Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes

If you live in Colorado, it is likely that you have heard the story of Christian Glass. I’m not sure if his story has made it to the national news.

Christian was a 22-year-old young man that was recently shot and killed by law enforcement in Clear Creek County . Christian’s parents want the officers responsible for his death to be held accountable. They are demanding that local, state and federal officials prosecute the officers involved.

If you click on the above link (the underlined portion above), you will get the original CBS news story from June 11th. Per www.cbsnews.com, "It seems like officers and deputies did everything they could to figure out what he needed, tried to help him. Nothing worked," said Clear Creek County Undersheriff Bruce Snelling.

Most people, including me, would read that story and think, what a shame. That’s what happens when you’re aggressive with the police and do not follow orders. I would have completely forgotten this story. The truth is, I didn’t even hear about it back in June.

The initial story is based on the officers version of what happened. The body camera video and 911 call were released this week, three months after the incident.

I am heart broken. The truth is that the officers and deputies did not do everything possible to figure out what Christian needed. Undersheriff Snelling said they tried to help him, but nothing worked. Actually, doing nothing would have worked better than what the officers and deputies actually did.

Christian drove his car into an embankment late on June 10th. He called 911 for help and told the dispatcher that he was scared.

Per www.nypost.com, author Lee Brown writes: On his 911 call Christian said, “I’m stuck in a dangerous place, and I will be killed.” He told the dispatcher that he was convinced that shadowy figures were following him.

“I’m gonna have to kill some skin-walkers,” he said, referring to the shapeshifting witches of Navajo legend.

“If I got out of the car, I might be in danger … It’s so terrifying. I am so scared. I love you for being with me,” he told the dispatcher.

Glass then also confessed to having weapons in the car to help defend himself against his supposed oppressors — but promised he was “not dangerous.”

“I have two knives, a hammer and a rubber mallet … But I am not dangerous, I will keep my hands completely visible,” he told the dispatcher, offering to throw them out once officers arrived.

The dispatcher passed on that Glass “sounds very paranoid,” and a Clear Creek County sheriff’s deputy who was one of the first to respond calmly asked him, “Do you need medical, brother?”

“No, dude, we’re not gonna shoot you,” one officer is heard on the video telling Glass, who removed his keys from the ignition but said he was too terrified to get out of the SUV.

“Sir, I’m terrified … I am so scared,” Glass replies calmly through a crack in his driver’s window, offering to throw out his weapons and also follow the officers to their precinct to ensure his safety.

But the officers instruct him not to throw the weapons out the window. They don’t want him to touch them at all.

As Glass holds his hands on the dash, one of the officers draws a gun after seeing a knife, barking, “Step out of the f—ing car now.”

The exchange appeared to escalate Glass’ paranoia, with him asking the officer, “Why are you scared of a knife if you are wanting to chat?”

Glass then holds his hands in a heart shape at the arrival of more officers.

During the standoff, a Colorado State Police sergeant stressed in radio messages that there was no reason to breach the car because no crimes had been committed and Glass did not appear “suicidal, homicidal or a great danger.”

Instead, the situation escalated. One officer was standing on the hood of Glass’s car pointing a gun at him and shining a light into his eyes. The officers are planning to break out his passenger window. Christian asks them not to break the window.

The officers break the window. At this point the situation escalates to total chaos. There were several officers. Christian was sitting in his car.

An autopsy showed that Glass “died as the result of multiple gunshot wounds,” including five in his torso. “The manner of death, in my opinion, is homicide,” the pathologist wrote.

Glass’ mother, Sally Glass, said her son was “petrified” and “paralyzed” by fear the night he was killed.

The family’s attorney, Siddhartha Rathod of the Denver-based Rathod Mohamedbhi, said that Glass was clearly in a crisis.

“Christian was experiencing a crisis, and he called 911 for help,” said Rathod, “and yet these officers busted out Christian’s window, shot him six times with beanbag rounds, tased him multiple times from two Tasers, and then shot him five times.”

He was “fully contained in his vehicle and presenting no threat,” the statement insisted, saying he “had committed no crime, posed no threat to himself or others, and there was no reason for continued contact.”

“These officers took a gentle, peaceful soul and extinguished it simply because it was ‘time to move the night on,'” the law firm said.

Per Lee Brown’s article:

The autopsy said Glass had THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana, in his system, and a .01% blood alcohol concentration. He also had amphetamine, which Rathod said is likely from an ADHD prescription.

Still, psychologist Dr. Max Wachtel told 9News that “it sounded to me like a delusional disorder or a delusion that’s part of a psychotic disorder.”

“That is not the way to handle it, whether it’s drugs or it’s something organic, like a schizophrenia or a delusional disorder — coming at the person hard and aggressively, that is only going to make the situation worse,” Wachtel said.

“Industry best practices in law enforcement, we recommend that officers just leave the scene. Walk away from this scenario,” said Wachtel.

Ed Obayashi, a sheriff’s deputy who is the lead trainer for use of force in California, also told the outlet that officers are taught to “walk away from this [type of] scenario.”

“Once they decided to force entry — break a window — it was predictable that this event could most likely unfold the way it did,” he said. “We’ve seen it time and time again.”

Leading use-of-force expert Seth Stoughton questioned why the officers did not take Glass up on his offer — made in his initial 911 call as well as during the confrontation — to throw out the weapons.

“Officers have plenty of opportunity to maneuver themselves and put themselves in a position that’s not risky,” said the former cop, who also saw nothing that should have made the officers smash the window.

“It’s not clear to me that it should have gone that far,” he said.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation handles police shootings, but the family wants prosecutors to file criminal charges, Rathod said.

Heidi McCollum, district attorney for the Fifth Judicial District that includes Clear Creek County, released a statement Tuesday saying her office is investigating the case along with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

Her office plans to eventually issue a report on the shooting or present the case to a grand jury, which would decide if indictments should be issued, McCollum said.

This story could have easily been about Travis. It is my greatest fear that it could be one day. In my blog published April 18th, “No End in Sight”, I write about downloading the Vitals Ap on Travis’s phone. Here is part of the article I shared in that blog:

By Dillon ThomasApril 14, 2022 at 5:59 pm

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (CBS4) – Fort Collins Police Services will be the first agency in Colorado to partner with “Vitals Ap,” a technology that will help first responders identify and properly interact with community members who live with intellectual disabilities. In partnership with UCHealth, the health provider that has covered the associated costs for the police department in order to launch the app in Fort Collins, Fort Collins police and mental health responders will be able to better serve those who have profiles through the app.

The app, which was developed by former law enforcement officers and experts in mental health response, is subscription-based. For as little as $2.99 a month families can create a profile on the app for their loved ones. A profile includes a photo of the individual, their name and information about their disabilities that the family feels comfortable sharing.

The app also includes information on what types of actions an officer can expect from the user that is experiencing distress, contact information for loved ones and even best practices for that individual’s preferred form of de-escalation.

Users are given a keychain that is tied to their account. An officer only has to come within 80 feet of the individual for the officer’s phone to link the profile.

Police are unable to track the whereabouts of a user, as the app on the officer’s phone only works if they are within 80 feet of the user.

“We are the first co-response in the nation that is using this,” FCPS Chief Jeff Swoboda told CBS4’s Dillon Thomas. “Vitals is going to allow our officers to interact with people in a different way.”

FCPS has a standing partnership with UCHealth and the mental health response team. The team has been used in the past year to respond to mental health calls which may be better for medical providers to respond to instead of police. In its opening phase in Fort Collins, Vitals will be used predominantly by the mental health response team from UCHealth. Once officers are further trained on the usage of the application they will also adopt the process.

“It is that type of interaction that is going to be a game-changer for police officers on the street,” Swoboda said.

Users can also provide phone numbers associated with the person living with individual mental health challenges. Those phone numbers and the associated data are then provided to an estimated 85% of 911 dispatch centers currently working with Vitals App, allowing dispatchers to understand how to better handle a 911 call.

“(Our officers will be able to approach knowing) what triggers the person? What causes them to have more stress, and what causes them to calm down?” Swoboda said.

Fort Collins is the only police department in Colorado currently offering the service. However, the company behind the app hopes to expand that soon.

Chief Swoboda said the app also places more pressure on the community to make sure they are doing their part to help the police department better serve those with unique mental challenges. By offering up the Vitals App service, Swoboda said there is now one less excuse for officers not having access to critical information that can better help individuals during a crisis.

“It puts some responsibility back on the family members as well. If you know those types of things are happening, let’s not just rely on police officers to figure it out at three in the morning with no other services around,” Swoboda said “Let’s take some proactive steps.”

I took the proactive steps. Travis has the Vitals app, he carries the keychain with him, and his information is available to the Fort Collins Police Department.

On May 23rd I published a blog, “Hoping for the Best”. Here is a highlight:

I received the Spring 2022 edition of our local Health District newsletter. The cover story is titled, “Mental health co-responders: Answering the call with compassion”, written by Julie Estlick.

The article begins by describing a situation that could have led to violence and injuries, and instead ended in everyone leaving the scene safely. Per Estlick, “That is one of the main goals of the Fort Collins Police Services Mental Health Response Team (MHRT), which matches UCHealth crisis-trained clinicians with police officers to answer emergency and non-emergency calls where someone may be suicidal, behaving erratically, or a victim in need of support. They are often on the scene of domestic violence, harassment due to paranoia or delusions, substance use, a disturbed youth, or a person struggling with homelessness.”

In her article, Estlick quotes Stephanie Booco, a licensed mental health and addiction counselor. Booco is the program supervisor for the UCHealth Co-responder program. Booco says, “Police interact with people in our community who have extreme needs. In the co-responder model, clinicians work in tandem with officers to de-escalate situations and calm people down. In fact, 95 percent of our calls are stabilized in place—no transport to jail or the hospital for psychiatric care is needed.”

Per Estlick, “The mental health co-responder model is being adopted in many communities in northern Colorado—and across the country—to address a growing mental health crisis amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic and a lack of adequate mental health and substance use resources. In 2020, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reported 1 in 5 U.S. adults has mental health concerns, and 1 in 20 has a serious mental health disorder.

The need for the service has been so great that the team needed to grow. “When we began this program, we learned that there is no way that the MHRT can respond to every mental health-related call, there are simply too many,” says Fort Collins Police Officer Annie Hill, a team member who is also a psychotherapist and certified addiction counselor.

Last year, two Fort Collins co-responder units answered 1,892 calls for service. A third officer and clinician were added this year, and there are currently openings for a fourth unit so that the Mental Health Response Team can be available 7:30 a.m. to midnight, 7 days a week. Officers are carefully selected and receive extensive training before joining the unit.

Funding for the MHRT is split between the police department, which covers the cost of all equipment and patrol cars, and UCHealth, which employs the clinicians.”

I have highlighted in previous blogs that Fort Collins Police Department (FCPD) had a co-responder program in place, but I wasn’t sure if the LCSO did. Estlick’s article answered my question.

“Mental health crisis intervention is becoming a priority in northern Colorado. In addition to the MHRT, SummitStone Health Partners’ Co-Responder Program partners with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office, and the Loveland and Estes Park police departments to provide clinicians that assist on behavioral health calls.

The sheriff’s department program is made up of three clinicians, two deputies, and a supervisor. Units respond to calls throughout the county including in Red Feather Lakes, Poudre Canyon, Rist Canyon, and unincorporated areas. Between December 2021 and January 2022 they handled 185 of the 299 mental health-related calls that dispatch received, not counting welfare checks.

Sergeant Robert Cook, who supervises co-responders for the sheriff’s office, has seen the difference that understanding, and a little compassion, can make when a person’s mental state is impacting their actions.

“There are so many success stories about people we have assisted who, once connected to the necessary resources, stabilize and can not only function as a member of society again, but also begin to thrive.”

What is going on in other Colorado communities? This is what Olivia Prentzel and Jennifer Brown have to say in an article they wrote for Colorado Sun News on September 19th and can be found at www.coloradosun.com:

More than half of Colorado counties lack a “co-responder” program, including Clear Creek County. The death of Christian Glass is once again raising questions about law enforcement response to 911 calls involving someone who is having a mental health crisis.

Co-responder programs are meant to de-escalate encounters with police and reduce the number of people who need mental health treatment but are instead sent to jail. Colorado has ramped up efforts in the past few years and provided state funding to local law enforcement agencies and mental health centers to expand programs across the state. Yet wide swaths of rural and mountain communities still do not have co-responder teams.

Since 2017, the state Behavioral Health Administration has offered funding to communities to start the programs, which also require local financial contributions. Today, 24 out of the state’s 64 counties have a co-responder program funded through the administration.

The Behavioral Health Administration program, with a $7.3 million budget, is funded through taxes on marijuana sales as well as federal mental health aid. State laws passed in 2017 and 2019 provided dedicated state funding for the program. 

Co-responder teams funded by the Behavioral Health Administration responded to 25,900 calls from July 2020 to June 2021, and 98% of the time, there was no arrest, according to state data. And 86% of the time, the mental health professional who responded to the call ended up providing help, often with a behavioral health assessment or a link to treatment. 

Most of the calls are resolved on site, though some result in transport to a hospital or mental health center. The model helps police respond more effectively to behavioral health calls, “which are often time-consuming, difficult to resolve, and, on relatively rare occasions, result in tragic injuries or deaths,” said Stefany Busch, spokeswoman for the Behavioral Health Administration.

Although Clear Creek has no co-responder program, both sheriff’s deputies who responded to Glass’ 911 call were trained to identify signs of mental health distress, Undersheriff Bruce Snelling said. The annual training is required for all of its deputies, along with peer support training that includes recognizing signs of medical and mental distress.

Upon being hired, every deputy is required to take a two-hour training on de-escalation and must repeat the course every two years, according to the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office policies and procedures manual.

“Law enforcement is heaped upon to solve a lot of problems, whether it be drug abuse, alcoholism, mental health issues, domestic violence. People expect that we’re capable and well-trained to handle each and every one of those things that might pop up,” Snelling said. “So, we’re always looking to try to expand what our knowledge and training capabilities are, and we work hard at that each and every day.” 

But the sheriff’s office is not currently looking at specific ways to improve the department’s mental health training, he said, and a low number of mental health calls the sheriff’s office receives wouldn’t justify implementing a co-responder model.

“We’re a small place, you know. It’s not like we run into a mental health issue every day. We can, but sometimes you might not run into it for a couple of weeks,” Snelling said. “I think if we had a greater call volume of mental health issues, we might be able to justify having a co-responder program.”

Glass’ death isn’t the first time Clear Creek deputies have come under scrutiny for shooting a person having a mental health crisis.

In June 2020, a grand jury was convened by then District Attorney Bruce Brown, McCollum’s predecessor, to review the actions of two Clear Creek County sheriff’s deputies after they shot and killed an Idaho Springs man experiencing what appeared to be a mental health episode.

The Christian Glass incident body cam video is available online. If you are at all interested, you can watch it and make your own determination. I have a unique perspective. I am the mother of a young man in his twenties that is suffering with mental illness. It is not clear to me which person is an officer and which is a deputy. What I can say for certain is that it didn’t appear to me that all of the respondents went through any type of de-escalation training. Or if they did, they didn’t learn anything or were not paying attention. Or maybe a two-hour training is not enough?

Or is the problem what Christian’s mom thinks it is? Per Sally Glass, "You know, an aggressive bully is always going to be an aggressive bully, and I don't know how you can train that characteristic out. Pay more, elevate the stages of the profession by getting rid of (them) and hire people with kind hearts and a moral compass.”

A co-responder unit isn’t justified because of the low number of mental health calls? Clear Creek deputies shot and killed a man during a mental health episode just two years ago.

“This is just a county with very few counselors and no psychiatrists,” Brown told The Colorado Sun on Friday. “There is a mental health crisis across this country and without the public saying we are going to continue to make sure that these communities, particularly rural communities, are served, these gaps are going to show up as unfortunate incidents where people die.”

While funding can create obstacles for smaller communities in creating co-responder models, money is not a “conclusive barrier,” he said, pointing to the small counties of Powers, Otero and Fremont.

It also comes down to law enforcement agencies making a co-responder model a priority. For Clear Creek County, that includes the sheriff’s office and the police departments for Georgetown, Idaho Springs and Empire. “It’s for the leadership at those agencies, in conjunction in part with their mayors, to say we want this to happen,” Brown said.

The 24 counties with at least one program funded by the Behavioral Health Administration are Adams, Arapahoe, Baca, Boulder, Broomfield, Chaffee, Crowley, Delta, Denver, Douglas, Eagle, El Paso, Fremont, Jefferson, Lake, Larimer, Mesa, Montrose, Otero, Pitkin, Prowers, Pueblo, Summit and Weld. 

Eleven communities in the state have mental health response programs that are not funded through the administration.

A law passed by the legislature this year created additional grant programs through the state Department of Public Safety for law enforcement agencies that want to start crisis response programs. 

In my opinion, every county needs to put a program in place. Utilize the dedicated state funding and make it a priority in local funding. Ask other small counties how they did it. It seems to me that funding a program would be much better than paying out a wrongful death lawsuit. Not having a program in place and not doing effective de-escalation training is leaving law personnel open to charges. And yet another family mourning the loss of a loved one.

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

“We do not make changes for the sake of making them, but we never fail to make a change when once it is demonstrated that the new way is better than the old way.” - Henry Ford