What happens when police don’t show up to 911 calls
Police chiefs from cities across Thurston County last week announced their decision to no longer send police officers to respond to 911 calls unless a clear crime has been committed.
That includes the bulk of mental and behavioral health calls, such as suicides, drug overdoses, medical emergencies, mental health crises, or other erratic behaviors that might be categorized as a “public nuisance” or a “welfare check.”
Some police departments across the state are announcing drastic cuts to service, which law enforcement leaders say are a response to the raft of police accountability bills that took effect on July 25.
Yet law enforcement officials in cities such as Seattle, Bellingham, and Bellevue are saying the new laws change very little about their response. And some of the legislators who pushed for the police reform bills also contend police are misinterpreting the laws.
“None of these laws in any way prevent agencies from responding to calls for service,” Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz wrote in a statement last week. “The idea that the ability to use force is a prerequisite for engaging in investigative stops or responding to individuals in crisis is absurd.”
All three of those cities will continue to send officers to respond to behavioral health calls.
In an interview with The Olympian, Olympia’s Interim Police Chief Jelcick chalked up the differing interpretations to ambiguities within the law itself, which he said wasn’t clearly written.
“I can’t tell you and I can’t answer for why some other jurisdictions are continuing to respond to these types of calls and what the risk is,” Jelcick said. “But I do think that as time goes on, we are going to get further clarity on this.”
Until then, he is choosing to err on the side of caution and not send officers into situations where there is any doubt about whether or not an officer is justified in using force.
“At any point, if I put hands on you at all, I’m detaining you,” Jelcick said. “I’m using some level of force. And so the question is, if you decide at that point you don’t want to go into the car, what happens next? The officer can’t just walk out of there. So putting the officer in a position where none of those elements met under the law the example of force really puts the officer at risk.”
What the law says
Much of the confusion centers on HB 1310, which sets a statewide standard for police use of force.
HB 1310 allows police to use physical force when necessary to make an arrest or prevent an escape, or when there is “an imminent threat of bodily injury” to the officer, suspect, or someone else. It directs officers to exhaust all possible de-escalation tactics before using force, and use the least amount of force needed to overcome resistance.
The bill offers a list of possible tactics, including taking as much time as needed, repositioning, calling for backup, calling for additional resources such as mental health workers, or leaving the scene “if there is no threat of imminent harm and no crime has been committed, is being committed, or is about to be committed.”
State lawmakers disagree with Thurston County law enforcement’s characterization of what changes the new laws dictate.
“Nothing the legislature did prevents or prohibits police from responding to calls,” said state Rep. Roger Goodman, the Kirkland Democrat who chairs the House Public Safety Committee. “What matters is what they do when they get there.”
State Sens. Manka Dhingra (D-Redmond) and Jamie Pedersen (D-Seattle), chairs, respectively, of the Behavioral Health subcommittee and Law & Justice subcommittee, issued a similar statement:
“Law enforcement officers have always had the discretion to choose how to respond to calls for behavioral health crises, and that remains the case.”
How each Thurston jurisdiction is responding
OPD’s service changes mean that Olympia will lean much more heavily on the city’s Crisis Response Unit (CRU), a team of unarmed civilian responders that was started two years ago and modeled on the CAHOOTS program in Eugene.
The CRU currently has six members and operates from 7 a.m. to 8:40 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and 10 a.m. to 8:40 p.m. Fridays through Sundays. When CRU is not on, calls may go unanswered.
“Realistically, we are going to have gaps in service,” Jelcick said.
No other city in Thurston County has a CRU, although the Lacey City Council two weeks ago approved funding to hire four full-time mental health contract workers that will constitute a mobile crisis team.
Lacey Police Chief Robert Almada anticipates the mobile crisis team will be onboarded by Aug. 23. In the meantime, officers will respond to mental health crises only if the person’s actions are criminal.
“We are not going to respond to any of the calls or types of calls the legislature doesn’t want us to respond to,” Almada said.
In unincorporated Thurston County, sheriff’s deputies might observe a person in crisis from a distance. However, if there appears to be no crime or immediate threat, deputies will leave to attend to matters elsewhere, Sheriff John Snaza told The Olympian.
“We will observe if there is a tendency for violence or something like that,” Snaza said. “But for the most part we’re not going to be there. If they haven’t committed a crime, there’s no reason for us to be there.”
Jelcick indicated that OPD officers may intervene in certain situations even if a crime has not been committed. For example, if someone were about to jump off a bridge, Jelcick said, police would intervene.
A new crisis for mental health workers
The new hesitance of Thurston County law enforcement to respond to mental health calls has upended the process for getting people suffering from a crisis into treatment, mental health experts say.
Under the Involuntary Treatment Act, Designated Crisis Responders (DCRs) can decide to detain someone who “presents an imminent likelihood of serious harm” or who is “gravely disabled,” meaning they are so unstable that they are unable to care for themselves. It’s a laborious process that can take several hours, and limited funding and staffing means that response times vary widely for DCRs. The local DCR team covers both Thurston and Mason counties.
In the past, police officers would assist DCRs at the scene as backup in case the person in crisis were to become violent. If the DCR decides to commit the person, an officer would usually take the person into an ambulance or police car and drive them to a hospital or treatment center.
According to Jelcick, officers will still accompany DCRs if requested, but will make their own evaluation about whether to assist in bringing them to a medical facility. If officers don’t see the same evidence that DCRs see, they may choose not to assist in detaining them.
“It’s a case-by-case basis whether or not we use any level of force to assist a DCR in getting somebody the help that they need,” Jelcick said. “They [the officers] are going to make that evaluation as well, whether or not they believe it fits within the law.”
So far, officers often are choosing not to engage, and that system has broken down, Northwest News Network recently reported.
“Now we have this gap where now the DCRs can’t respond either if the situation is potentially unsafe,” said Joe Avalos, administrator of Olympic Health and Recovery Services, the quasi-governmental agency that dispatches DCRs for Thurston and Mason counties.
In a memo dated July 12, Avalos advised DCRs not to conduct evaluations of people with access to firearms or other weapons, or who have a history of violent or aggressive behavior, if a law enforcement officer is not also present.
Even before HB 1310 went into effect, he said DCRs already had noticed officers’ reluctance to show up and transport people in crisis, whether that means guiding them in an ambulance or handcuffing and them putting in the back of a squad car.
“It’s very rare that law enforcement actually has to detain someone who is unwilling and use physical force to get them into the ambulances,” Avalos said. “Most of the time, just the mere presence of law enforcement is enough.”
In a joint statement, the ACLU of Washington and Disablity Rights Washington said that police departments that refuse to transport people in crisis are “dangerously misinterpreting the new law.”
“The law does not prevent officers from going to the scene even when a crime is not being committed; it does require them to use reasonable care when engaging with people, even those in crisis,” they wrote. “Choosing not to show up, because an officer may not be able to use violence, is an unfortunate choice that these departments are making, but it is not mandated by the new law.”
What happens when you call 911 now
According to state Rep. Goodman, the Attorney General’s Office is being consulted on any possible ambiguities in the law with regard to the Involuntary Treatment Act.
A spokesperson from the Attorney General’s Office said they could not comment on law enforcement agencies’ interpretation of HB 1310 because they are currently providing guidance to the Criminal Justice Training Commission and Washington State Patrol. The AG could issue an opinion if asked, but had not been asked as of Thursday morning, the spokesperson wrote in an email.
One organization that has formally requested an AG opinion on the new laws is the Washington Fraternal Order of Police (WAFOP), a statewide organization that represents over 2,500 officers. WAFOP President Marco Monteblanco, who supports the new legislation, was critical of how police departments have responded.
“It’s unfortunate that some in law enforcement are misinterpreting these laws, disregarding what we believe is clear legislative intent, and are using these changes to politicize their implementation,” Monteblanco wrote in a statement on July 22.
Jelcick said he expects the AG to weigh in, but said he also hopes lawmakers amend HB 1310 to allow that “force is okay in these certain circumstances, some level of force is okay.”
Until something changes, emergency dispatchers are having to manage expectations for people who make emergency calls.
TCOMM, the agency that receives 911 calls and forwards them to police and fire departments, issued a memo to its dispatchers with a list of abbreviations for types of calls police departments will likely not respond to. It includes incidents such as theft, shoplifting, loitering, trespassing, noise, alcohol and drug use, and malicious mischief.
Dispatchers are changing the language they use when talking with callers, because they don’t know if police or fire will respond.
“TCOMM will avoid telling citizens anything that implies in-person contact or response,” the memo states. “Instead, they are advised to tell callers that the dispatcher will ‘advise [the agency] of your request.’”
Olympian reporters Leo Brine and Martín Bilbao contributed to this report.
This story was originally published August 1, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "What happens when police don’t show up to 911 calls."
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