Oregon
Disability Rights Oregon sues Washington County alleging it fails people in mental health crises – Oregon Capital Chronicle
Washington County routinely fails to meet the health needs of people in mental health emergencies by dispatching armed police officers instead of trained behavioral health teams to help people in crises, Disability Rights Oregon said in a lawsuit filed on Monday.
That response led to violence and bloodshed, the lawsuit found, including one instance involving a man who an officer stabbed in a hospital because police who responded failed to ask a behavioral health team to help him before sending him away in an ambulance.
Disability Rights Oregon filed the lawsuit against the state’s second largest county after a year-long investigation with the ACLU of Oregon that analyzed emergency call data and the police response to people who seek help. The federal lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, alleges the county’s systemic response to people in a mental health crisis places them at a greater risk for harm and violates federal laws that require people with disabilities to receive equal access to programs and services without discrimination.
“Everyone deserves access to health care during an emergency – that includes emergency mental health services during a crisis,” Jake Cornett, executive director and CEO of Disability Rights Oregon, said in a statement. “Police are neither trained nor appropriate responders for someone who has broken their leg and calls 911 – and the same holds for someone having a mental health emergency. Your ZIP code shouldn’t determine whether armed police or mental health providers show up when you call needing life-saving mental health care.”
The lawsuit alleges the county’s system routes 911 calls for mental health assistance to police first, which means police are the primary agency that responds. The county has a contracted mental health crisis response team, but it’s unavailable at night, the lawsuit said and usually only responds after hearing from police. As a result, police in Washington County are usually the first to arrive, even when no crime is involved, the lawsuit said.
Spokespeople for Washington County didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Officers in Washington County respond to thousands of mental health calls every year. For a nearly three-year period from 2020 to 2022, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office handled about 12,000 calls, the lawsuit said. But in a two-year period, police only asked for the mobile crisis team to come on the scene for about 100 calls, the lawsuit said.
“When you’re a person in Washington County who calls because of a psychiatric crisis, you get a deputy or a cop,” Dave Boyer, managing attorney of DRO’s Mental Health Rights Project, said in an interview. “We believe that that response warrants a mental health provider without a cop. What they’re doing is they’re sending cops and mental health providers typically or just cops. And we feel like the presence of that police officer is detrimental to that person’s mental health.”
The stories of people in crisis are central to the lawsuit.
Mental health care requested, and police respond
In one account, a 27-year-old man called a suicide hotline in 2022 and was transferred to the county’s 911 dispatchers. The man was contemplating suicide for the second time in three months and specifically requested medical help – not a police response, the lawsuit alleges. Instead, the dispatcher sent five county deputies.
Deputies arranged for an ambulance to transport him to a hospital, but he didn’t receive the psychiatric assessment and stabilization services that a mobile crisis response team would have provided, the lawsuit alleges. As a result, the man was still in crisis when he arrived at the hospital, and a nurse began checking his vitals in an unsecured exam room, the lawsuit said.
A deputy followed the ambulance to the hospital, the lawsuit said, and the man walked out of the exam room, approached the officer and attempted to take his firearm, repeatedly saying: “Let me kill myself.”
In response, the deputy stabbed the man several times to keep him from grabbing his gun, and injuries to his chest, stomach and head required a nearly three-week stay in the hospital, the lawsuit said. Due to the altercation, the man was charged and tried in Washington County mental health court and he received five years of probation in connection with the incident.
“By dispatching … deputies to (his) crisis instead of qualified mental health professionals, defendants denied (him) the opportunity to be clinically assessed and stabilized at his home,” the lawsuit said. “Instead, they exacerbated his crisis and provided him with an emergency response service that is unequal to the service provided to people experiencing a physical health emergency in the county.”
The lawsuit also alleges police use unnecessary force while out on the calls. In one instance cited in the lawsuit, an officer pulled a woman to the ground who was trying to flee from police while in a mental health crisis. The officer placed his right knee on her lower back and hips and his left knee on her shoulder while another officer handcuffed the woman, the lawsuit alleged.
“Not only did she endure being thrown to the ground, arrested, and involuntarily hospitalized but she was also subjected to a highly dangerous restraint technique,” said the lawsuit, which cites police reports.
Other findings in lawsuit
The lawsuit says the county doesn’t fully fund, staff or integrate its existing mobile crisis teams – which have mental health workers rather than police – into its emergency responses.
The lawsuit also alleges the county’s system requires an armed police officer to respond to mental health calls before mobile crisis teams arrive, which can escalate the situation and traumatize the person who needs help.
This perpetuates a cycle for people: The person is not treated, making them more likely to remain homeless and use illicit drugs to ease their suffering on the streets.
“Ultimately, this lawsuit aims to correct the misconception that people experiencing mental health crises are dangerous and require a law enforcement response,” Daniel Bartz, senior counsel of the ACLU of Oregon, said in a statement. “People in crisis should receive the care that they need and deserve, rather than being treated as though they committed a crime.”
The lawsuit seeks a court order to require Washington County to improve how it responds to people with mental health disabilities and adequately fund and use its response teams, with a police response limited only to dire emergencies. If the lawsuit is successful, it will make non-police crisis response teams the primary way to help people with mental health needs, not law enforcement.
The lawsuit was filed by attorneys at Disability Rights Oregon, ACLU of Oregon, the ACLU, and Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, an international law firm headquartered in Los Angeles.
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The text came from an employee on Monday morning, as ordinary as any, and it completely surprised Corrine Coxey, owner of Salud Raw Food restaurant in Bend.
“Woody Harrelson is here, and he’s raving about your food,” the text read.
Harrelson, a “Cheers” actor and devoted vegan who ordered “rawkin’ tacos” and other items with his wife, Laura Louie, returned to the restaurant Tuesday and promised to come again. He said they were visiting family in the area. Headlines followed.
“I’m just very honored they came in and raved about it,” Coxey said. “Woody has been a vegan for 30 years and you know he’s eaten at the best places around the world so it was a real compliment.”
Coxey opened her raw food restaurant, which uses no stoves or ovens to prepare healthy, organic, plant-based dishes, in 2013. This year has been the slowest ever, she said, to the point she has often wondered whether she’d have to close. The TV and movie star’s arrival has been a “blessing” for business, she said.
“All of this publicity couldn’t have come at a better time as it’s been pretty bleak lately,” she said by text. “The local news here did a story on the 6 o’clock news tonight. We were twice as busy as we would have been today!”
She hopes he returns, too, not just for the sake of her bottom line: “He and his wife were very sweet and humble.”
— Beth Slovic is an editor on the public safety and breaking news team. Reach her at 503-221-8551 or bslovic@oregonian.com.
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Oregon
Big Ten reverses course: Oregon football has clinched a spot in Big Ten championship game after all
EUGENE — It was the clinch that appeared to be, then wasn’t, then was again.
In a reversal, the Big Ten Conference announced Tuesday that Oregon football (11-0, 8-0 Big Ten) has in fact earned a spot in the conference’s championship game. According to multiple sources with knowledge of the discussion, Big Ten athletic directors met virtually Tuesday to discuss the conference’s tiebreakers, and whether Oregon had clinched.
While the conference previously claimed the Ducks needed Ohio State and Penn State to lose this coming weekend in order to secure their spot this week, it may have misinterpreted its own tiebreaking procedures. Oregon appears to have clinched a spot with Saturday’s win at Wisconsin.
“Following a comprehensive evaluation of all possible scenarios over the final two weeks of regular-season play across the conference’s 18 teams, there are no conditions whereby the Ducks do not finish No. 1 or No. 2,” the Big Ten said in a release.
The conference did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Prior to Saturday’s game against the Badgers, the conference told The Oregonian/OregonLive and officials from the Oregon athletic department that even a victory would not secure the Ducks a spot in the Dec. 7 game in Indianapolis. That was the operating assumption as recently as Monday, when The Oregonian/OregonLive reported a follow-up story based on the conference’s interpretation of its tiebreaking procedures.
The Oregonian’s original interpretation of the tiebreaker rules was that Oregon needed only to beat Wisconsin to clinch. That appears to have been true.
While the Ducks’ trip to Indianapolis is finally locked in, their opponent remains a mystery. Indiana, Ohio State and Penn State all still have a path to meet the Ducks at Lucas Oil Stadium.
— Ryan Clarke covers the Oregon Ducks and Big Ten Conference. Listen to the Ducks Confidential podcast or subscribe to the Ducks Roundup newsletter.
For Oregon Duck fans that were gripping their seats and tracking flight logs to Tuscaloosa, Alabama while unfounded rumors of coach Dan Lanning’s departure ran amok last year; be ready to experience some deja vu.
With the No. 1 Oregon Ducks currently standing at the top of the College Football rankings with an 11-0 record and a likely bid to the Big Ten Conference Championship, there’s a lot of praise coming Lanning’s way as well as a lot of expected rumors towards a potential departure to the NFL.
In the midst of rumors circulating that Lanning is becoming a prospect for a coaching job in the pros, former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky joined “The Next Round Live” podcast to share his own praise for the coach.
“He’s authentic. I think he’s got a no-stone-unturned youth, a Nick Saban youth to him,” Orlovsky said. “Nick Saban is notorious for; there is nothing that is small. Everything is big. I think Lanning has that quality to him.”
Lanning coached under the legendary coach Saban early in his career in 2015 when he was a graduate assistant at Alabama. During that season, Lanning helped the Crimson Tide win yet another National Championship for their dynasty against the Clemson Tigers. After a tenure at Memphis, Lanning went on to coach outside linebackers and eventually become the defensive coordinator under Georgia coach Kirby Smart; another coach Orlovsky lauded kind words to.
“It’s funny, when they beat Ohio State and did that 12-man on-the-field penalty, I said, ‘It’s very clear that we have two elite coaches in college football. Kirby Smart being one and Dan Lanning probably being the second. And people are like, ‘You’re an idiot, this and that,” Orlovsky said.
Lanning’s calling card on the field has been seen this season through gutsy plays and team-involved gestures. The 12-man penalty vs. Ohio State, Dillon Gabriel’s NCAA record breaking touchdown throw to offensive lineman Gernorris Wilson during the Maryland game, his “Gladiator” inspired timeout for his athletes to watch Michigan’s stadium clear out (“Are you not entertained?”), and the most recent ploy for the Ducks to crash Wisconsin’s “Jump Around” fourth quarter celebration are all stimulated by Lanning himself. Several of these strategies and play calls have social media sports enthusiasts calling Lanning a “mad man” for his inspired coaching choices.
Despite claiming detractors, to the former 12-year NFL veteran, there’s something very clear about Lanning, who just received a $200,000 contract bonus from the Ducks for beating the Badgers 16-13.
“It’s very clear that Dan Lanning, at worst, is the second-best College Football coach in the country right now,” Orlovsky said.
And with so much positive attention coming the way of Lanning and the Ducks, so do the ever-evolving rumors of a potential Lanning departure. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler brought up Lanning’s name last week when discussing NFL buzz-worthy topics.
“The once-popular trend of plucking college head coaches for NFL jobs has slowed in recent years,” Fowler said. “All but one of the 32 sitting head coaches (Chargers’ Jim Harbaugh, formerly Michigan) came directly from an NFL job. Recent NFL failures of Urban Meyer and Matt Rhule haven’t helped the collegiate pipeline. But a league exec I trust brought up an interesting name to me this week: Oregon’s Dan Lanning. ‘He’s got some Dan Campbell to him,’ the exec said. While Campbell is in his own class right now, Lanning knows how to command a room, and the Ducks are 32-5 since he took over.”
It seems Oregon has constantly fielded coach departure rumors for the better part of a decade at this point. From the “blink and you’ll miss it” coaching tenure of Willie Taggart, who left the Ducks after one year for Florida State in 2018, and former coach Mario Cristobal’s unceremonious goodbye to join the Miami Hurricanes in 2022; Duck fans have a history of feeling anxious about their coaches.
However, it seems Lanning might possess a different perspective. Last year, when rumors flew about the young coach departing for the seat retired by Saban at Alabama, Lanning shared a statement that has since become a brand for the program.
“The reality is, the grass is not always greener; in fact the grass is damn green in Eugene,” Lanning said. “I want to be in Eugene for as long as Eugene will have me…This is a destination, not just for me but for elite players.”
Lanning appears to be on a quest to prove he can win a championship without the prestige of an SEC or tenured program. His bold moves and gutsy play calling are welcome in a program like Oregon that embraces innovation. Lanning’s continued efforts on the recruiting trail, intentions to include more alumni in the program, and deep family involvement in Oregon culture like the “Heroes” uniforms designed by the Lanning family all indicate deeper roots than a temporary tenure.
As rumors will no doubt continue to swirl around the sports world as Oregon continues their opening season in the Big Ten, it’s a safe bet to think Lanning will stick where the grass is green until other notice.
MORE: Oregon Ducks, Wisconsin Badgers Officiating ‘Consistently Wrong’: Bad Penalty Calls
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MORE: Los Angeles Chargers Quarterback Justin Herbert Earns New Nickname From Jim Harbaugh
MORE: Ohio State Buckeyes Commit Chris Henry Jr. Flip To Oregon Ducks? Recruiting Flip Push
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