Reducing Violent Incidents between Police Officers and People with Psychiatric or Substance Use Disorders

• DOI: 10.1177/0002716219897057
• Author: Keith Humphreys,Harold A. Pollack
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Subject Matter: Policy-Making and Fatal Police Shootings

166 ANNALS, AAPSS, 687, January 2020

DOI: 10.1177/0002716219897057

Reducing

Violent

Incidents

between Police

Officers and

People with

Psychiatric or

Substance Use

Disorders

By

HAROLD A. POLLACK

and

KEITH HUMPHREYS

897057ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYREDUCING VIOLENT INCIDENTS

research-article2019

This article describes evidence-based strategies

designed to reduce the prevalence of police encounters

with people in behavioral crisis (PBCs) and to make

such encounters less dangerous for all parties when

they do occur. Some of these strategies are imple-

mented by law enforcement, including gun violence

restraining orders and the training of officers to provide

time, distance, and cover during encounters with

PBCs. Other strategies involve broader systems of com-

munity care, including assertive community treatment

for people with serious psychiatric disorders, and criti-

cal time interventions for individuals leaving incarcera-

tion or inpatient psychiatric care. Broader adoption of

such strategies should both reduce the risk of police

shootings of PBCs as well as improve the effectiveness

and well-being of police officers.

Keywords: behavioral crisis; police; psychiatric disorder;

substance use; violence; crisis intervention

The Chicago Reader and other news sources

recently ran stories about a man named

Vincent Gaughan, who had participated in a

confrontation with police 48 years before. The

son of Irish immigrants, Gaughan grew up in

Chicago and attended Catholic schools. In

1964, he joined the Army and served three

tours in Vietnam as a forward artillery observer,

earning a Bronze Star for combat heroism,

Harold A. Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor of Social

Service Administration at the University of Chicago and

faculty codirector of the University of Chicago Crime

Lab and University of Chicago Health Lab. He

researches strategies to improve services for individuals

at the boundaries of behavioral health and criminal

justice systems.

Keith Humphreys is the Esther Ting Memorial Professor

at Stanford University and a senior research career

scientist at the VA Health Services Research Center in

Palo Alto, California. His research addresses the pre-

vention and treatment of addictive disorders, the for-

mation of public policy, and the generalizability of

psychiatric clinical trials.

Correspondence: haroldp@uchicago.edu

REDUCING VIOLENT INCIDENTS 167

which included rescuing wounded comrades under heavy fire (St. Clair 2018;

Bogira 2016).

Gaughan returned to Chicago and enrolled in DePaul Law School. But com-

bat experience left its scars. He struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder

(PTSD), and in April 1970 he became particularly agitated after a car accident.

He locked himself in his room at his parents’ home. Around 3 a.m., he fired two

shots from an M1 rifle into a neighbor’s bedroom. After police arrived, Gaughan

fired two more shots, narrowly missing two officers.

Officers converged on the scene with their guns drawn, but they did not fire.

And by then, Gaughan was done. He called down the stairs and asked to speak

with a priest: “I want a policeman to come, too. An Irish sergeant.” This being

Chicago, both were quickly found. Gaughan surrendered without incident. The

priest accompanied him in the police squad car to the police station. The Cook

County Circuit Court has no record of any charges being filed or resolved. Three

years later, Gaughan joined the public defender’s office.

For those who identify Chicago policing with the Laquan McDonald case

(see Ridgeway, this volume), the contrast could hardly be sharper. McDonald

was a 17-year-old African American male who was behaving erratically; toxi-

cology tests later revealed he was under the influence of the drug PCP. He

damaged a police vehicle with a knife and did not obey an order to drop the

knife, but he injured no one. He was at some distance from surrounding police

officers. Police dashcam videos show several officers behaving in the same

way, deploying time and distance principles as if in a police training film, wait-

ing for further assistance. But then Officer Jason Van Dyke drove up. Six

seconds later, he fired sixteen shots, killing Laquan McDonald.

Vincent Gaughan had nearly shot multiple police officers when police pro-

vided him time and space to regain his composure and negotiate a dignified sur-

render. Almost 50 years after Gaughan’s mental health crisis ended without

incident, Officer Van Dyke was charged with murder. The presiding judge in his

case was a respected figure in Chicago’s legal community: Vincent Gaughan.

Anyone who follows cases like these can supply a litany of examples in

which confrontations between police and people with psychiatric and/or sub-

stance use disorders (whom we will refer to here as “people in behavioral

crisis” or PBCs) resulted in tragedy. Robert Saylor, a man living with intel-

lectual disabilities, died of asphyxiation when three deputies restrained him

face-down after wresting him from a chair at a movie theater (Pollack 2016).

Saheel Vassell was well known by the locals in his neighborhood for having

psychiatric problems, but the police who responded to a call about a man

“holding a gun” (which turned out to be a curved silver pipe) did not know

this before they shot him to death (Mueller, Ransom, and Ferré-Sadurní

2018). Sonny Lam suffered from schizophrenia and had stopped taking his

NOTE: Dr. Pollack was supported by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and

the Arnold Foundation. Dr. Humphreys was supported by grants from the Veterans Health

Administration and Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. Opinions in this article are the responsi-

bility of the authors.