Dustin Pigeon, 29, was standing in his front yard covered in lighter fluid, holding a lighter in one hand and a bottle of accelerant in the other, when two Oklahoma City police officers arrived. Pigeon suffered from bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, depression and substance abuse. The officers pleaded with him to reconsider. Before he could, another officer, Sergeant Keith Sweeney, arrived, gun in hand.
“I’m gonna shoot you (expletive),” Sweeney yelled. “Get on the ground.”
Sweeney fired five shots at Pigeon, killing him.
60-year-old Benny Edwards suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He went to the mall armed with a knife. Sergeants Keith Duroy and Clifford Holman of the Oklahoma City Police Department arrived on the scene, pepper-sprayed him and fired their Tasers. Seconds later, they shot Edwards. He died.
Ernest Antwine, 42, suffered from schizophrenia and substance abuse. Oklahoma City police arrested him at least 15 times before his mother, Shirley Antwine, called for help again. In previous interactions with Antwine, officers used a Taser on him for resisting arrest. In many cases, officers then took him to a nearby hospital and then to jail. This time, however, Oklahoma City Police Sergeant Robert Burton dropped him off on the side of Sooner Road, just outside the Oklahoma City limits. Burton stood in front of a silver Nissan pickup truck and died.
These mental health emergencies were reported by Oklahoma Watch over the past four years, and in each case, Oklahoma City police officers responded without guidance from mental health professionals.
While the majority of mental health-related calls don’t end so tragically, stories like these prompted the Department of Justice to open investigations into the state of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City and the Oklahoma City Police Department in 2022. Federal investigators are looking into whether the state, city and police department are complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which bans discrimination against people with disabilities.
more:When to call 988? Oklahoma’s Mental Health Lifeline is available before a crisis
In recent years, the Oklahoma City Council, police and fire departments have worked together to improve the city’s mental health response.
On July 3, the City Council released a 20-page report titled, “Progressing in Transforming Mental Health Services in Oklahoma City: Challenges, Innovations and Solutions,” which is primarily the product of the Law Enforcement Task Force and the Community Policing Working Group, both of which were formed in 2020. The two groups, with the help of 21CPSolutions, a company specializing in public safety services, gathered information and presented the City Council with 39 mental health response recommendations.
How OKC responded to mental health-related 911 calls
In 2019, two programs were launched to address the high volume of mental health-related 911 calls dispatchers receive each year: the Oklahoma City Fire Department’s Community Advocacy Program and the police department’s Triage Resource Emergency Support Team, known as TRUST.
Of the 438,785 calls received by Oklahoma City Police in 2023, 18,614 were mental health-related. The City Council report discussed how the two programs have changed the role of 911 by connecting regular callers to services that reduce the need to call again.
“They were overusing 911,” said Mike Walker, operations chief for the Oklahoma City Fire Department, “not in the sense that they were overusing it, but just that they knew who was going to answer the phone.”
The Community Assistance Program receives referrals from the fire department and connects people with agencies that provide a variety of services, from food and housing to mental health care.
more:Should I call 988 or 911 for mental health help? What you need to know
Lt. Bill Downs of the Oklahoma City Fire Department and Jenna Cox, a family services specialist with the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, visit clients periodically to assess their needs. The two-person team has a caseload of about 70, and Walker said some clients are only visited once a month.
The fire department plans to add two case managers but is having trouble finding qualified applicants.
Downs said so far the program has saved the fire department an estimated $600,000 in costs from 911 overuse.
“With a little bit of prevention and a little bit of adjustment, everybody wins,” Downs said.
TRUST is a similar program: When officers are dispatched to a mental health emergency, they refer callers to members of a crisis intervention team who then connect them to appropriate services.
The Crisis Intervention Team is a voluntary 40-hour mental health response training program that was launched in 2002. The team is made up of 172 Oklahoma City police officers, making up 35 percent of active patrol officers as of June, but 460 have completed the training.
Oklahoma City Police Department spokeswoman Valerie Littlejohn said the difference could be explained by additional criteria needed to join the crisis intervention team: Officers must be at the rank of lieutenant or below, and the majority serve in patrol rather than other divisions such as investigations or administration.
Kathy Walker’s daughter has mental health issues and has had contact with Crisis Intervention Team officers on two occasions, most recently in May 2023.
“They had a good conversation with her and convinced her that she needed to go and get checked out,” Kathy Walker said.
Collaboration is key
Because mental health responses often overlap with homelessness and overdoses, mental health responders must collaborate with other providers, including those who support the homeless and overdosed.
The city launched a homeless outreach team in 2014. Police officers can report incidents involving unhoused individuals to the Oklahoma City Action Center, which notifies 40 nonprofits that are part of the city’s Key to Home Partnership.
Shela Farley oversees the Street Outreach and Community Response Team for the Mental Health Association of Oklahoma, part of the Key to Home Partnership.
“When you’re living outside with untreated mental illness or substance abuse issues, we’re in what I call survival mode,” Farley said. “You’re only worried about the here and now. You’re not worried about telling anyone about your mental health because you don’t have time for that. So if we give people that information, it makes it a lot easier for them to get it.”
The city also launched an Overdose Response Team in July 2023 to track people suffering from an overdose and connect them with food, water, housing and/or mental health care.
The team is made up of Lance Jones, operations major for the Oklahoma City Fire Department, and Stephanie Fitzenmeyer, peer recovery support specialist for Hope Community Services.
“They know where we need to go, and we know what to say when we get there,” Fitzenmeyer said of the collaboration between law enforcement and mental health professionals.
Jones said he has spoken to about 600 overdose victims and their companions.
Walker said the city’s efforts will focus on expanding those programs and creating ones that would give mental health professionals a larger role in responding to 911 calls.
Mobile Integrated Healthcare
The city is hiring five clinicians, five paramedics, nine case managers and one physician for its Mobile Integrated Care Program, which aims to embed mental health professionals working directly for the city into law enforcement responses.
Mobile Integrated Healthcare is made up of four units, two of which are already operational: Crisis Call Transfer, Crisis Response Team, Community Outreach Program, and Overdose Response Team.
Crisis call forwarding provides a local alternative to 988, the national suicide and crisis lifeline, giving callers an option other than 911 by allowing them to communicate with a mental health crisis specialist over the phone, who can then dispatch a specialized mobile crisis team, contracted with the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, if needed.
Oklahoma 988 receives so many calls that it routes high-risk calls to the 911 emergency dispatch center, about 18,000 of which it did last year, Walker said.
To manage this and give residents a local alternative to 988, the city implemented crisis call transfer, placing clinicians and certified case managers qualified to assess needs with Oklahoma City 911 dispatchers. The program will allow for more streamlined collaboration between mental health professionals and police.
If mental health professionals determine a patient requires a higher level of care, they can send in a crisis response team.
The crisis response team, made up of paramedics and case managers, will transport people to a crisis and emergency recovery center run by a certified community behavioral health clinic if necessary. Less serious cases will be handled by an alternative response team run by an outside agency, which will be on the streets by January.
The biggest issue facing OKC is staffing.
The city’s biggest obstacle is staffing — so far the only position filled is that of a doctor.
The federal government has designated all 77 counties in Oklahoma as mental health professional shortage areas, according to a November 2023 report by the Tulsa-based Healthy Minds Policy Initiative.
“You can really throw money at the problem,” said Jeff Dismukes, executive director of the Oklahoma Depression and Bipolar Disorder Support Coalition, “but without the workforce, we’re never going to be able to provide what we need to provide.”
Another report by the Healthy Minds Policy Initiative cited a lack of educational opportunities in the state for people interested in mental health careers as a major reason.
Expected patient volumes may also be an obstacle: Steve Norwood, chief operating officer of specialty services at Red Rock Behavioral Health Services, said the company’s crisis stabilization unit typically operates at 85 to 90 percent of capacity.
Verna Faust, CEO of Red Rock Behavioral Health Services, said community mental health jobs are not the most desirable.
“It’s hard work, we bill the government forces and there’s a lot of paperwork,” she said. “Sometimes it’s easier not to work in the community sector.”
Statewide Reform
Tulsa has been operating a Community Response Team, similar to Oklahoma City’s Mobile Integrated Care, since 2017 through a collaboration between law enforcement and Family & Children’s Services, a certified community behavioral health clinic.
Family & Children Services, through its Community Outreach Psychiatric Emergency Services, known as COPES, works with the Tulsa Police and Fire Departments to provide mental health professionals to law enforcement agencies when needed.
COPES Vice President Amanda Bradley said when the Community Response Team was formed, it was essential that all collaborators agreed on definitions for terms like “diversion.” Because law enforcement and mental health professionals have different backgrounds in mental health response, she said it was important that everyone was on the same page.
The Tulsa program didn’t have trouble recruiting, as mental health professionals from the Department of Family and Children’s Services were able to quickly fill the positions.
Fitzenmeyer said working for Hope Community Services instead of Oklahoma City makes his job on the overdose response team easier because he can work with Jones to review patients’ conditions and fill out admission forms for Hope, expediting admission to the treatment center.
“Behavioral health issues don’t belong to just one organization,” Dismukes said. “It takes multiple organizations working together to find real, lasting solutions.”
Oklahoma Watch, Oklahoma Watchis a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering public policy issues facing the state.
