By J.D. Velasco and Brian Day, San Gabriel Valley Tribune (California)

Last month, 37-year-old Khoa Le, a schizophrenic El Monte man, decided he needed to go to Costco late at night to buy a watch.

His father refused to take him, leading to an argument that turned physical, the attorney for Le’s family said.

Le’s sister, Diane, called the El Monte Police Department looking for help. When officers arrived, they tried to subdue Le with blows from their flashlights and batons, Tasers, and by putting him in a sleeper hold. A short time later, Le was dead.

The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office has not yet determined what killed Le, and the incident is being investigated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the El Monte Police Department and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.

In January, a Rosemead woman suffering from psychological problems showed up in the lobby of a Rosemead mental health clinic, where she was a patient, with a ball-peen hammer. Employees of the Asian Pacific Family Center clinic called the sheriff’s Temple Station to report the situation, according to authorities.

Jazmyne Eng, 40, was holding the hammer above her head and screaming when deputies arrived, according to the Sheriff’s Department. One of the deputies tried to shock her with his Taser, but may have missed – a coroner’s report showed no Taser darts in her body.

As she approached the deputies with the hammer, a deputy shot the 4-foot-11, 95-pound woman, killing her. She was struck in the torso and in the hand by bullets, coroner’s records show.

In July 2011, 37-year-old Kelly Thomas, a schizophrenic and homeless Fullerton man, died following a beating by Fullerton police officers.

The case garnered national attention. Two of the police officers have been charged in Thomas’ death and three Fullerton council members were successfully ousted in a recall launched in the aftermath of the incident.

Deadly encounters between law enforcement officers and persons suffering from mental illness are not a new phenomenon.

In 1999, the Los Angeles Police Department found itself at the center of a controversy when one of its officers shot to death a mentally ill homeless woman who was brandishing a screwdriver.

Mental health experts and advocates say encounters between police and the mentally ill often turn deadly because officers are not properly trained for those kinds of situations.

Paranoid and distrustful

Calling the police is sometimes the worst thing someone can do when dealing with a mentally ill person, according to Dave Meyer, a professor in the Institute of Psychiatry, Law and the Behavioral Sciences at the USC Keck School of Medicine.

“The default for addressing (mentally ill individuals) is to call 9-1-1. From childhood we’re trained to do that,” Meyer said. “For the most part, the police are perhaps the least well-equipped to respond.”

Brenda Wiewel, executive director of the Los Angeles Centers for Alcohol and Drug Abuse, said officers’ training is “about control and protection.”

“They’re prepared to see things as aggressive and to protect themselves and protect others,” Wiewel said.

And Rusty Selix, executive director of the Mental Health Association in California, said mentally ill people are often “paranoid and very distrustful” – a condition that can turn explosive when coupled with the techniques police use for controlling situations.

“If a person does not respect the words of law enforcement, law enforcement is trained to increase the level of force,” Selix said. “The more you force (mentally ill people), the more rebellious they will get.”

Wiewel said that’s because mentally ill people can have trouble understanding what’s being asked of them in a situation involving police.

“They’re really often mis-perceiving signals,” she said. “It can escalate really quickly.”

Some teams in place

Recognizing that problem, some law enforcement agencies have begun developing specialized teams that are trained to deal with mentally ill individuals.

The Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health works with several of the county’s larger police departments to create teams comprised of a law enforcement officer and a mental-health worker in order to better handle situations involving the mentally ill.

Some of the teams even include someone who was formerly homeless or previously suffered from mental illness.

“These are people who can relate to the person and can de-escalate the crisis,” Selix said.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Pasadena Police Department, among a handful of others in the county, have such agreements with DMH, officials said.

But the specialized teams have limitations. Chief among them is that the teams may not be able to respond to a developing crisis in time to resolve it, especially when the law enforcement agency covers a large geographic area.

Lt. Margarito Robles of the Sheriff’s Headquarters Bureau said the department’s Mental Evaluation Teams (MET), which is based out of South El Monte, consists of one sergeant and five deputies who have received at least 40 hours of mental illness training.

The six-person team, which is only staffed from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week, serves the entire region patrolled by the Sheriff’s Department – more than 3,100 of the county’s 4,083 square miles, according to its website.

“Every time they go out, they’re partnered with a clinician from the mental health department,” Robles said.

In Eng’s case, it’s still unclear whether the Sheriff’s Department alerted its MET Team. Sheriff’s officials declined to comment, citing their ongoing investigation.

Prior to Thomas’ death, the Fullerton Police Department had been recognized by the Orange County Department of Mental Health for actively using its mental-health teams, said Ron Thomas, his father. That didn’t matter on the night his son ran afoul of Fullerton officers, he said.

“When it came to Kelly, and these officers knew him and knew about his schizophrenic condition, they chose not to call,” Ron Thomas said.

In response to the death and the ensuing media firestorm, the Fullerton Police Department began requiring all of its employees – officers and civilian – to receive mental illness training, Ron Thomas said.

That’s something Selix said the Mental Health Association in California advocate.

“It’s not like it’s impossible for law enforcement to get the training,” he said.

Robles said the average deputy who is not a member of the MET Team receives four to eight hours of mental illness training while in the academy and a bit more while working in the county jails.

And smaller departments, including the 122-officer El Monte Police Department, do not even have special teams, or partner directly with DMH.

Le’s sister said she informed the El Monte police dispatcher that Le was schizophrenic. Sheriff’s Department officials, who are investigating the incident, have so far refused to release the audio of the 9-1-1 call, even after getting the OK from the El Monte Police Department.

Meyer said it’s tough for any municipality, especially the smaller ones, to justify the costs of setting up such teams.

“Since the beginning there has been a reluctance of governmental administrators to spend money up front,” Meyer said.

Law enforcement agencies that do not have a team in place for dealing with the mentally ill are putting their officers in a tight spot, he said.

“It’s an awful lot for us as a community to expect someone who is trained at controlling dangerous people to instead use techniques of a clinical setting,” he said.

El Monte police Lt. Dan Buehler said since 2000 the department has worked with a psychiatrist to offer a three-day training class to its officers. He said officers also receive short lessons – 15 minutes to an hour – throughout the year.

“I feel that we’ve done our due diligence,” Buehler said.

He wasn’t sure whether the El Monte Police Department had special procedures for dealing with mentally ill individuals.

“We deal with each call differently, whether it involves a mentally ill individual or not,” Buehler said. “Many times the subject we’re dealing with dictates the direction.”

But Ron Thomas, a retired Orange County sheriff’s deputy, said training won’t solve the problem entirely. He said he expects police chiefs to know their officers and “weed out the bad apples.” On Thursday, the one-year anniversary of his son’s death, he announced that he is suing the city, two former police chiefs and the six police officers involved in the incident for unspecified damages, according to the Orange County Register.

“I hold the chief of police responsible for his officers’ actions,” Ron Thomas said. “So many officers become officers because it gives them the ability and the authority to beat up other people. There’s no reason in the world for an officer to mistreat somebody.”

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