White Paper – Disability and Police Violence – 28
Paramedics came to the scene, but Chasse wasn’t taken to the hospital. Instead, police drove him to jail, but jail staff refused to book him because of injuries he received at the hands of arresting officers. Police eventually drove Chasse to the hospital in a police cruiser. He died en route. Chasse's death resulted in $3.1 million in settlements to Chasse’s family by the city of Portland, Multnomah County and American Medical Response. The controversial circumstances that caused Chasse’s untimely death prompted Portland’s police bureau to require that all officers be trained in crisis intervention. The troubled past which led to Portland’s CIT training program was called into question in 2013 when one of the officers who contributed to Chasse’s death in police custody was chosen to lead Portland Police Bureau's expanded mobile crisis unit. Portland police expanded their mental health unit from one officer to three in 2013 as part of a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, which according to the Oregonian found that “Portland police engage in a pattern of excessive force against people suffering from mental illness.” On October 20, 2013, an article in The Oklahoman detailed the issues centered around training not in terms of curtailing abuse but rather as one related to budgets and resources. One notable piece began by detailing: [At the] Oklahoma City police academy about 16 years ago, mental health training consisted of the cadets watching a VHS tape that hadn't been updated in years. Now, all cadets get 16 hours of mental health training, 11 hours more than mandated by the Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training. No information was provided on the effectiveness of the training. The training program wasn't in place Dec. 14, 2000, when three Oklahoma City officers were sent to the apartment of Paul Hight, a former Roman Catholic priest, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and shot and killed him. His brother Joe Hight, a former editor at The Oklahoman, described Paul as the “greatest guy in the world” when taking his medication. Joe Hight suspected that a problem with his brother’s medication led to the confrontation with police. After his brother's death, Hight met with local mental health care advocates, the Oklahoma City police chief, and other law enforcement officials, and initiated the process which led to the state adopting CIT training. Issues related to police training have received a great deal of media attention in Oklahoma during the time period reviewed for our research. The Sooner state reportedly has the second highest rate of mental illness in the nation. Police responded to 7,406 “911 calls” relating to mental illness from January through September 2013. Although a complete