    [Senate Hearing 117-772]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                            S. Hrg. 117-772

                        BEHAVIORAL HEALTH AND POLICING:
                           INTERACTIONS AND SOLUTIONS

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   before the

                            SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL
                          JUSTICE AND COUNTERTERRORISM

                                     OF THE

                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                        ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                 APRIL 22, 2021

                                   __________

                              Serial No. J-117-13

                                   __________

             Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

                    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                            www.judiciary.senate.gov
                                www.govinfo.gov

                                    ______

    	            U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

    54-139 PDF                WASHINGTON : 2026

                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                       RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois, Chair

    PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont            CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa, Ranking
    DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California             Member
    SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island     LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
    AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota             JOHN CORNYN, Texas
    CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware       MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah
    RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut      TED CRUZ, Texas
    MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii              BEN SASSE, Nebraska
    CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey           JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
    ALEX PADILLA, California             TOM COTTON, Arkansas
    JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
                                         THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
                                         MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
                 Joseph Zogby, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
          Kolan L. Davis, Republican Chief Counsel and Staff Director

                        SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE
                              AND COUNTERTERRORISM

                       CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey, Chair

    PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont            TOM COTTON, Arkansas, Ranking
    DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California             Member
    SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island     LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
    AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota             JOHN CORNYN, Texas
    ALEX PADILLA, California             MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah
    JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  TED CRUZ, Texas
                                         JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
                                         JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana

         Daniel P. Smith and Lynda Garcia, Democratic Chief Co-Counsel
                     Drew Hudson, Republican Chief Counsel

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                               OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                       Page

    Booker, Hon. Cory A..............................................     1
    Cotton, Hon. Tom.................................................     4
    Durbin, Hon. Richard J...........................................     6
    Cornyn, Hon. John................................................     7

                                   WITNESSES

    Bartness, Martin A...............................................    10
        Prepared statement...........................................    56
        Responses to written questions...............................    77

    Delany-Brumsey, Ayesha
        Prepared statement...........................................   146

    Mangual, Rafael A................................................    12
        Prepared statement...........................................    61
        Responses to written questions...............................    82

    Martone, Kevin...................................................    22
        Prepared statement...........................................    51
        Responses to written questions...............................    83

    Mims, Margaret...................................................    17
        Prepared statement...........................................    70
        Responses to written questions...............................   129

    Morgan, Ebony C..................................................    19
        Prepared statement...........................................    40
        Questions submitted but no responses.........................    75

    Myrick, Kerris Jan...............................................    15
        Prepared statement...........................................    47
        Responses to written questions...............................   133

    O'Connor, Terri..................................................    20
        Prepared statement...........................................    68

                                    APPENDIX

    Items submitted for the record...................................    39

                        BEHAVIORAL HEALTH AND POLICING:
                           INTERACTIONS AND SOLUTIONS

                                  ----------

                            THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2021

                                  United States Senate,
                               Subcommittee on Criminal Justice
                                          and Counterterrorism,
                                    Committee on the Judiciary,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in
    Room 226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Cory A. Booker,
    Chair of the Subcommittee, presiding.
        Present: Senators Booker [presiding], Whitehouse, Padilla,
    Ossoff, Cotton, and Cornyn.
        Also present: Senators Durbin and Blumenthal.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CORY A. BOOKER,

              A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

        Chair Booker. I am calling this hearing to order. It is
    exciting for me that I get to be here with Senator Cotton in
    our first hearing on the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and
    Counterterrorism. I want to welcome Ranking Member Cotton and
    all the Subcommittee Members and thank the witnesses that are
    here today, both in person--thank you, Kevin--and the virtual
    witnesses that we will have as well.
        I am going to acknowledge in a moment, after I finish my
    opening remarks, should Senator Grassley show up, and I see
    Senator Durbin here. We will offer and make time for both of
    them to give some remarks after Senator Cotton gives some.
        I was asked by one of our Subcommittee Members, Senator
    Klobuchar, who really wanted to be here today, but she is
    unfortunately at home attending the funeral services of Daunte
    Wright, who was shot and killed during a traffic stop. She
    wanted us to express that she is going to be submitting
    questions for the record.
        Right now across our country and in the Senate, we are
    having a long overdue, absolutely critical conversation about
    policing in America. I am very grateful over the last weeks to
    be in good-faith conversations with colleagues of mine across
    the aisle about a larger bill to try to advance policing in
    America.
        But today we are here on a far more narrow topic, and the
    purpose of the hearing is to talk about changes we need to make
    when it comes to how we as an overall society are going to
    respond to people dealing with mental health crisis and those
    who behaviorally have disabilities of behavioral health.
        By and large, we as a society have failed to provide these
    individuals with the support services, compassion, and empathy
    they need to thrive in our communities and live full lives. We
    see our streets with people experiencing homelessness, our
    jails and prisons, and we see unfortunately short and tragic
    deaths of those who are struggling with mental health crises. I
    have not met a warden, when I go visit jails or police leaders,
    who have not spoken with compassion and empathy that they are
    not the ones that should be dealing with this. There should be
    a better way to help people live healthy lives.
        Today we focus in on what is unfortunately too often our
    society's first real interaction with people with mental
    health, and it often goes wrong. We are here to talk about how
    our great police officers try to deal with this issue. It is
    about how we have made police officers first responders for
    mental illness, intellectual developmental mental disabilities,
    substance abuse, and people experiencing homelessness. It is
    about how officers are deeply frustrated and, as is often the
    case, overwhelmed because they are expected to play the role of
    social worker, mental health expert, and medical expert when
    they do not have the training or the skills often to do so. It
    is about how, for this reason, these encounters can quickly
    escalate to violence or turn deadly.
        One study of shooting data for 2015 found that people with
    untreated mental illness were 16 times more likely to be killed
    during a police encounter. The names, many of which we know, of
    the people who have died because of their encounters: Daniel
    Prude, Deborah Danner, Marcus-David Peters, and so many more.
    Often when these deaths occur, I reach out to the police
    officers I trust in the police department that I oversaw as a
    mayor. These are great, tough cops, courageous--fearless, in
    fact--and I ask them: Should those people with mental illnesses
    have died in those interactions? They all conclude with me very
    quickly that there should be a better way. We as a society
    together should be able to avoid these unnecessary deaths.
        Public health issues cannot be fixed with a law enforcement
    response. We must find a different way. What is needed for
    people who live with mental illness or addiction is help,
    services, treatment, access to medication, medical treatment,
    housing, peer support, and more. We know from our experiences
    of sound law enforcement officers, people on both sides of the
    aisle, that this should change in our society. We are better
    than this.
        I mentioned my time as mayor of Newark, and I have to say I
    was elected with a mandate to lower violent crime. My city was
    experiencing a surge in crime when I became mayor in 2006, so I
    spent hours and hours and hours riding along with police
    officers, often until 4 o'clock in the night. I wanted to know
    the challenges they faced. I wanted to learn their profession
    as best I could. I rode with them, and I got to know them.
    Again, I was humbled by their heroism and their service and
    their sacrifice. I got to know them and their families. I saw
    their professionalism. I saw how they were willing to take
    extraordinary risks, often putting themselves squarely into
    life-threatening situations, to carry out their duties.
        Let me tell you right now the job of being a police officer
    in America is extraordinarily difficult. What made their work
    harder was having to answer calls for service that took them to
    the person in a mental distress and screaming in their home, to
    the teenager whose mother called 911 because he was erratic and
    she had no one else to call, to the person experiencing
    homelessness, struggling with addiction, lying in the street.
    We were so frustrated, me and my police leadership, that the
    calls for service kept people chasing what we called queue,
    chasing call after call as opposed to doing the strategic work
    we needed to do to solve violent crimes. Unequipped and under-
    resourced, I saw my officers spend their nights chasing those
    calls when they could have been more strategically using our
    manpower as police. Those people who they responded to could
    have gotten better help that would have prevented them from
    having encounters with the police in the future.
        I want to note that I received several letters from law
    enforcement leaders that echoed my own experience across the
    country in advance of this hearing asking, almost pleading, for
    Congress to fix the problem. I am going to submit those letters
    for the record, but I want to read just some of the words.
        Chair Booker. Sheriff Jerry Clayton of Washtenaw County,
    Michigan, wrote: ``I urge the Subcommittee to support and fund
    additional community-based services for people with mental
    health and substance use challenges. Too often people in need
    of treatment end up in our jails. This is not where they
    belong. Wherever possible, we should make efforts to find ways
    to provide community-based care without ever connecting with
    law enforcement.''
        Chief Shon Barnes of Madison, Wisconsin, wrote: ``In this
    era of police reform, we must all challenge our Government to
    provide a better level of service to the community. We can no
    longer simply rely on police responses to mental wellness and
    must view this issue from a community health perspective. We
    have seen far too many times the negative results of police-
    only responses to mental health calls. No person deserves to be
    imprisoned or harmed by police simply because they have mental
    wellness challenges.''
        Chief RaShall Brackney of Charlottesville, Virginia, wrote:
    ``By simply calling 911, a caller unleashes the full power of a
    system in which few officers are equipped to navigate. The
    Senate Judiciary Committee has the opportunity to inform the
    development of a national framework for responding to
    individuals in crisis. Included in that framework must be a
    pathway toward decreasing the presence of law enforcement in
    the mental health response portfolio and for the allocation of
    funding and resources which build capacity to support
    community-led continuum of care options which incorporate lived
    experiences and racial equity into the system.''
        In the meeting with local police chiefs 2 weeks ago, my
    colleague, my friend, and my partner in a lot of work here in
    the Senate, Senator Cornyn, expressed support for specialized
    training and more social workers and mental health experts so
    that police can do their jobs and, ``keep the bad guys at bay
    and protect the community.'' I believe we can find common
    ground here. I very purposely made this first hearing about
    something that I thought there was a wide common ground to do.
    There are so many issues that we as Democrats and Republicans
    do a good job of delineating our differences. This is something
    that should rise, I think, more grace from all of us. How can
    we come together, right and left, to try to find a way not to
    rehash our differences, but champion our shared interests and
    find commonsense solutions? It is time that we go that extra
    step to end what for many families with someone that has a
    mental illness in them has been a constant nightmare, fears of
    what will happen to their family member.
        I am grateful to all the witnesses that are here. I hope
    today we can narrow in not on our differences but to see if we
    can find some common ground. That is when we as a country move
    forward, when we find ways to stand together and work together
    to the benefit of others. It is the calling of our country to
    lead with that kind of spirit.
        I look forward to hearing from everyone. I look forward to
    a constructive conversation. With that, I am honored to pass it
    on to my Ranking Member and someone who I have a lot of respect
    for, Tom Cotton.

                 OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TOM COTTON,

               A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF ARKANSAS

        Senator Cotton. Thank you, Senator Booker.
        Policing is on the minds of many Americans today. It is on
    their minds because of the relentless coverage of some high-
    profile situations, but, unfortunately, that coverage often
    includes falsehoods which can be incendiary, and if repeated
    often enough, can do significant damage, something that no mere
    retraction can correct.
        There is another reason that many Americans have policing
    on their minds today. Last year, our Nation experienced the
    single largest increase in murders ever recorded, a shocking 25
    percent surge nationwide. In big cities, it was even worse.
    Murders rose in Chicago by 65 percent, in New York City by 58
    percent, and in Washington, DC, by 40 percent. Major cities
    additionally suffered the largest rise in aggravated assaults
    in three decades.
        American families and communities also watched in horror as
    drug overdose deaths rose to the highest level ever in the
    tragic history of addiction: 88,000 Americans died in just the
    last 12 months alone from drug overdoses.
        Our country also experienced hundreds of violent riots last
    year that inflicted billions of dollars in damages and wounded
    more than 2,000 law enforcement officers.
        Policing is a dangerous and difficult profession. It often
    involves individuals, all of whom are imperfect, making split-
    second decisions with life-and-death consequences. The vast
    majority of law enforcement interactions involve no use of
    force, in fact, are cooperative and cordial between law
    enforcement and citizens. The vast majority of law enforcement
    officers are good, brave, selfless individuals putting their
    lives on the line every day to protect their communities. They
    face tight budgets, long hours, and sometimes public ridicule,
    all because they dedicate their lives to protecting others.
        Nonetheless, we, of course, have understandable concerns
    about how police interact with the public, including with poor
    communities, minority communities, and individuals with mental
    health challenges. Given the potential consequences if an
    interaction goes poorly, it is no surprise that Republicans and
    Democrats alike are interested in finding ways to improve
    policing and to improve public safety.
        Despite bipartisan interest in this issue, we have seen on
    occasion unfortunate partisan divides that have gotten sharper
    in recent years. There is perhaps no more visible example of
    this partisan divide than calls to defund the police. Activists
    and politicians can mean different things when they use that
    term. Some, including some lawmakers in Congress, have
    literally called for the abolition of all law enforcement,
    although many of these same lawmakers and advocates spend
    enormous sums of money on their own phalanx of private security
    bodyguards. Abolishing law enforcement is, of course, a foolish
    idea that no serious person would ever want to see enacted.
        Others say we should not abolish law enforcement
    altogether, but that we should simply cut their budgets further
    and rely more on unarmed social workers or mental health
    workers to intervene in emergency situations. Of course, we
    need to involve mental health professionals anytime there is a
    crisis situation where a person can receive treatment from a
    mental health professional rather than be subject of our law--
    our criminal justice system. We do not need to ask police
    officers to also function as psychiatrists, doctors, and
    educators or to solve every social problem in our society. They
    are on our streets to enforce our laws and keep our communities
    safe.
        I suspect that most police departments would be glad to
    have more and better partnerships with mental health providers,
    as Chairman Booker outlined in some of the letters he
    introduced. I expect we will hear more about this in the
    hearing, and I welcome the opportunity to work with my
    colleagues in a bipartisan fashion to improve the availability
    of things like de-escalation training, and training on how to
    recognize and respond to people facing mental health
    challenges, and to expand partnerships between law enforcement
    on the one hand and mental and behavioral health providers on
    the other hand.
        The suggestion that mental health professionals can replace
    the police rather than supplement and support the police is
    misguided and dangerous. The simple truth is that when law
    enforcement stands down, when it responds less to what some
    people would call small or quality-of-life crimes or when the
    police are defunded, all we get is more crime and more
    violence.
        Let us be clear. Law enforcement is not the enemy, and we
    should not try to reduce law enforcement either. Not only can
    the police prevent additional victims, they can also be the
    opportunity to connect offenders who suffer from mental illness
    and addiction with the professionals that can give them the
    care they need.
        Almost every day that a police officer puts on their
    uniform, they help someone on the worst day of that person's
    life. Our police see the most heart-wrenching tragedies, the
    most gruesome gore, the most pernicious evils in our society.
    They are constantly faced with the worst and are always asked
    to be at their best.
        As violent crime and lawlessness continues to increase, we
    need more police, more resources, and better training, and,
    yes, more and better partnerships between our police and our
    behavioral and mental health professionals.
        I thank the witnesses for appearing today, and I look
    forward to hearing their perspectives on this important issue.
        Chair Booker. Senator Cotton, I am grateful for those
    remarks, and I would like--now invite and ask Senator Durbin to
    give some remarks as well, and I am hoping if Senator Grassley
    is here, he will do the same.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD J. DURBIN,

               A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

        Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator Booker. I am honored to be
    here for your first hearing as Chair of the Subcommittee on
    Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism. In this room today, we
    are making history. As you take the gavel, you are the first
    African-American Chair of a Senate Judiciary Committee. This is
    not only a historic moment; it is long overdue. I could not
    think of a better person to Chair this Subcommittee. Our work
    together on the FIRST STEP Act showed you as a real leader when
    it came to criminal justice reform, and I know you are showing
    the same leadership when it comes to police reform.
        The topic today is one that is near and dear to me. As
    Senator Cotton noted, there is an abundance and overwhelming
    evidence of gun violence in the city of Chicago and many cities
    across the Nation. As a United States Senator, many groups come
    to me and say, ``Well, what are you going to do about it? You
    are such a hotshot. You are a leader. You are on the Judiciary
    Committee.'' Many times I throw up my hands and think, ``If it
    depends on passing a law, that is so hard to do politically to
    get anything done in so many different areas.''
        I made a trip a few years ago that has really guided me
    since to the Cook County Juvenile Facility. This facility
    houses adolescents under the age of 18 who have been accused of
    gun crimes, many of them murder, and they stay in this facility
    in downtown Chicago until their trial. Sometimes that is years.
    We have created a high school in this facility--classrooms,
    gyms, cafeterias--for these adolescents waiting for trial as
    they are accused of gun crimes. I sat down with the teachers
    and counselors at these facilities and said, ``Who are these
    kids? How did they get into this situation, gang members, gun
    violence? What is this all about?''
        Of course, they said there are many avenues and many paths
    to that outcome, but they said to me, ``There is one
    overwhelming common theme. Over 90 percent of these kids have
    been the victims of trauma.'' Of course, we think of trauma in
    the physical sense, but it also is in the mental sense. If you
    go back to ACEs indicator, adverse childhood experiences, a
    list created many years ago, and realize what can happen to a
    little kid as they are growing up that has a direct impact on
    who they will be, what they will do, you find out there is a
    long, long list.
        The second visit I made--and I will make this very brief--
    was to a public school in Chicago that was going through a
    program where they were introducing children in the third grade
    to meditation. I watched as the teacher--I sat in the classroom
    as the teacher called for a few minutes, 5 minutes, of just
    silence and reflection and meditation of the class. As I
    watched and went out in the hallway later, I said, ``There was
    one little boy in there that just could not settle down, could
    not quiet down. What is going on, do you know?'' ``Well,
    something terrible has happened at his home.'' I said to the
    teacher, ``So, what are you going to do about it?'' She says,
    ``I teach math in third grade. I am not a psychologist.''
        The issue that I am raising here this morning at the
    beginning of this hearing, all the issues you have raised are
    valid issues, but let us not forget the need for mental health
    counseling for children, intervention in the lives of children.
    I do not think these kids are lost forever. They need help.
    They need a mentor. They need somebody who believes in them and
    who cares, who can turn them to the right path instead of
    seeing them end up on the wrong path.
        I yield.
        Chair Booker. Senator Grassley is one of the busier men in
    the U.S. Senate and moves with the indefatigable determination
    of the Energizer Bunny, so he is not here right now. I invoked
    Senator Cornyn's name, and I would love to extend the courtesy
    to Senator Cornyn if you would like to give any introductory
    remarks.

                 OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN CORNYN

                 A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

        Senator Cornyn. Thank you for the courtesy and the
    opportunity. I am glad to be here today, and I appreciate you
    and Senator Cotton convening this hearing.
        I think we have all learned a lot in recent years about law
    enforcement and the role of mental health in that process. I
    guess one of the people that made the biggest impression on me
    a few years back was a journalist named Pete Earley, who
    chronicled his own family's struggle with a son, an adult son,
    who was mentally ill, but in the process would commit petty
    crimes and found himself in a jail cell without any real
    benefit to him or society because that is the only place they
    knew to put him.
        I have been encouraged by the work that we have been able
    to do here in the Congress, passing things like my Mental
    Health and Safe Communities Act, offering grants for those
    police departments that needed help with things like active
    shooter response, things like de-escalation training and the
    like. I have been very much encouraged by the crisis
    intervention teams that are sprouting up in most major cities
    around the country, including the major cities in my State, and
    even the advent of things like mental health courts so that,
    unlike traditional courts that adjudicate guilt or innocence,
    they literally monitor people once they are released into the
    public and make sure that they have the support they need and
    hopefully to deal with their mental health condition and so
    they do not repeat those offenses and they get the help they
    need, hopefully to get better.
        I will never forget, about 5 years ago now, I think it was,
    I was in Dallas at a memorial service where five police
    officers were killed, and Police Chief David Brown at the time,
    who has since gone to Chicago, he said to me and everyone else
    there at the time, ``We ask the police to do too much.'' I
    think we are making progress to try to provide additional
    resources and a more effective response. Frankly, I do not
    think it is an either/or proposition. I do not think the
    question is: Do you support the police or do you support mental
    health providers? We need to do both, in my view.
        I am glad that this Committee and this Congress has been
    productive in passing things like the Criminal Justice Reform
    Act that we all worked together on. I am--Senator Whitehouse
    and I are working on post-release access to services to make
    sure that people who do go through the programs to deal with
    their mental health challenges or with their addictions or lack
    of job skills, that once they are released from prison that
    they have the support they need in order to remain a successful
    and productive member of society and not by going back to the
    same old neighborhood with the same old bad influences and just
    get back into their same old bad habits.
        Thanks for giving me a chance to say a few words, Mr.
    Chairman, and thanks for holding this hearing.
        Chair Booker. Thank you, Mr. Cornyn.
        As I learned as a young boy in a small Black church in New
    Jersey, the choir has now sang, with surprising harmony amongst
    us all. Now, it is time to get on to the sermon, and that will
    come from our witnesses, and I am very excited to introduce
    half of our witnesses, and I will ask my Ranking Member to
    introduce the other witnesses. If I can find my notes here,
    forgive me, if I can get my introductions here--thank you very
    much.
        The first witness is Major Martin Bartness. He is the
    commander of the Baltimore Police Department's Education and
    Training Section, where he is responsible for the development
    and delivery of new recruit training and continuing education
    for approximately 3,000 personnel. Major Bartness also leads
    the Baltimore Police Department's Crisis Response Program, and
    he has served as the chief of staff to the police commissioner
    and commander of the Special Investigations Section. He holds a
    bachelor of arts degree from Creighton University, a master of
    arts degree from the University of Nebraska, Omaha, and a
    master's of criminal justice degree from Boston University.
        Then we have Keris Myrick, who is director of the JED
    Foundation and codirector of the Mental Health Strategic Impact
    Initiative, and she serves on the board of the National
    Association of Peer Specialists. Ms. Myrick is--has previously
    held the position of Director of the Office of Consumer Affairs
    for the Center for Mental Health Services of the United States
    Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health
    Services Administration and the board president of the National
    Alliance on Mental Illness. Ms. Myrick has a master's of
    science degree in organizational psychology from the California
    School of Professional Psychology of Alliant International
    University. Her master's of business administration degree is
    from Case Western University and the university's Weatherhead
    School of Management.
        Ebony Martin is the program coordinator and a crisis
    intervention worker for CAHOOTS. The CAHOOTS program provides
    mobile crisis response in Eugene and Springfield, Oregon, and
    has been connecting people experiencing crisis with uniquely
    trained personnel as an alternative to law enforcement for more
    than 30 years. In her position, she strives to promote and
    enhance the crucial role mobile crisis response plays in
    keeping communities safe.
        Kevin Martone is--Kevin, hi--is the executive director of
    the Technical Assistance Collaborative, a nonprofit
    organization dedicated to helping our Nation's mental health,
    addiction, homelessness, and affordable housing systems
    implement policies and practices that empower people to live
    healthy, independent lives in the communities they choose.
    Previously, Mr. Martone served as the mental health
    commissioner for the great State of New Jersey, president of
    the National Association of State Mental Health Program
    Directors, and CEO of a supportive housing agency.
        Yes, Ranking Member, please introduce your witnesses.
        Senator Cotton. Thank you. I would first like to introduce
    Terri O'Connor. Ms. O'Connor lives in Philadelphia, where she
    was born and raised. She is the mother of two children and the
    grandmother of two. Ms. O'Connor has firsthand experience with
    the challenges faced by our police. Not only is her son a
    police officer, but her late husband was also a police officer.
    In the early years of her marriage, Ms. O'Connor also spent a
    decade working as a 911 operator herself.
        Most recently, and tragically, Ms. O'Connor is also a widow
    after her husband, Philadelphia Police Corporal James O'Connor,
    was killed last year as he was serving a high-risk murder
    warrant on a gang member. His murderer should have been in the
    jail at the time but for the soft-on-crime policies of the
    local district attorney who prioritized so-called decarceration
    and reducing the footprint of the criminal justice system above
    public safety. Ms. O'Connor, I am so sorry for your loss. Thank
    you for your testimony today.
        Next, I would like to introduce Rafael Mangual. Mr. Mangual
    is a senior fellow and deputy director of legal policy at the
    Manhattan Institute as well as a contributing editor to City
    Journal. He has authored or coauthored a number of reports and
    articles on issues ranging from urban crime and jail violence
    to broader matters of criminal and civil justice reform. His
    work has been featured in a wide array of publications, and he
    has also appeared on a number of television and radio programs
    and discussed these issues. He has previously worked in
    corporate communications for the International Trademark
    Association. He holds a B.A. in corporate communication from
    City University of New York's Baruch College and a law degree
    from DePaul University in Chicago. Last year, he was appointed
    to serve a 4 year term as a member of the New York State
    Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
    Thank you, Mr. Mangual, for appearing before us today.
        Finally, I would like to introduce Sheriff Margaret Mims of
    Fresno County, California. Sheriff Mims has been a peace
    officer for more than three decades and was elected sheriff in
    2006. Not only was Sheriff Mims the first female deputy sheriff
    sergeant to supervise field patrols in Fresno County, she was
    also the first female deputy sheriff there to attain the ranks
    of lieutenant, captain, or assistant sheriff, or to be elected
    to the office of sheriff. She is a member of the California
    Peace Officers Association and the California State Sheriffs
    Association and is also deeply involved in her community in
    other ways, including through her service on the board of
    directors of the Marjaree Mason Center, a local women's
    shelter, as well as on the board of trustees for the Fresno
    County Boys and Girls Club. Sheriff Mims is a graduate of
    Fresno Pacific University and holds a master's degree in public
    administration from National University. Thank you, Sheriff
    Mims, for testifying today.
        Chairman Booker, I would also like to ask consent to enter
    into the record a number of other documents, including four
    peer-reviewed articles regarding policing and behavioral
    health, three commentary articles published in mainstream media
    publications, two documents published by the International
    Association of Chiefs of Police and the Law Enforcement Legal
    Defense Fund, and a written statement from the Council of State
    Governments.
        Chair Booker. Without objection.
        [The information appears as a submission for the record.]
        Chair Booker. I would like to now bring the witnesses on
    one by one. I think I need to swear folks in, and why don't you
    stand up, Kevin? The witnesses at home, please stand in your
    bedroom, living room, wherever you are. Do you affirm--please
    raise your right hand. Do you affirm that the testimony you are
    about to give before this Committee will be truthful, wholly
    truthful, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
        Major Bartness. I do.
        Mr. Mangual. I do.
        Ms. Myrick. I do.
        Sheriff Mims. I do.
        Ms. Morgan. I do.
        Ms. O'Connor. I do.
        Mr. Martone. I do.
        [Witnesses are sworn in.]
        Chair Booker. With that, we are going to bring on the first
    witness, and the first witness with be Major Martin Bartness,
    the commander, Education and Training Section, at the Baltimore
    Police Department.

              STATEMENT OF MARTIN A. BARTNESS, COMMANDER,

                EDUCATION & TRAINING SECTION, BALTIMORE

                 POLICE DEPARTMENT, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

        Major Bartness. Good morning, Committee Chairman Booker,
    Ranking Member Cotton, and distinguished Members of the
    Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism. My name
    is Major Martin Bartness, and I am a 24-year veteran of the
    Baltimore Police Department, where I currently serve as the
    commander of education and training and lead the Crisis
    Response Program. I am also a Bloomberg Fellow at the Johns
    Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
        While it is my privilege to appear before you today, I wish
    my presence were not necessary. We have come together, in large
    measure, because for at least the past decade, law enforcement
    actions have been associated with the annual death of about
    1,100 people nationwide. It is estimated that 25 percent to 50
    percent of these deaths involve persons who have been diagnosed
    with a severe mental illness. In the past 3 weeks alone, more
    than a dozen people who were mentally ill or in the throes of a
    breakdown were killed by police.
        These tragedies point to the urgent need for law
    enforcement to partner with behavioral health professionals,
    community stakeholders, and individuals with lived experience
    to develop and implement solutions to effectively respond to
    persons in crisis and meet the complex behavioral health needs
    of those we serve.
        We are in this situation because of public policy decisions
    made decades ago, when psychiatric institutions were closed and
    those living with mental illness were returned to their
    communities without adequate treatment and support. While these
    institutions were not the answer, States and municipalities
    failed to provide the supports and treatment needed for people
    with mental illness to live free from discrimination in their
    communities.
        To this day, in Baltimore and many other places throughout
    the United States, the behavioral health system's goal of
    crisis prevention has not been realized. I will share a story
    to highlight this point.
        In June of last year, a 19-year-old man, completely nude
    and in psychiatric crisis, repeatedly fired a handgun at
    motorists as he walked the streets of his Baltimore
    neighborhood. Police responded, safely took the man into
    custody, recovered the firearm he had been discharging, and
    drove him to an emergency room for psychiatric treatment. This
    would have been a great outcome except for within 6 days of his
    release from the hospital, he had another psychotic episode.
    This time, when officers answered the 911 call to his home and
    calmly attempted to de-escalate him, the man pulled a handgun
    from his pants pocket and pointed it at the officers. In fear
    for their lives, the officers shot him. He is now paralyzed.
        Far too often, police find themselves in positions where
    the behavioral health system has failed to meet consumers'
    needs. This is why an estimated 10 percent of total police
    calls involve mental health situations. Inadequate funding and
    a system that diffuses responsibility among numerous,
    uncoordinated entities are at the core of the problem. As a
    result, people experience crises more frequently, and police
    are thrust into the role of a last-resort safety net for people
    in crisis.
        Even when police peacefully handle behavioral health calls
    and link consumers to service providers, these calls can be
    time-consuming, which is often at odds with the demands of the
    911 system and the expectations communities have for timely
    police response to crime and disorder.
        I know we can do better. My testimony today is informed by
    10 years of partnering with behavioral health professionals. I
    have witnessed firsthand how service delivery is improved
    dramatically when police partner with highly trained clinicians
    to conduct forensic interviews of sexually abused children;
    when police partner with victim advocates to coordinate
    counseling services to survivors of intimate partner violence;
    when police partner with outreach workers whose credibility
    within our Nation's most marginalized communities allows them
    to mediate disputes to disrupt cycles of retaliatory violence;
    and when police co-respond with licensed clinical social
    workers to de-escalate a person in crisis.
        Through these kinds of successful partnerships between the
    criminal justice and behavioral health systems, we have
    demonstrated how it is possible to improve public health
    outcomes for even the most challenged populations. Moving
    forward, I hope you will help build upon the promising
    practices of behavioral health programs like CAHOOTS in Eugene,
    Oregon; STAR in Denver, Colorado; and GBRICS in Baltimore,
    Maryland.
        I hope you will fund research so that jurisdictions can
    make evidence-based decisions for allocating scarce resources.
    I hope you will incentivize law enforcement, behavioral health
    providers, and academic institutions to collaborate on policy
    development, training, data analysis, and outcome evaluation. I
    hope you will heed the calls of behavioral health practitioners
    and clinicians to fund crisis response services, long-term
    treatment, and community-based providers at the levels needed
    to meet the extraordinary demands.
        I thank you for the opportunity today to discuss how this
    Committee can make our communities safer and more responsive to
    the millions of people who desperately need a robust behavioral
    health and crisis response system. Your support of law
    enforcement, behavioral health professionals, and the citizens
    we serve is greatly appreciated.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        [The prepared statement of Major Bartness appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chair Booker. Thank you so much, Commander. We really
    appreciate your testimony.
        I am really pleased to bring on this next witness. When I
    was mayor of the City of Newark, the Manhattan Institute was a
    partner of ours in helping us to establish the first-ever in
    the State of New Jersey Municipal Office of Prisoner Reentry,
    and so I am grateful now that one of the Manhattan Institute's
    senior fellows is here, Mr. Rafael Mangual. I hope I pronounced
    your name correctly, sir. Would you please give us your
    testimony?

                    STATEMENT OF RAFAEL A. MANGUAL,

                 SENIOR FELLOW, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE FOR

                  POLICY RESEARCH, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

        Mr. Mangual. You did, and thank you, Chairman Booker and
    Ranking Member Cotton, as well as Members of the Subcommittee,
    for the invitation to deliver testimony here today. It is truly
    an honor and a privilege to address this body on an issue that
    is among the most important public policy debates of our time,
    which is police reform.
        Unfortunately, it is also one of the most divisive. A lot
    of the conversation about how to reform policing in the United
    States seems to be driven by a key misconception, which is that
    police violence is a likely outcome of an investigative or
    enforcement interaction. What I would like to do is to start by
    addressing this misconception and talk a little bit about the
    potential risks and limits of an approach to reform that
    primarily seeks to reduce the footprint of police for its own
    sake.
        Right now, 83 percent of Americans--this is according to a
    recent Pew Research survey--guessed that the typical police
    officer has fired his gun at least one time on the job, while
    on duty. In reality, only about one in four actually ever do at
    any point during their long careers. Police very rarely use
    force, and when they do, it very rarely results in serious
    injury. In 2018, police officers in the United States
    discharged their firearms an estimated 3,043 times. That year,
    they made more than 10.3 million criminal arrests. If you
    attributed each of the 3,043 estimated discharges to a unique
    officer, it would mean that, at most, 0.4 percent of officers
    purposefully discharged their firearm in 2018. If we assume
    that every shooting happened during the course of a separate
    arrest, it would mean that, at most, police applied deadly
    force with a firearm in just 0.003 percent of arrests.
        As to non-deadly force, in 2018, a team of researchers and
    doctors published a thorough study of police use of force in
    The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. That study
    analyzed over a million calls for service to three mid-sized
    police departments in Arizona, Louisiana, and North Carolina
    over a 2-year period. Those calls resulted in more than 114,000
    arrests. Police force was used in just 1 of every 128 of them,
    meaning that more than 99 percent of all arrests and much more
    than 99 percent of all encounters were effected without any use
    of force.
        That study went on to find that on the people whom police
    used force against, they sustained no or mild injury more than
    98 percent of the time. Only 1.8 percent of suspects sustained
    moderate or severe injuries, and only one suspect was fatally
    wounded by police gunfire during the study period.
        Nor are uses of force likely when you drill down into
    particularly dangerous police encounters, including those
    involving people in crisis. Take my home city of New York, for
    example. In 2020, the NYPD responded to 161,278 911 calls for
    persons in crisis. Yet the department recorded just 42 firearm
    discharges that year, including off-duty shootings, the vast
    majority of which did not begin with crisis calls.
        On average, the NYPD responds to 175,000 calls involving
    people in crisis annually, and its highly trained emergency
    service unit officers try to respond, often responding to about
    125,000 of those per year, usually in conjunction with beat
    cops. In the 3-year period between 2018 and 2020, ESU officers
    recorded just one shooting.
        None of this means that there is not room for improvement
    or that police are perfect. There is, and they are not.
    Exploring opportunities for reform is a worthwhile endeavor
    that has to be undertaken soberly, because pulling the wrong
    policy lever can have disastrous effects, particularly on
    crime. That is the risk that we should be especially cognizant
    of now, given the very sharp uptick in shootings and homicides
    across the country.
        Last year, for the first time since 1995, criminologists
    estimated that the U.S. will have seen more than 20,000
    criminal homicides--an increase of about 4,000 additional
    homicides compared to 2019. That is still a ways off from the
    nearly 25,000 homicides the country experienced in 1991, but it
    is important to note that some cities have actually seen their
    homicide numbers approach and even surpass their 1990s peaks.
        I suspect that some of the sincerely held misconceptions
    about police use of force have shaped some of the overarching
    goals of the reform movement, which, at the moment, seems to be
    to minimize the footprint of police, and the criminal justice
    system more broadly, in any way possible. We have heard calls
    to defund the police, which, in some cities, have been heeded.
    We have also heard calls to divert more responsibility,
    particularly things like traffic enforcement and responding to
    mental health calls, away from police to unarmed civilians.
        On the mental health front, there is some evidence that
    suggests that we should continue to invest in efforts to
    augment the police by deploying civilian crisis intervention
    teams to calls involving people in crisis. In a report released
    just yesterday, my Manhattan Institute colleague, Charles
    Lehman, reviews some of that evidence. Among the approaches
    evaluated in his report is a popular, oft-cited, and promising
    effort launched in Eugene, Oregon, called CAHOOTS. While
    effective, CAHOOTS is also a case study in the limits of
    programs loosely referred to as alternatives to policing. As
    Lehman notes in his report, CAHOOTS responders are highly
    specialized. In 2019, they covered just 17 percent of Eugene
    911 calls, with 75 percent of those calls being a welfare check
    or providing transportation, usually to someone homeless or in
    need. Even in those relatively limited circumstances, CAHOOTS
    responders still called for backup in roughly 1 in every 67
    calls for service in 2019.
        While it doubtless provides a useful service now, groups
    like CAHOOTS are not necessarily a model for how to replace the
    police. As a complement to policing, it is certainly a useful
    model for other cities to adopt. When you consider the sheer
    volume of mental health calls received by the police, not to
    mention the fact that they are often received in the late-night
    or early morning hours, it becomes very clear that we simply do
    not have the capacity to shift this particular responsibility
    in total.
        Another complicating factor is that it is often unclear as
    to whether a call can be accurately categorized as one that can
    be safely diverted to civilian responders in mental health
    crises as opposed to police-based encounters. In other words,
    there is a study, for example, out of the city of Philadelphia
    which found recently that some medical or public health
    activity initially masquerades as crime or other policing work,
    and some events eventually determined to be police or crime
    activity can initially appear to be public health related. The
    study went on to find that about 20 percent of activity in this
    area actually does not appear predictable from the initial call
    type as handled by police dispatch, which is important because
    we need to know that in advance if we are going to successfully
    divert some of these calls.
        I also want to second the comments offered by Major
    Bartness and say that a real solution to the problems that
    sometimes arise in police encounters with those suffering from
    serious mental illness must be built around an effort to
    provide more and better supervision for those in need so that
    they can get the care and services that they desperately
    require in a safe and compassionate setting rather than turning
    them out onto the street where they are likely to get hurt and/
    or hurt others.
        Again, none of this is to say that improving outcomes in
    policing is not something that we not should pursue with vigor.
    It is. While reform is a worthy pursuit, it cannot be allowed
    to cause us to lose sight of the government's first duty, which
    is to provide for the public's safety.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Mangual appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chair Booker. Mr. Mangual, that was really incredible
    testimony, so good that I am considering sending you a tie as a
    gift.
        I would like to now go to Ms. Keris Myrick. Would you
    please give us your testimony?

                     STATEMENT OF KERIS JAN MYRICK,

               CERTIFIED PERSONAL MEDICINE COACH--CPMPC,

                 INDUSTRIAL-ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY,

                        LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

        Ms. Myrick. Good morning, Chairman Booker, Ranking Member
    Cotton, and Members of the Subcommittee. I appreciate this
    opportunity to speak with you today about creating behavioral
    health crisis systems that are safe and work for all. You have
    heard my bio, but equally important is who I am as a person. I
    am a daughter, sister, cousin, friend, Army brat, African
    American, and I am a person who has been given a diagnosis of
    schizophrenia.
        I recall when first diagnosed I believed that no one would
    want to be my friend, that I was not worthy of help, and,
    worse, that I was not worthy of love. Initially, I did not even
    believe that my struggles were due to having a mental illness.
    This is how I have felt often as a person of color in this
    country. I rejected any form of help, and due to the
    embarrassment and stigma of mental illness, I did not even let
    the people who loved and supported me the most--my parents--
    into the world that I was experiencing.
        My first interaction with the mental health system during a
    crisis when I was in my 30s, in Los Angeles, went badly, very
    badly. When I was in emotional distress, my expectation was
    that an EMT or ambulance would come to help me. I had been told
    repeatedly that a mental illness is like any other physical
    illness and should be treated as such. During a time of
    confusion, paranoia, and extreme emotional distress, the police
    arrived at my small apartment building where I was the only
    African-American resident. The officer banged on the door and
    loudly announced that he was from the police department sent to
    do a welfare check. As a Black person, so many things ran
    through my mind: Will the neighbors think that I fit some sort
    of stereotype about Black people being criminals? Was I safe to
    open the door given the many horrific outcomes for African
    Americans and police interactions?
        My paranoia was not about my illness. It was about the
    realities of what it is like to be Black in America. I let the
    police in, fearing if I did not they would break down my door.
    Being deemed a danger to myself, I was handcuffed and taken to
    the police station where I was then handcuffed to a chair while
    they spoke to an African-American boy about stealing his
    grandfather's gun that was on the table in a secure gun box. I
    was trying to understand how it was possible for me to be what
    everyone said, ``sick and needing psychiatric
    hospitalization,'' yet to be sitting handcuffed to a chair at a
    police station seeing for the first time in my life a real gun.
        This was my first experience being in such distress and
    needing mental health support. What I did not need was the
    police response and being treated like a criminal. I needed
    health care and support.
        I found what ``care'' was all about: asking for help and
    getting instead handcuffs and being harmed physically and
    emotionally. From this, I was unwilling to seek the care I
    needed, especially when I needed it most. All I can think is I
    am very fortunate not to have had the same outcomes as Ms.
    Mitrice Richardson. A 24-year-old African-American woman known
    to have bipolar disorder was picked up by the police in the
    Malibu area of Los Angeles because it was reported she was
    acting irrationally. Like me, she was taken to a police
    station. Sadly for Ms. Richardson, she was released from the
    station in the middle of the night with no car, phone, wallet
    or money. Her decomposed body was found 11 months later in the
    area not far from the station.
        When someone has a heart attack, stroke, dementia, or even
    ready to give birth, is this how they are treated? Police are
    not the default first responders. It is ambulance or EMTs who
    are the default. Why do we have police responding to mental
    health emergency situations when others are trained to do so?
        Peer support specialists should be part of the mobile
    crisis response as one of the ways to remove police from the
    behavioral health crisis response equation. Peer support
    specialists are trained in evidence-based practices such as
    wellness recovery action plan, personal medicine coaching, and
    psychiatric advance directives, and they share their personal
    story of recovery to support another. Peer support has proven
    to help people participate in and adhere to treatment, shown
    reductions in hospitalization, homelessness, an increase in
    employment and social connection, and for parents and family
    members, it helps them to feel more confident in their ability
    to help their loved ones. Peer support is cost-effective and
    particularly valuable in rural and other areas that have been
    strapped for resources. We need more fully funded peer respite
    so people in behavioral health crisis have a safe and
    supportive place to recover.
        These are unprecedented times--a world reeling from the
    pandemic, racial unrest, economic challenges, and trauma,
    especially for those who have been so disproportionately
    impacted. If we want people to engage in their recovery, build
    resilience, and flourish, we need to create crisis response and
    systems that look like other health crisis response without
    police as default first responders.
        Recent reports such as The Group for the Advancement of
    Psychiatry's, ``Roadmap to the Ideal Crisis Systems,'' and the
    Front End Project's report, ``From Harm to Help: Centering Race
    Equity and Lived Experience in Crisis Response,'' provide
    blueprints that could help us get there.
        Developing the new 988 phone number for everyone to call
    specifically for these kinds of crisis situations in lieu of
    911 is a start and has created momentum for more comprehensive
    reforms, including comprehensive police and criminal justice
    reforms. Yet without the explicit inclusion of peer support
    throughout, centered on race equity and lived experience, we
    may not yield the systems that are most effective and the ones
    that people want, even as the police have said that they want.
        This is what we need, and today I ask that we support
    legislation and robust funding to ensure equity is really
    equity in behavioral health crisis response. I ask that if we
    want to move from handcuffs to help, we must work together to
    ensure the safety of all including the police in creating
    systems that are humane, compassionate, effective, and help
    people to flourish and be safe and live to their full
    potential.
        Thank you, Chairman, for this opportunity.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Myrick appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chair Booker. I am very, very grateful for that powerful
    testimony.
        I would like to now introduce Ms. Margaret Mims--I should
    really say Sheriff Margaret Mims. I am so grateful that you
    would take time out of what I know is an intensely busy
    schedule as a sheriff. We are grateful to have you on. Would
    you please give us your testimony?

                      STATEMENT OF MARGARET MIMS,

                   SHERIFF, FRESNO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

        Sheriff Mims. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member,
    and Members of the Committee. I am honored to appear before you
    to discuss challenges faced by local governments, communities,
    and families as we work together to respond to those with
    mental illness. Although there are no simple solutions, we
    continue to develop and implement initiatives to better serve
    our communities, including increasing access to mental health
    treatment, diverting individuals with mental health conditions
    away from the criminal justice system, and working with mental
    health professionals on training programs to address those with
    mental health needs.
        Increasing numbers of people with mental illnesses are
    coming into contact with the criminal justice system. Many
    times, as first responders, we do not know that a call for
    service may involve someone with mental illness until we
    arrive. These calls can be very dynamic and, in some cases,
    dangerous. In Fresno County we have had two deputy sheriffs
    killed in the line of duty by mentally unstable individuals who
    had armed themselves. These calls for service often are
    repeated as we often respond to the same location or the same
    individual. All law enforcement agencies in my county book
    those they arrest into the Fresno County jail. We have three
    correctional facilities, and our average daily population for
    March was 2,620 inmates. Of that population, 97 percent are in
    custody for felony charges; only 3 percent are misdemeaners.
    For all intents and purposes, we are an all-felony jail. To put
    this into perspective, this high number of felony cases exists
    after California passed an initiative in 2014 reducing many
    felony drug crimes to misdemeanors.
        In addition to responding to calls, we are working
    tirelessly to provide treatment to those inside our
    correctional facilities. In March of this year, 41 percent of
    those in our facilities received psychotropic medication for a
    mental health disorder. Recently, our inmate health care
    services received accreditation from the National Commission on
    Correctional Health Care.
        As we evaluated our system, we learned that many
    individuals were not receiving care when they were not in
    custody. No one should have to be in jail to receive mental
    health services. The sheriff's office worked with our
    Department of Behavioral Health to form a strategy to improve
    the continuum of care when individuals leave our facilities.
    Rather than release these individuals out the door, we
    transport them to a safe location. It should be noted many of
    these individuals are homeless, so they are taken to a shelter
    at one of our map points that I will discuss in a moment. These
    efforts have resulted in strengthening our partnerships, a
    safer jail release plan, and in the long term the goal is to
    reduce recidivism.
        Moreover, most law enforcement leaders I talk to agree that
    incidents involving mental health crises require more than just
    a law enforcement response. However, the lines are rarely
    bright, and in many cases law enforcement response is required
    to help save lives. Our law enforcement agencies worked with
    our Behavioral Health Department who provided us with crisis
    intervention training, which included de-escalation techniques.
    We have established a crisis intervention team comprised of
    mental health professionals and emergency medical services to
    respond with law enforcement so that both safety and
    professional services can be available during interactions with
    individuals in need of care.
        We have also activated a Sequential Intercept Mapping
    initiative. This is a cross-system approach that identifies
    locations where law enforcement most often comes into contact
    with those with mental illness. We use the data from this
    initiative to establish a system that bridges criminal justice
    and mental health services and minimizes criminal justice
    involvement for persons with mental illness. Our action plan
    includes creating a county-wide crisis intervention team,
    increasing treatment of co-occurring disorders, and creating a
    sobriety center. We are also focusing on discharge and reentry
    planning to reduce recidivism in addition to developing
    diversion tools.
        We want to continue to expand these efforts, but enhanced
    response to mental health crises will require significant
    increases in training and personnel. Federal support for this
    would be helpful, as long as it does not displace core law
    enforcement support programs.
        We should be clear that replacing law enforcement--or
    defunding the police--would result in more harm to the citizens
    that we serve. ``De-policing'' has the same effect. The rule of
    law is a fundamental principle that must be respected. When
    laws are broken, our citizens expect an effective response--
    especially when their lives and their homes are threatened.
        I began my statements this morning by saying solutions need
    cooperative relationships. A multidisciplinary approach is
    needed that includes all stakeholders, mental health
    professionals, public safety and community-based organizations.
    I can assure you, Senators, that law enforcement professionals
    across the Nation want to be a part of the solution and at your
    service to provide any additional input you may need as policy
    is developed.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Sheriff Mims appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chair Booker. Sheriff, thank you. I am aware of the
    enormity and responsibility of your job, so I am grateful for
    you taking time to share your testimony and remaining for
    questions as well.
        I would now like to bring on someone who has been invoked
    numerous times. We have heard CAHOOTS mentioned by previous
    witnesses and others, so I am very excited to hear from Ms.
    Ebony Morgan. Would you please share your testimony with us.

                     STATEMENT OF EBONY C. MORGAN,

                OUTREACH MANAGER AND CRISIS INTERVENTION

                SPECIALIST, CAHOOTS CRISIS INTERVENTION,

                             EUGENE, OREGON

        Ms. Morgan. Good morning, Chairman Booker, Ranking Member
    Cotton, and Members of the U.S. Senate Committee on the
    Judiciary. I was asked to come before you today to discuss my
    experience providing mobile crisis intervention services with
    the CAHOOTS program of Eugene and Springfield, Oregon.
        My name is Ebony Morgan. I am a registered nurse, and I
    work as the program coordinator of CAHOOTS. CAHOOTS is a mobile
    crisis response team. We respond in unarmed pairs of a crisis
    worker and a medical professional to calls for service through
    police dispatchers via police radios. We coordinate with the
    police departments, our community partners, to take on the
    appropriate calls and meet community members where they are at.
    I am inspired to do this work in very personal ways.
        My grandmother, Carolyn, was an extraordinarily kind human
    being who lived with severe and persistent mental illness. She
    thrived until her passing under the care of my mother, also a
    nurse. Growing up watching my mom care for her so diligently
    taught me that people experiencing a mental health crisis are
    not to be feared, rejected, judged, or punished. They are to be
    cared for. Someone in a crisis needs de-escalation, respect,
    safety, and support. As a society, we often fail to deliver
    that to the most vulnerable populations.
        My father, Charles Morgan, did not get a chance to
    participate in raising me. He died during an encounter with the
    police when he was just 25, a young Black man. My family was
    devastated. I was 5, and my sister had not yet experienced a
    birthday.
        When I graduated from nursing school, I declined an offer
    to work at our local hospital and double my income. I chose to
    remain with CAHOOTS, where we are underfunded, because this
    work matters. As others have also noted today, behavioral
    health services should not have to be limited by a lack of
    funding in their efforts to support the community in a way that
    is proven to be safe and effective.
        Mobile crisis responses are worth every effort of
    implementation. For more than three decades, CAHOOTS has
    utilized unarmed de-escalation to meet the needs of the
    community. This frees up local police officers to handle the
    calls that they are trained to respond to and matches the needs
    of the community with the appropriate response. If we arrive on
    a call and find that a law enforcement presence is necessary,
    we can request them via police radio and work together to come
    to an outcome.
        We can respond independently for welfare checks, suicide
    prevention, mediation, crisis counseling, substance abuse, and
    so much more. In 2019, CAHOOTS had some level of involvement in
    17 to 20 percent of the total incoming public safety calls for
    service. No employee has ever lost their life or been seriously
    injured on the job despite never carrying a weapon, and no
    clients have died as a result of us showing up to help.
        CAHOOTS crisis responders are trained to overcome our own
    fight-or-flight response. When a scene is escalated, we remain
    cognizant of safety, show the client that we are there to help,
    and skillfully de-escalate the situation. In order to de-
    escalate a client, they must be able to identify that we are
    not a threat to them, so it helps significantly that we are
    not.
        The honed ability to intervene calmly without giving in to
    reactivity or impulsivity is imperative. Being unarmed allows
    us to default to our client-centered training because it is our
    only way forward. Does the client need to talk? Do they need to
    go to the hospital? Do they need time to sober at the sobering
    center? Helping begins when you stop seeing the client as a
    threat and start evaluating what feels threatening to the
    client. Cultural competency is imperative to trauma-informed
    care. Build in anti-racist practices from the start to learn
    from and avoid perpetuating systemic racism.
        Mobile crisis teams can also connect a client to existing
    community resources, but are not a replacement for them. These
    can include a 24/7 walk-in crisis center and phone line, low-
    barrier shelters, permanent supported housing, sobering and
    detox centers. Each area must be empowered to identify its
    needs and fund those programs.
        As the Nation is recognizing that mental health crises are
    best responded to by trained mental health professionals, I am
    extremely hopeful that together we can find a way to provide
    humans with the appropriate resources for every situation
    instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to public safety that
    overburdens a group of people that did not necessarily get
    specifically trained for these encounters. One size fits all
    never fits all.
        CAHOOTS is one longstanding example of the role that mobile
    crisis response can play in a community. We operate as an
    addition to existing structures and, thus, do not replace or
    change the current public safety systems. Mobile crisis
    response, however, is a necessary and logical service to
    provide to communities.
        Thank you for making time for me today.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Morgan appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chair Booker. We are really grateful for that testimony and
    looking forward to the questions that will come.
        I now have the honor to introduce Ms. Terri O'Connor, who
    is--truly has an extraordinary American family: her son as a
    law enforcement professional and her late husband as well. We,
    as Senator Cotton said, give you our deepest condolences. Your
    family is a family of heroes, and we are very much looking
    forward to hearing your testimony.

                  STATEMENT OF TERRI O'CONNOR, WIFE OF

               THE LATE SGT. JAMES O'CONNOR, PHILADELPHIA

        Ms. O'Connor. As you heard from my short bio, my husband,
    Jim, was a Philadelphia police officer. Jim was a corporal in
    SWAT who was shot and killed in the line of duty on March 13,
    2020. Jim's death will never seem real. He served the police
    department for 23 years. His father was also a police officer,
    serving for over 40 years. Our son and daughter-in-law are both
    currently Philadelphia police officers. Our police family
    extends to numerous other family members, too. This is the one
    job we all know too well.
        I, myself, started out as a police dispatcher. I had
    firsthand experience of hectic situations and numerous
    emergencies. My job was to keep a cool voice and calmness to
    whatever situation needed to be dealt with. Our goal was to
    have every officer go home at the end of each shift.
        Defunding the police is dangerous. Look at what has
    happened in cities like Seattle and Portland and in so many
    large cities across the country. Murders are up, and there is a
    sense, especially among criminals, that there is no law and
    order on the streets.
        The mayor and city council have accepted zero
    accountability. This brings me to Philadelphia, where we had
    one of our highest murder rates in decades last year. Five
    hundred murders were committed in 2020, and more than 2,400
    shootings, including 225 women and 195 children. This year, we
    are already on pace for an even higher murder rate. Four months
    into the year, and we have over 145 murders, 440 shootings, and
    55 of those shooting victims were children.
        Philadelphia is a prime example of what happens when police
    are demoralized and feel the pressure of a no-consequences DA
    like Larry Krasner along with the narrative that often goes
    along with the defund the police rhetoric that all cops are
    bad. My son has told me that while locking criminals up, they
    laugh and say that they will be out of jail in a day or two.
    The criminals know there are no real consequences here in
    Philadelphia.
        My husband's four murderers had rap sheets that could go on
    for days, including multiple violations of probation, drug
    charges, and gun charges. They all had reduced bail and cases
    dropped. The man who pulled the actual trigger has five murders
    under him, including my husband. Those were only the ones they
    have learned about so far.
        One of the other males in the room was wanted for two prior
    murders. The other males both had previous gun charges. They
    were holed up in a tiny, rented, one-bedroom apartment, with
    nine guns lined up and multiple drugs throughout the room. Who
    do you think should be responsible for going into the room and
    responding to incidents involving hardened criminals like this?
    Mental health workers? Maybe a negotiator? This is the job my
    husband and his coworkers signed up for. There are split-second
    decisions that needed to be made.
        Nobody hates a bad cop more than a good cop, but the
    movement to defund the police is now about demonizing every
    officer and taking our country into anarchy by abolishing the
    police altogether. Every officer is given at least 9 months of
    training before graduating the academy. They then have
    continued yearly training. SWAT officers alone have an extra 3
    months of training before they can serve warrants, handle a
    barricaded situation, et cetera.
        The morning of March 13th, they used some of their training
    and used restraint, when fired upon, to return fire, but stop
    and negotiate through a closed door. The criminals asked them
    to stop shooting, and the police responded for them to do the
    same. Four other males could have been killed that day. The
    police used their training to not make the situation even
    worse. All our officers could use high-risk training. They
    sometimes have a split second to make a decision.
        During--Defunding the police reduces funding for vitally
    important training and ongoing professional development that
    needs to occur to address bad policing tactics. Police
    brutality usually occurs when overly aggressive policing
    tactics are implemented in a dramatic fashion or with evil
    intent. To reduce this type of violence, we should reevaluate
    policing tactics and make sure our police are trained in the
    most effective de-escalation skills and techniques possible.
    Good policing requires a commitment to robust training that
    must be ongoing. This requires funding.
        A recent shooting in Philadelphia reflects the continued
    need for money and training. Walter Wallace was a knife-
    wielding, mentally ill man who was shot when he aggressively
    approached police. Although I do not believe there was enough
    time for a mental health worker to be called in on this type of
    job, if a taser was used, he could have been subdued until he
    was taken to the proper facility. The officers were not
    equipped with tasers. More than half of Philadelphia officers
    do not carry the recommended tasers. Funding is an issue.
        There are many reforms that we can debate; however,
    defunding the police is not one of them. To think that
    criminals are victims of society and the system is totally
    absurd. There needs to be a respect level for our police
    officers. We need stricter penalties. We hear too many times
    that a criminal has a lengthy list or prior arrests, but is out
    of jail because of reduced bail or convictions overturned and
    thrown out of jail. Our DA and others need to be held
    accountable for letting these people out of jail.
        I know personally that Jim's murderers should have been
    locked up. If they had been kept in jail, where they deserved
    to be, I would not be spending today, April 22d, my 26th
    wedding anniversary, testifying on his behalf at this
    congressional hearing. Jim should be here. His life mattered.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. O'Connor appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chair Booker. Ms. O'Connor, that testimony could not have
    been easy. Thank you for sharing your pain and your purpose,
    and we honor your husband, his heroism, and his service.
        Ms. O'Connor. Thank you.
        Chair Booker. I would now like to bring up a Jersey boy and
    someone who I have a tremendous amount of respect for, again,
    the executive director of the Technical Assistance
    Collaborative, Mr. Kevin Martone.

                      STATEMENT OF KEVIN MARTONE,

                EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

                  COLLABORATIVE, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

        Mr. Martone. Thank you, Senator, Ranking Member Cotton. My
    name is Kevin Martone, and I will be speaking to you regarding
    one aspect of police reform: the overutilization of law
    enforcement to manage mental health emergencies.
        I have spent nearly 30 years working in the public mental
    health system as a provider of direct services, as commissioner
    for the mental health system in New Jersey, and on various
    national boards and committees. I am also part of a racially
    diverse family and a family member committed to helping a loved
    one define her life beyond mental illness and navigate the
    racism that she experiences in her daily life.
        In many parts of the United States, 911 is the default
    mental health crisis line, law enforcement is the default
    mental health emergency response, and local jails are the
    default treatment provider. We have criminalized a public
    health issue and delegated responsibility to law enforcement
    and the criminal justice system.
        There are approximately 240 million calls made to 911 in
    the United States each year. Estimates are that behavioral
    health emergencies constitute between 5 to 15 percent, or
    somewhere between 12 million and 36 million of the calls to the
    911 system. Many of these are classified by local dispatchers
    as ``wellness checks,'' ``disturbances,'' ``intoxicated
    persons,'' or ``mental crises'' and do not always require
    police presence. It is estimated that 80 percent of mental
    health calls to 911 are resolved without the need for police
    involvement when diverted to a crisis line. However, law
    enforcement are often sent.
        While a police response may be justified, especially if a
    weapon is involved, we know that it can also create
    substantially adverse outcomes for communities of color and
    individuals with behavioral health disorders and other
    disabilities.
        According to the International Association of Chiefs of
    Police, ``the mere presence of a law enforcement vehicle, an
    officer in uniform, and/or a weapon . . . has the potential to
    escalate a situation'' when a person is in crisis. All too
    often, these calls for service result in unnecessary
    fatalities. People with serious mental health disorders are 16
    times more likely than the general public to be killed during a
    police encounter. Today, in an era when deadly violence--police
    violence is top of mind, one in four fatalities by police
    involve people experiencing a mental health emergency.
        Half of all people killed by police are people of color,
    and when combined with mental illness, the difference is nearly
    tenfold.
        The problem is more complex than we have time for today,
    and I will highlight a few of the factors that have resulted in
    this. Generally, a series of cascading issues over the past
    several decades has resulted in two driving factors.
        One, a fragmented, underfunded, undervalued, and
    inaccessible mental health system. This is compounded by poor
    health insurance coverage, limited funding for services at the
    Federal, State, and local level, mental health workforce
    shortages, and geographic challenges and transportation issues
    that impact services access, especially in rural areas. This
    has been exacerbated during COVID by increasing demand and
    reduced provider capacity.
        Two, mental health and other systems that do not
    sufficiently address social determinants of health, such as
    racism, poverty, and access to affordable housing, employment,
    and education. People with mental illness, especially those in
    communities of color, are disproportionately poor, homeless,
    and unemployed. All of these are correlated with worse outcomes
    for people with mental illness.
        The result is a de facto national policy that it is
    acceptable for law enforcement to manage mental health
    emergencies. Most law enforcement officials that I have spoken
    with would prefer to see people with mental illness served in
    the mental health system. People with mental illness, their
    families, and providers agree. The events that we have
    witnessed in the past year alone--the public health and
    economic impact of COVID, racial and social unrest, and deadly
    police encounters for Black and brown people with mental
    illness--have elevated awareness of the need to treat mental
    health as the public health issue that it is.
        The good news is that there is activity. Recent
    congressional action has resulted in additional block grant
    funding for mental health and crisis services, a new Medicaid
    benefit for mobile crisis services, and funding that can
    support additional workforce capacity. We have seen important,
    bipartisan legislation passed recently, including the Crisis
    Stabilization and Community Reentry Act and the National
    Suicide Hotline Designation Act that establishes a new 988
    suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline as an
    alternative to 911.
        Solutions exist. In recent years, several communities have
    established mental health-led or--involved emergency programs,
    such as CAHOOTS in Oregon and RIGHT Care in Texas. Our system
    response efforts need to push further upstream to prevent
    crises from occurring to begin with. Access to evidence-based
    services like supportive housing, assertive community
    treatment, specialized peer support, employment supports,
    children's systems of care, and other approaches exist to serve
    adults and children in the community, but do not have the
    capacity and workforce to meet demand in many areas of the
    country.
        In closing, to the extent that law enforcement will likely
    continue to have some role for the foreseeable future in
    responding to mental health emergencies, at least in situations
    when public safety is a concern, law enforcement must own
    reforms for how it responds to people with mental illness,
    especially those who are Black--Black and brown. This work
    should be informed by people who experience mental illness,
    racial equity and justice groups, and other key stakeholders.
    If we are to reduce law enforcement response to mental health
    emergencies, we must commit to addressing mental health reform
    and build the infrastructure needed to create an accessible
    mental health system.
        Just a note. There are 17,000 police departments in this
    country--that is a lot--and an underfunded mental health
    system. If we are to do this one by one, we are never going to
    get there. We really need a national strategy that funds
    treatment and services and includes intentional multi-system
    efforts that include planning and training and design and data
    collection and research if we are really going to collectively
    address this issue. One by one is not going to get us there.
    There needs to be a national strategy.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Martone appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chair Booker. Mr. Martone, that was incredibly valuable,
    and I love the point you made about a lot of our solutions
    should not be about just simply responding to crisis but
    preventing those crises from happening in the first place.
    There is a lot of wisdom in that and that last point you made
    about a larger system to deal with this. Unfortunately, the
    focus of this hearing today is: What should we be doing in
    terms of the first response? I do not want to let that
    important part of your to be lost on Congress about getting a
    larger national strategy for mental health awareness. It is
    fractured. There are so many gaps that swallow up so many folks
    that then perpetuate the crises that we are seeing. I think
    that that was worth highlighting.
        We are at a point where everybody's testimony is really
    important for the record and for the strategies I think
    Congress is going to do in a bipartisan way, the Senate. I do
    not know if my friend Senator Blumenthal would like to ask some
    questions first. I will yield to him.
        Senator Blumenthal. I really appreciate this opportunity,
    Mr. Chairman, and I just want to say how important I think this
    hearing is.
        My thanks to Chairman Booker for bringing us together on
    this critically important topic. I served as United States
    attorney in Connecticut for 4-1/2 years and then as attorney
    general in our State for 20 years. I have worked very
    extensively with law enforcement, and police interactions with
    people who may have disabilities or mental illness or autism
    ought to tremendously concern us. I am sure many of my
    colleagues have said, as I did, that Tuesday's guilty verdict
    in the Chauvin trial provides necessary accountability for the
    murder of George Floyd last May. It is not true justice, not
    for George Floyd, not for any other Black or brown American
    killed by law enforcement in this country. No single verdict in
    a single case can eliminate the generations of racial
    injustice, inequality, and inequity faced by Black and brown
    Americans in policing and across many other aspects of society.
    There is so much work to do, and Senator Booker has been at the
    forefront nationally, but also in the Senate among us,
    reminding us of our obligations to commit ourselves to true
    justice, equality, and equity. There is a need for real action,
    real reform, and real change, and I am very proud to work with
    him on legislation that can achieve that change.
        We find ourselves in a moment of reckoning. While Derek
    Chauvin may have been held accountable for violating his sworn
    oath to protect and serve, at least three more Black and brown
    Americans were killed by law enforcement in high-profile
    incidents just in the last month: Adam Toledo, Daunte Wright,
    and 20 minutes before the Chauvin verdict was announced on
    Tuesday, Ma'Khia Bryant. Something must change, and we in the
    United States can make it so.
        Let me tell you one reason why I am committed to this most
    important mission. Last October, one of my constituents from
    East Hartford, Maureen Sorensen, reached out to my office to
    share her concerns about her son, Curtis. See, Curtis is 13
    years old. He is African American. He is also a person with
    autism and intellectual disability. Maureen is worried about
    what would happen if law enforcement were ever to interact with
    her son. She wrote to me recently, ``From the outside, my child
    appears to look neurotypical,'' but ``there is a delay in
    processing information, which scares me that an officer will
    not take the time to understand. Others, without knowing the
    situation, may see this as being defiant. I do not want him nor
    any child or adult to be traumatized or lose their life because
    law enforcement did not take the time to know how to approach
    the situation.''
        Maureen is an incredible mom. She has a task that is
    unimaginable for many of us. I have four children. Being a
    parent is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, and I think
    it is the most serious task that I or any parent face in life.
    Maureen is doing her very best to teach Curtis about law
    enforcement, how to react if he is ever approached by police,
    or even if he is just asked a question. Quite frankly, she has
    every right and reason to be concerned. She is doing everything
    in her power to prepare Curtis for what may be an inevitable
    encounter with police.
        Maureen should not have to prepare Curtis. She should not
    have to prepare him differently than any other parent would
    prepare a child. Law enforcement needs to know how to deal with
    these kinds of situations, how to respond to people like Curtis
    with autism or other behavioral health diagnoses, how to bring
    in community mental health services and experts when a police
    response is necessary but also capable of becoming violent, not
    only for Curtis but for others who may present with
    disabilities, difficulties, or illness.
        I want to ask a question, and I really appreciate the
    Chairman indulging me with this time. Major Bartness, I
    understand that you have been with the Baltimore police for 24
    years. What should law enforcement in East Hartford and around
    the country be doing to ensure that Curtis and people like him
    are treated appropriately and safely by the police?
        Major Bartness. Thank you for your question, Senator. I
    think the kind of training that we are currently developing and
    delivering in the Baltimore Police Department is moving in the
    right direction. We have training for CIT officers, which
    comprised about 30 percent of our patrol ranks, and that
    training expressly deals with the kinds of topics you
    recommended: identifying individuals with autism and how to
    interact with them. We work with a host of behavioral health
    organizations in creating our training and delivering it, so it
    is not just law enforcement. We are representing in the
    classroom what we want to see practiced in the field. We work
    with the National Alliance on Mental Illness. We work with
    Behavioral Health System Baltimore. We work with Baltimore
    Crisis Response Inc.; the Arc, which is an organization that
    works with individuals with intellectual and developmental
    disabilities; Disability Rights Maryland. These kinds of
    partnerships are absolutely essential to ensuring that our
    officers are prepared to meet the challenges that they are
    going to have to face on the streets to de-escalate incidents
    and then make referrals to the appropriate services.
        Senator Blumenthal. Thank you, Major Bartness, and thank
    you, Mr. Chairman. This hearing is so valuable, and I hope that
    we can build on it in the Judiciary Committee going forward,
    because it is a key part of what we need to do to reform and
    improve policing in America. Thanks.
        Chair Booker. Thank you, Senator.
        I would like to now call on Senator Whitehouse, who is
    remote.
        Senator Whitehouse. Thank you very much, Chairman Booker.
    It is good to be with all of you. I appreciate the testimony of
    everyone.
        Ms. O'Connor, my daughter lives in Philadelphia, so I am
    very glad that your husband's family and your family have been
    protecting that community through multiple generations, and I
    just wanted to express my appreciation for their service. It is
    not at all, as you know, uncommon for police work to be passed
    on from father to son, and now daughter, and be a very
    important part of a family's traditions, and I am grateful that
    you shared your experience with us today.
        Senator Cornyn and I have been working for some time on a
    bill to improve the coordination between law enforcement and
    behavioral health, mental health, addiction, and recovery. Both
    of our States have similar situations, although they are
    different in many, many, many ways.
        One of John's sheriffs came to him and said, ``You know,
    John, I am providing more mental health services than I am
    providing law enforcement services, and that is not what we are
    trained for.'' My police chiefs in Rhode Island tell me the
    same thing. I think the problem reaches across a whole variety
    of areas.
        First of all, at the point of engagement with an
    individual, to have the crisis intervention teams and to have
    the crisis intervention centers available so that there can be
    a timely and appropriate response to support the police
    response is essential.
        Mr. Martone talked about how jails are too often the
    default collection point for individuals having a behavioral or
    mental health crisis or an addiction issue. We see that in
    Rhode Island as well. We also see our emergency rooms as
    another place where people are brought, and for emergency room
    doctors trying to deal with regular medical emergencies, this
    is not appropriate. They need to be in behavioral health
    treatment, and quickly. The reason that the jails and the
    emergency rooms are playing that role, in Rhode Island anyway,
    is not because people are misdirected about where folks should
    go. It is because there are not the behavioral and mental
    health services and resources to meet the need.
        We need to not only do a lot of crisis intervention support
    and develop new models for supporting police departments with
    behavioral health crisis intervention, but we need to make it a
    lot more robust in terms of the resources for those people.
        Someone in the nonpolice-involved mental health crisis who
    goes to the emergency room in many places, including in
    Providence, Rhode Island, can spend days waiting in the
    emergency room for services or a room to become available. The
    whole question of how much we invest in the necessary
    infrastructure is a really vital part of this conversation.
        I would like to add that I was delighted to hear Senator
    Cornyn mention mental health courts, because we are working our
    district court chief judge, Judge LaFazia, who was instrumental
    in supporting the growth of our veterans court, which stood on
    the record that the superior court had in a program I started
    when I was attorney general of having a drug court, and I think
    the mental health court is a really good idea, but as we look
    around for how do you resource that, there are not a lot of
    resources.
        Taking the idea of mental health courts to stand on drug
    courts' and veteran courts' experience I think is another
    aspect that we have to work on.
        I wanted to invite all colleagues to join Senator Cornyn
    and I in working on that measure. We have worked together
    successfully before on the reentry measures that were part of
    the sentencing reform bill, and we hope very much to get a
    significant piece of legislation put together.
        What I would ask the witnesses to do is to share with us
    what from your experience you think are the best practical
    models that you have seen, whether in your own State and your
    own jurisdiction or whether, because this is your field of
    inquiry, you are aware of really good examples that are taking
    place in other States and other jurisdictions around the
    country. I will ask that as a question for the record, if you
    all do not mind. There will be a week or so after the close of
    the hearing when Chairman Booker will allow written answers to
    questions for the record. If you do not mind writing down a
    brief summary of what you think are the best examples of
    behavioral health coordination with law enforcement or the best
    way for engaging with this population and successfully dealing
    with de-escalation, we would love to know, because the broader
    the support that we can get from States where there are really
    good examples, the broader the base for legislation grows in
    the Senate, and the more likely we can get something big done.
        I will close with that real gratitude to all of the
    witnesses, each of whom made a very special contribution to our
    understanding and to this hearing, and to the extent you would
    not mind supplementing that with a list of what you think best
    practices are out there, I think we would be very grateful as
    we pull this legislation together.
        Senator Whitehouse. Chairman Booker, thank you for this
    terrific hearing, and I will yield back whatever time I have
    remaining.
        Chair Booker. Senator Whitehouse, I am grateful for your
    comments and the work you are doing with Senator Cornyn. I
    think there will be a lot of rich contributions from the
    witnesses in hopes that we can work with you to make that bill
    something that goes a long way into covering what a lot of our
    witnesses are saying is urgently needed. We appreciate Senator
    Whitehouse's leadership.
        I want to jump in. If there are no other Democrats on line,
    then I will just jump in myself. I want to just first jump to
    Ms. Morgan. There was a little bit of a shadow cast on, I
    think, the work that CAHOOTS does in some of the testimony, and
    I am wondering, could you just give us a characterization how
    many incidents does CAHOOTS respond to each year? In how many
    of them do responders call police for backup? Can you
    characterize those moments when--I think it was represented by
    another witness that one out of every 60 or so times, you guys
    call for backup. Could you give some light on that data point
    and also talk to us a little bit about what happens when they
    call for police?
        Ms. Morgan. Absolutely. The total amount of calls we were
    dispatched to in 2019, which is our most recent data, wound up
    to be about 17 percent of the calls, or just over 17,000--
    17,700. On those calls, we requested police backup about 1.5
    percent of the time. It was 311 out of that 17,700. Of those
    calls that we did call for backup, the 311, we called for Code
    3 cover, which is lights and sirens, about 5 percent of the
    time. It is very----
        Chair Booker. Could you be more explicit? Code 3 coverage,
    just explain what that means.
        Ms. Morgan. Code 3 coverage means that in that exact moment
    we believe there is an imminent threat to someone--ourselves,
    the clients, a bystander--that we are going to need a police
    response for immediately. Part of what makes this program work
    is that we have that access. By carrying the police radios, if
    a situation either escalates or is a situation that came to us
    but is appropriate for a law enforcement response, we can
    request them, and they can come quickly.
        What might have us determine that we need a law enforcement
    response is typically going to be safety related. It is going
    to be--we are a consent-based program because we do not have
    the authority of law enforcement to take anybody's rights away,
    so people can choose to engage with us or not. If they choose
    not to but are not behaving in a safe way, we cannot just let
    them be unsafe, and that is where we might end up bringing in
    law enforcement for that reason.
        Chair Booker. It is safe to say it is a fraction of the
    time, 1.7 percent you call for police, and a fraction of that
    is because of imminent harm or danger to other people?
        Ms. Morgan. Correct.
        Chair Booker. Got it. Can I--I want to move on from you in
    the limited time that I have.
        Mr. Martone, again, I just find your perspective on this so
    valuable about the larger crisis in America that we are not
    doing--do not have a mental health care system that in any way
    meets the challenges we have. It is a crisis of empathy. It's a
    crisis of compassion. It's a poverty, really, of our ability to
    love one another in a substantive way and protect ourselves.
    Clearly, our lack of doing it is not just a harm to the person
    struggling with mental health. It is a harm to all of us. It is
    a self-inflicted wound.
        Can I just ask you, I am just trying to figure out ways to
    build upon your testimony in terms of really good guidance
    about what we should be doing. When you work with States and
    local governments, what resources are there that they most
    frequently request? What are these professionals that are
    supposed to keep us safe saying to you that they most need?
        Mr. Martone. Thank you, Senator, for the question. You
    know, in the crisis space--and I think you heard this from the
    CAHOOTS program--when calls are diverted to crisis centers, 80
    or 90 percent of those calls can be diverted on the phone from
    the start. Then those that cannot be diverted often then go to
    a mobile response program like CAHOOTS or many different States
    have different types of mobile response programs. Then when
    mobile response programs engage a person, they then can divert
    a person from more restrictive settings like law enforcement or
    emergency departments. They can divert people to linkages with
    outpatient services and things like that.
        What we hear in the crisis space is, yes, we may have a
    program in Eugene or we may have a program in, you know, some
    State, there is one in a county for a million people, you know?
    The problem is there is not enough capacity, right? When we
    think about the capacity for call centers--you know, we have
    the new 988 National hotline that is going to be stood up. We
    need to make sure that there is enough capacity in those
    systems to sufficiently handle calls that may be--instead of
    going to 911, go to 988, or may be triaged from 911 to 988, and
    we need enough resources so that we can stand up sufficient
    mobile capacity so that, you know, police can respond right
    away. Mobile crisis teams, if they cannot respond in a very
    short period of time, it is going to just default again to the
    police response. Mobile response programs need to have that
    capacity.
        Then there needs to be sort of that next step beyond
    mobile, right? There needs to be crisis stabilization programs
    or drop-offs or a mental health program that can receive that
    crisis and then begin to serve that person, all that trying to
    divert a person back upstream and away from the law enforcement
    system.
        Chair Booker. I am going to give you--just cogent, quickly
    as you can, because you are going to be asked this in writing
    by Senator Whitehouse. You are now the better-looking, more-
    haired Senator from New Jersey. Three things that you would
    want to get into the bill, give it to me real quick. Three
    things.
        Mr. Martone. I think we need additional Federal Medicaid
    dollars to match State dollars so that we can provide enhanced
    capacity to provide these services out there. There is some of
    that. I think we need more linkages to upstream services. Some
    of that is State funding, but a lot of it, again, is Medicaid
    matching dollars. Some of it also, frankly, is rapid rehousing,
    access to housing. Right? Many of these folks are homeless. We
    need rapid linkages to housing situations for folks as well
    because so much of this is tied to that.
        Chair Booker. That is my experience as well. That is
    really, really insightful.
        I would like to jump to Major Bartness, and, again, thank
    you for your incredible service and leadership. Building on
    some of the things we have asked before with CAHOOTS, tell me
    this: Does responding to calls involving people in crisis or
    with mental illness divert law enforcement resources? In other
    words, is this crisis a drain on your ability to focus your
    Department on other areas where you could help better keep
    people safe?
        Major Bartnessr. Thank you for the question, Senator. It
    absolutely is. As I indicated in my testimony and Mr. Martone I
    believe also indicated, a very significant percentage of 911
    calls coming into law enforcement, somewhere around 10 percent,
    is substantial, and that is time spent away from addressing
    more traditional matters related to public disorder, crime, and
    safety. These kinds of calls, to be handled properly, are not
    disposed of quickly. Police officers--and we are very
    intentional about this in educating our officers to spend time
    with consumers on these calls, because we do not want to have
    to continually come back. We want to do our very best to link
    them through to community-based services, and so we connect
    them with the crisis hotline at our crisis response center, and
    we really endeavor to get these folks the treatment that they
    need. The reality is, as Mr. Martone has stated, the services
    are not there to meet the demands of the population.
        Chair Booker. I really appreciate that.
        I want to jump to Ms. Myrick really quick. One thing we
    have not talked too much about is peer support, peer to peer,
    and how powerful that could be. Could you just give me really
    quickly why do you think peer support is so important in
    behavioral health care and generally what function does it
    serve?
        Ms. Myrick. Sure. Thank you for the question. Peer support
    is essential, is all I can say. The first time I met a peer who
    looked like me, it was the first time I thought, okay, wow, I
    can really get better, somebody who had been through what I had
    been through. You know, evidence has shown that peers who have
    training, who are certified and have training can really
    support people, especially in crisis, to help identify kind of
    what is going on. They can slow things down. We have heard from
    other people giving testimony about how it is important to slow
    things down in order for people to make their needs known,
    especially when they are in crisis, and then help get connected
    to the resources that they need. Peer supporters are trained to
    do that, and they use also other evidence-based tools and
    mechanisms to do so.
        One of the things that I think is critically important are
    things like wellness and recovery action plans which could help
    people to understand what are they doing well and when are
    things starting to break down in order to prevent a crisis and
    then develop a plan for what happens if they do enter a crisis
    and post-crisis. The legal means to do that is through
    psychiatric advance directives, which peers can also help
    people do.
        I also think that peers who have families to support other
    families and other parents is also another critically important
    step so families and parents have a better kind of
    understanding of how to support their loved one pre, post, and
    during crisis. You know, having peers on mobile crisis teams,
    being able to meet people where they are, possibly support them
    in the field, having them as part of the 988 workforce response
    also is--988 is the number people can call when they need
    support, where they can take the time on the call to help with
    some of the triage and work with people immediately, is another
    way that peer supporters can be used.
        Last, we have heard people need places to go. It might be
    fine that you can get the crisis team there, but what about
    where the people go if they need someplace safe to go but may
    not need hospitalization. Peer support is totally
    underutilized, totally underfunded, and if there were more peer
    support respites where people can go and have peer support 24/7
    and get that space away from possible crisis that is
    contributing to their mental health distress is critically
    important and needs to be part of the mental health crisis
    response ecosystem.
        Chair Booker. That is excellent, and it also resonates
    somewhat the point of Mr. Martone about the power of supportive
    housing with people that are there.
        Senator Cotton, who had to attend to business on the floor
    of the U.S. Senate, is back. Just so folks know, he is going to
    give his questioning. Then we are going to go to Senator
    Padilla, and then I think we are going to end at that point and
    wrap up the hearing. I appreciate the patience of the
    witnesses, and I am honored to turn it over to my Ranking
    Member, Senator Cotton.
        Senator Cotton. Thank you, Senator Booker, and thanks to
    all the witnesses for your patience. As Senator Booker said, we
    are all at the mercy of the Senate floor schedule, but I know
    that all of our colleagues on this Subcommittee have taken a
    great interest in this subject and very much appreciate your
    appearance here.
        Ms. O'Connor, I would like to start with you. What happened
    to your husband is a tragedy, especially because it was so
    preventable. If it was not for the criminal leniency efforts in
    Philadelphia that released dangerous criminals over and over
    again, we would not have officers like your husband repeatedly
    facing the same kind of dangerous arrests.
        You mentioned in your testimony the extensive training that
    he received throughout his career, including high-risk
    training. You also come, as you testified, from a law
    enforcement family. Do you find that improving training
    available to officers helps to protect not only the officers
    but also the suspects they encounter?
        Ms. O'Connor. I think that the training is necessary. My
    time as a 911 dispatcher takes me back to the--there is just
    not enough time. When these calls come out, they need immediate
    response. I do not know how long it would take to get a mental
    health worker to show up to a situation. I feel like the police
    are always going to be the first ones to respond, and then
    maybe they can go from there and decide--you know, they can get
    a mental health worker in, but I could not get somebody to come
    out and, you know, change the lights on the corner for 2 days,
    or if we needed, you know, a tow truck to come, it could take
    hours. My concern would be how long it would take to get
    someone out there.
        The police, they need the extra training as much as
    possible, because they are probably going to be the first ones
    to deal with the situation at hand immediately, and they can
    assess from there. The response time is probably--it is not
    realistic.
        Senator Cotton. In your experience in law enforcement, and
    your husband's and your entire family's, when budgets are
    tight, and especially when budgets are cut, is training often
    the first thing that gets cut?
        Ms. O'Connor. I would say so, yes, definitely. They have
    to. It is just unfortunate that is the way things are going to
    happen. Also, right now in Philadelphia and probably across the
    country, the police officers, they are low. People are retiring
    and people are not joining the academy right now. All of it, we
    are in trouble. Our numbers are really too low because of the
    concerns of not having the support and overall defunding the
    police. They are who is going to be called first in any
    situation. If you need help, you are calling the police. They
    need to have all training possible in many different
    situations.
        Senator Cotton. Thank you, Ms. O'Connor.
        I want to turn to Sheriff Mims. You said in your testimony
    that 97 percent of the inmates in your jail are there on felony
    charges and have committed pretty serious crimes. A large
    number of those inmates were also receiving some sort of
    medication for a mental health disorder while in your jail. Is
    it fair to say then that a significant number of the serious
    criminals you encounter also have mental health issues? Would
    it put mental health workers and possibly bystanders in danger
    to have only a nonpolice response to these incidents?
        Sheriff Mims. Yes, Senator, a large number of our calls for
    service do involve those with mental health services--or mental
    health illnesses. Of course, the concern is we have some dual
    diagnosis going on. Not only do they have criminal behavior,
    they have the mental health behavior, as well as maybe a
    substance abuse issue. These are calls, for instance, that I
    testified to that are very dynamic. They unroll very fast. Law
    enforcement do come into contact very often with those that are
    mentally ill and have to take enforcement action because of the
    crimes that they committed.
        For example, the two deputies that we lost in the line of
    duty at the hands of an armed mentally ill person, one was a
    vehicle stop where that person came right out of the vehicle
    and shot the deputy as he was approaching the car. The other
    one was a burglary in progress. We do not know that the person
    that is involved in this also has a mental illness. They are
    very dynamic calls. They unfold very quickly. They are very
    dynamic. We are coming into contact with people who have been
    in criminal activity that are also mentally ill more and more.
        Senator Cotton. Thank you.
        As my time is concluding, I would like to return to Ms.
    O'Connor and just express again my deepest condolences and
    sympathy for your loss as well as my gratitude for your
    testimony today. I know that this must have been a hard day to
    tell your story, but may the memory of your husband and your
    loving marriage always be a blessing to you and to those who
    loved him. Thank you.
        Ms. O'Connor. Thank you.
        Chair Booker. Thank you, Senator Cotton.
        I would like to turn to Senator Padilla, who is on
    remotely.
        Senator Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        My first question is for Ms. Myrick, and I want to begin by
    just thanking you for openly sharing your experience of living
    with mental illness. You know, it is only by talking about it
    more that we can improve understanding and awareness of mental
    health conditions and the impact it has on people's lives, on
    families' lives, and in so doing help undo the stigma often
    associated with mental illness that keeps us talking about it
    individually, as families, and certainly when it comes to
    passing public policy and investing in better services and
    supports. I just want to acknowledge that up front, and it
    means a lot to me, and I commend you for that.
        In your testimony you did--have mentioned your personal
    experience with a police encounter. What I would like to hear
    more about is how that encounter, in turn, affected your mental
    health and your general well-being.
        Ms. Myrick. Thank you for the question, and I, you know,
    speak up and speak out, especially as an African American,
    because I could not find anybody who was talking about their
    personal story of living with a diagnosis specifically of
    schizophrenia. I have to ask permission from my father, ``Can I
    speak out?'' Because he is part of this story, too. Without his
    loving support of him and my mom, who is no longer living, and
    the rest of my family, you know, truthfully I would not be
    here.
        The impact of that first experience, I was actually wearing
    a pair of my beloved red--cherry red Doc Marten shoes, and I
    loved those shoes. It was my first pair of Doc Martens. It
    takes forever to break those suckers in. They were broken in,
    and I was wearing them on that day, and they were ripped from
    my feet as people were struggling with me trying to subdue me
    to participate in what I did not understand was happening. It
    was not, again, about my mental illness. It was about seeing
    people who looked like me in my past treated awfully and having
    bad outcomes. I did not want to be a victim. I just did not.
    That is what I was really fighting against.
        What that really led to was, number one, I never wore those
    red shoes again. It took years and years--it took about 15
    years before I ever put those shoes back on. They actually do
    not fit. I have about 20 pairs of Doc Martens, but I did not
    wear those shoes ever again. I was not willing to--I was not
    willing to accept treatment, especially when I was not at my
    best. Every hospitalization after was involuntary and did
    involve police coming to take me to the hospital, because I
    thought that is what it was like to go to a psychiatric
    hospital. I had not seen it done any other way. I did not want
    to have anything to do with that.
        You know, even talking about it, I am sorry, it is like my
    heart is super-duper racing, because it still brings up a lot
    of memories and trauma that, on top of having an illness in
    which you are trying to recover, no one should have to
    experience.
        Senator Padilla. You hit the exact right word that I was
    anticipating. It was ``traumatic.'' It was additional trauma,
    which does not help someone who is already, you know, working
    to cope with or overcome a mental health condition. There have
    got to be smarter ways to do this, and I appreciate you helping
    to make the points. You are right; in communities of color
    especially, we do not talk about this enough.
        I have a follow-up question for Major Bartness because
    there is also the flip side to this coin. As I have come to
    learn in recent years, correct me if I am wrong, but in law
    enforcement there are more sworn officers who die by suicide
    every year than lose their lives in the line of duty. Correct
    me if I am wrong. I just wanted to hear from you for a few
    minutes about the psychological toll that use of force and
    other first responder experiences has on law enforcement
    officers and suggestions and ideas on how to acknowledge that
    and build that into training and support for sworn officers.
        Major Bartness. Thank you, Senator Padilla. Secondary
    trauma in law enforcement is a very serious issue which you
    have highlighted, and it is incumbent upon police departments
    to develop very robust employee assistance programs and ensure
    that those resources, confidential, are available to law
    enforcement and their family members, because those family
    members also live with the baggage that our officers bring
    home. We very intentionally have to create a culture where we
    recognize that secondary trauma is going to occur and that
    officers need to talk about it and that there is a very well
    developed system that they know how to access in real time when
    they are struggling.
        Not every department, obviously, is doing very well with
    that. So it, too, is a responsibility, that as we assess the
    State of our profession at this moment in history, that has to
    be given attention. Thank you for your attention to it.
        Senator Padilla. Thank you. It is going to be a topic of
    ongoing conversation.
        Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Chair Booker. Senator Padilla, I am grateful.
        I am going to now adjourn the hearing. QFRs--I am sorry.
    What is that? Oh, I am sorry. Senator Ossoff, I apologize. I am
    told you are online.
        Senator Ossoff. All good. No problem, my friend. Thank you,
    Mr. Chairman, for convening this hearing, and thank you to the
    panel. I know we have votes, so I will do my best to be
    concise.
        Major Bartness, thank you for being here and thank you for
    your service. In response to an increase in mental health-
    related emergency calls during the pandemic, Brookhaven,
    Georgia, a small city, pioneered a co-responder crisis
    intervention system. The Mayor of Brookhaven, John Ernst, said
    that this has helped to de-escalate situations involving
    individuals suffering from mental illness who may be involved
    in contact with law enforcement or calls to 911. I would like,
    Major Bartness, for you to comment on how co-responder programs
    like the one in Brookhaven, Georgia, might help to de-escalate
    such interactions and ensure that neither public safety nor the
    safety and health of those suffering from mental illness is
    jeopardized when police and law enforcement and emergency
    services respond to such calls.
        Major Bartness. Thank you, Senator. I think the co-
    responder model is outstanding. We have it here in Baltimore.
    The challenge we have is that it is not large enough. It is
    operational 7 days a week but only 8 hours a day, and it is one
    team responsible for the entire city of Baltimore during that
    8-hour shift. It is a licensed clinical social worker paired
    with a highly trained CIT officer, and they respond to some of
    these most acute calls for service.
        What it does allow us to do is what Ms. O'Connor rightly
    pointed out earlier, and that is, as these calls come in with
    an officer in the field able to immediately respond, they are
    able to get there quickly, they do not have to wait an
    indeterminate amount of time. In order to do that to scale,
    there has to be more funding for these teams. They are
    fantastic. They play off each other's skills. They de-escalate,
    and then they refer to community-based services and case
    management to get these consumers who need the help.
        Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Major Bartness.
        Ms. Myrick, I would like to ask you a couple of questions
    about necessary investments in mental health services in
    Georgia and across the country. First of all, to be clear, I
    have not seen any evidence that people suffering with mental
    illness are any more likely to commit violent crime than anyone
    else in the population. In fact, according to the National
    Alliance on Mental Health, they are not, and, indeed, studies
    have shown that those suffering from mental illness are, in
    fact, much more likely to be victims of violent crime.
        We also know, at least according to some research, that
    individuals with untreated mental illness in particular who do
    come in contact with law enforcement in emergency situations
    are more likely to be killed in the encounter. I would like to
    hear from you your view on the importance of increasing our
    national investment in mental health care services and what
    kinds of social services in particular you think are neglected
    or lacking, generally speaking, across the country.
        Ms. Myrick. Sure, thank you. You know, definitely since the
    institutionalization of mental health care services and
    community-based services have never been fully funded, they are
    woefully underfunded. In order to kind of bring up, I would
    say, an ecosystem of support for people that move through the
    continuum of their health and wellness, which includes times
    when people are in crisis, we need to look at the system as a
    whole system that also interacts with other social services and
    systems such as housing, employment, physical health care,
    mental health care.
        Most people with mental health conditions, especially
    serious mental illness, want everything that anybody else
    wants. Most importantly, they want to work. Many are told, like
    myself, to go on disability which impedes sometimes your
    ability to go to work because of how the system of SSI and SSDI
    work.
        If we had to fund--like if we could fully fund a system, I
    think the system would include well-trained behavioral health
    professionals. It would include peer support and family
    support. Family support for adults with serious mental illness
    is not fully funded. It is funded for parents who are peers to
    other parents. It would include things like peer respite as
    well as family respite. We have not even talked about family
    respite. Those do not even exist, but families sometimes also
    need a respite and a place to go where they can get support 24/
    7 to help support their loved ones.
        Other things, I think, that are critically important are
    mobile crisis teams that do include a behavioral health
    professional and a peer supporter in order to be in the
    community and also community supports that are sometimes not
    even part of the system because sometimes people will not go to
    the mental health system, but they may go to their church or
    their barber shop. How do we place people there that can be
    helpful?
        The other things that people need, as Kevin Martone pointed
    out, most importantly, if you do not have a home, how can you
    participate in treatment and do that with any kind of
    consistency? Housing is critical, housing is first for people
    with both mental health and substance use disorders. I think
    there need to be better partnerships across jurisdictions,
    including criminal justice and police systems, in order for
    mental health, criminal justice, and police to work far better
    together.
        Last--oh, I had another one, and I forgot it. There are so
    many. I think that will give you your list. Thank you.
        Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Myrick.
        Major Bartness, my time is up. I am going to ask you for
    the record to respond to a more general inquiry. I have asked
    this of the FBI Director, I have asked this of nominees for
    senior positions at DOJ as well as in discussions with leaders
    in Georgia about the increase in violent crime that we have
    seen nationally over the last year, particularly during this
    COVID-19 pandemic, and its causes, how you have responded in
    Baltimore, what you assess to be the factors driving the
    increase in crime. We have seen a significant increase in the
    murder rate in Atlanta. We have seen a higher rate of violent
    crime in Columbus and in other parts of my State. I know it is
    a national dynamic, and so I will be submitting to you for the
    record, Major Bartness, an opportunity to present your analysis
    to this Committee of what is causing this increase in violent
    crime.
        Senator Ossoff. I thank you for being here. I thank all of
    our witnesses for your testimony.
        Mr. Chairman, I yield.
        Chair Booker. Thank you very much. I agree. I want to give
    a lot of gratitude to all the witnesses who have been here, who
    have shared such essentially important testimony. This is a
    crisis in our country, and this is a great hearing where we
    have talked about solutions.
        I apologize. The floor vote is expiring, so I am going to
    sprint and run, but I will remind everybody that questions for
    the record are due in 1 week. The hearing record will be open
    for 1 week for statements and letters or any other contribution
    that the incredible witnesses want to make to the constructive
    work that the U.S. Senate and especially the Judiciary
    Committee has before it.
        Thank you very much, everyone. I appreciate it, and have a
    good day.
        [Whereupon, at 12:04 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
        [Additional material submitted for the record follows.]

                                A P P E N D I X

    Miscellaneous submissions:

     Ayesha Delany-Brumsey Testimony..................................   146

     City of Charlottesville Police Department........................   210

     Contact Between Police and People with Mental Disorders..........   162

     Crime Science, Policing and public health calls for service in
        Philadelphia..................................................   191

     Defending the Police (LELDF).....................................   160

     Effectiveness of Police Crisis Intervention Training Programs....   201

     IACP Law Enforcement Policy Center...............................   151

     Madison Police Department........................................   145

     New York Post, Can't Replace Policing with Social Services That
        Don't Do What They're Supposed to by Stephen Eide.............   186

     Police, Treatment and Community (PTACC)..........................   189

     Potential for violence in arrest of persons with mental illness
        by Philip Mulvey and Michael White............................   170

     RealClear Policy, Police De-escalation and its Discontents.......   197

     USA Today, Fewer than 1 in 5 support `defund the police' movement   212

     Washtenaw County, Office of the Sheriff..........................   209

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