illness have slowly become more integrated into mainstream society.
Especially because of more effective drugs, people are able to resume functional lives in the community. "It doesn't mean they're cured," notes Andriukaitis, "but they can become fully functional, productive members of society."
Training Police to Spot Mental Illness
However, if such people have problems with their medication leading to police intervention, like the woman from Los Angeles, the officer is not always trained to notice the differences in behavior. "If the police look at the behavior as being disorderly behavior rather than 'disordered' they are going to arrest them," says Andriukaitis.
But training is being developed. The Chicago Police Department, the Office of Mental Health and other mental health agencies have put together a 40-hour crises intervention team—training for officers handling altercations with the mentally ill. "That program really familiarizes police officers with the signs and symptoms of mental illnesses and teaches them techniques to deescalate problems with an individual. It's in place but we're just getting it started," says Andriukaitis
Beginning in the fall of 2004, a pilot program teaching officers from the 23rd and the 7th district was implemented. However, after officers from these districts were trained, a period of time was needed to evaluate the effect of the training. "We're just now starting to train officers from all around the city," explains Andriukaitis.
Hospitalization Not Incarceration
In the meantime, many individuals who require hospitalization routinely end up in jail.
"They took my son to jail because they claim he was resisting arrest," says Jamilah, a North Side Chicagoan. She has attended regular NAMI meetings for the past 6 years after her son (now 23) was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Jamilah explains that her son's medication helped him to become stable enough to attend college and get his own apartment. Late one night, not long after moving in, problems with his medication made Jamilah's son seek out help from his landlord. The landlord was away but his son (a man in his late twenties) was home. However, he was not familiar with her son's condition and his unusual demeanor prompted a call to the police.
"When the police came, my son became alarmed and ran away, and the police ran after him and tackled him," said Jamilah, who claims that she only found out that her son was in jail when his case worker could not find him during a routine visit the next morning.
"He had his medication with him in the jail cell, but they wouldn't let him take it," remembers Jamilah. "He was very frightened… The police should have taken him to the hospital instead of to jail because he actually hadn't committed any crime. This is a very typical occurrence for families with persons with mental illness."
Jamilah was able to intervene during her son's court hearing and explain his condition so that he could be placed into a hospital for treatment rather than in jail for punishment, but many such cases are not processed as effectively.
"Cook County jail is actually now our largest psychiatric inpatient facility," notes Andriukaitis. Lack of funding for inpatient services for the mentally ill is partly to blame. "We had 55,000 inpatients in the state of Illinois," she said, "today these facilities have about 1,500 beds."
Of course, Illinois' story is not unique. Across the country the model for care for mental health has changed drastically in the last few decades and mainstream society is just starting to catch up.
There still is not enough understanding in the community about the facts of these illnesses, says Andriukaitis, "There is a lot of ignorance, a lot of fear…"
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