Pepper-spraying a handcuffed, suicidal man in the face.Restraining, face-down, a 10-year-old boy with autism.These are some of the examples cited in a new lawsuit saying the city of Worcester needs a better way to respond to mental health calls.The federal lawsuit was filed Monday by two mental health advocacy groups, two local chapters of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, and the Parent Professional Advocacy League, or PPAL.It says the city should treat mental health emergencies more like physical health emergencies, where health care professionals like emergency medical technicians and paramedics are dispatched. Instead, the city dispatches armed police officers to mental health emergencies, leading to unnecessary arrests, uses of force and involuntary commitments, the suit said.The suit estimates that Worcester receives about 35,000 mental health calls each year, or 25% of the calls coming into its 911 system.Attorney Steven J. Schwartz of the Center for Public Representation faulted the city for how these calls are handled more than the police for their response.”For people to have a mental health crisis is not a crime. They haven’t done anything wrong. They’ve struggled with an internal difficulty, and that difficulty has become a crisis. What they need is help, what they deserve is help. What they get is police that are often going to escalate the situation, inadvertently, because they’re not trained to respond,” Schwartz said.The suit says the city had a pilot program that was supposed to send unarmed professionals to emergencies, but its effectiveness was limited because the program was only open during certain hours of the day, and the clinicians actually responded only after police had arrived. In any case, the pilot program is no longer in effect, the suit says.The city of Worcester and its police department both said they hadn’t been served a copy of the lawsuit and so couldn’t comment.
WORCESTER, Mass. —
Pepper-spraying a handcuffed, suicidal man in the face.
Restraining, face-down, a 10-year-old boy with autism.
These are some of the examples cited in a new lawsuit saying the city of Worcester needs a better way to respond to mental health calls.
The federal lawsuit was filed Monday by two mental health advocacy groups, two local chapters of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, and the Parent Professional Advocacy League, or PPAL.
It says the city should treat mental health emergencies more like physical health emergencies, where health care professionals like emergency medical technicians and paramedics are dispatched. Instead, the city dispatches armed police officers to mental health emergencies, leading to unnecessary arrests, uses of force and involuntary commitments, the suit said.
The suit estimates that Worcester receives about 35,000 mental health calls each year, or 25% of the calls coming into its 911 system.
Attorney Steven J. Schwartz of the Center for Public Representation faulted the city for how these calls are handled more than the police for their response.
“For people to have a mental health crisis is not a crime. They haven’t done anything wrong. They’ve struggled with an internal difficulty, and that difficulty has become a crisis. What they need is help, what they deserve is help. What they get is police that are often going to escalate the situation, inadvertently, because they’re not trained to respond,” Schwartz said.
The suit says the city had a pilot program that was supposed to send unarmed professionals to emergencies, but its effectiveness was limited because the program was only open during certain hours of the day, and the clinicians actually responded only after police had arrived. In any case, the pilot program is no longer in effect, the suit says.
The city of Worcester and its police department both said they hadn’t been served a copy of the lawsuit and so couldn’t comment.