COMPASS Critics To City: Be Transparent

I remember zero people shot and killed by New Haven, CT police in the past decade, if not longer.
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/?gclid=CjwKCAjwj42UBhAAEiwACIhADvgqnm9PLD6YB8aTOfyVUfQtQbN7guO95pi6BC0eER5bZPpOegQ15xoCYyUQAvD_BwE
https://airtable.com/shroOenW19l1m3w0H/tblxearKzw8W7ViN8
I have a question to add...

I agree that there needs to be more focus on mental health. But with all due respect to the doctors who authored this article, medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death in this country, per a 2018 study by Johns Hopkins. Perhaps they should be more worried about what's going on in their own field before focusing on others.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us

"first-generation families"
The first generation was Adam & Eve, so the authors must be unreported siblings of Cain and Abel.

I am honored to serve on the Advisory Board of Compass. We all just introduced ourselves, asked many questions and offered input on a large number of details that need to be worked out.

It is a very diverse group that well represents the city demographically and geographically. Each of the members is extremely enthusiastic. Most have great depth of knowledge in more than one critical area. We are committed to getting this right.

Many of us have lived in and worked with the affected populations and/or been active in social issues in New Haven since before the authors were born. I'm not sure why they think their input is unique or has any special value.

I have been amateur first responder to dozens of emergencies involving panhandlers for the last four years, interact with them daily, moderate their turf wars and have four decades of civil-rights activism. A co-founder of BLM New Haven sits on the board. Another member has spent fourteen years working with people who are transitioning from incarceration to society and is bilingual. Another is retired after more than 20 years as an outreach coordinator. Many have been mental-health professionals here for decades.

We received an 'honorarium' of $50. Mine is now a big stack of vitamin water for the panhandlers. Most members travel by car, use fuel and pay for parking.

The authors note, based on incidents elsewhere in the country, that "When police respond to mental health emergencies, they can kill the person in need."

A panhandler who obviously has mental health issues is quite fun to watch. He holds his cell-phone to his head and dances and has a great time. The opinion of these young medical residents appears to be that police are not needed.

He harasses women and one day followed one until I could no longer see them. The PD was looking for him because I called them. He's not one of the two that I know to be convicted sex-offenders. One might consider that "wisdom from generations of lived experience."

Yale is always the elephant in the room. I, too, found the award of such a big contract shocking in that there was little public awareness of who was bidding on the contract. There was bidding on the contract, wasn't there?
The Mayor promised transparency. This contract does not meet that test.
As for attacking the medical establishment, and thus diverting attention from the very detailed questions the two doctors raised, Mr. Bruckhart failed to include this provision in the Johns Hopkins report: "The researchers caution that most of medical errors aren’t due to inherently bad doctors, and that reporting these errors shouldn’t be addressed by punishment or legal action. Rather, they say, most errors represent systemic problems, including poorly coordinated care, fragmented insurance networks, the absence or underuse of safety nets, and other protocols, in addition to unwarranted variation in physician practice patterns that lack accountability."
Somewhere in there is lack of access to healthcare due to lack of medical insurance. The number of people who die annually, and especially in the pandemic, due to lack of healthcare is staggering.
It's good to see the medical community advocating for the people. Thank you for speaking up. Let's see if you get any response.

Where is the list of names “appointed” to the committee? I scream foul. How did Yale sneak in on the deal is the question. Why are they the owner of this endeavor? They paid the city more money only to get the money back in a contract. Elicker has sold New Haven to the Yale laboratory once again. Folks don’t trust Yale. The uniforms are going to make folks look like spooky lab staff and they will have white vans. SMH. If it weren’t so sad, I’d be laughing.

Not sure I support Compass, can’t recall NHPD shooting any person dealing with mental health issues, unfortunately NHPD is being lumped into the same barrel even though they have not committed the same atrocities against those suffering from mental health as other departments across the company.

@robn so NO police shooting is now the standard for good policing?

i"m skeptical about this program and suspect police will need to be called to assist in many cases but i hope it's successful and frees up police to do other assignments.
what i don't care for is woke yalies being critical of police for doing their job, a job no one wants any more because people like these yalies have demonized them for so long. are they perfect, no they are not but who is?

I am just one member of the Board but if it comes up. I will be sure that we give this the consideration it deserves - none whatsoever.

The failure to observe, attend or read the minutes of meetings does not indicate a lack of transparency. It indicates a lack of effort.

The Board exists to ask and answer many of the questions the authors want answered. We've had one meeting. The authors will not be getting answers to the questions that we have not yet answered. We are not working on their timeframe. I can, however, answer all of their question with one bit of information:

"Deliberate, v. to think about deliberately and often with formal discussion before reaching a decision."

These Yale psychiatrists are right about one thing. The people of New Haven don't really trust Yale psychiatrists. If they would like to help, they should probably figure out why that is the case and try to do something about it.

Do the authors have any evidence that Yale or anyone else has contracted with NHPD or other police agency, or plans to do so?

Robn, a similar program has operated in Eugene, OR (a city half again as large as New Haven) for more than 30 years. Social workers respond to about 20% of 911 calls (they don’t respond to calls involving violence or the threat of violence) . They had responded to about 24,000 calls in 2020, and called for police back-up in 150 cases. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/us/cahoots-replace-police-mental-health-trnd/index.html

1644, I suspect the authors are first generation Americans, i.e., their parents immigrated here.

Blithing: From Bobbie Peel, principle 6-9.

Robn,
Not in 17 years......
Date: 3/2005 Location: New Haven, New Haven, CT Summary: Tyshan Napoleon, a 27-year-old man with bipolar disorder, was shot and killed by police in New Haven, CT on March 11, 2005. Napoleon had led police on a car chase, foot chase and shootout behind a local elementary school before being killed in the school parking lot. His mother, Rosie Buie, had called the police on her son after he began making bizarre comments and talked about hurting his girlfriend and their 2-week-old daughter. Buie knew her son had stopped taking his psychiatric medication nine months earlier and had a sawed-off shotgun in his possession. She believed he knew what he was doing, however, when he shot at the police. “My son was tired of dealing with his illness and he probably figured when he fired those shots that would be the end of it,” Buie said. Dr. Michael Nelkin, the psychiatrist who treated Napoleon from 2000 – 2002, said he also believed the situation was a textbook case of “suicide by cop.” Nelken said Napoleon chose to stop seeing him in 2002, after which Napoleon was briefly hospitalized. “This guy’s life could have been saved perhaps, if he had been forcibly medicated and had been forced to maintain his continued relationship with a psychiatrist,” Nelken said. Six New Haven police officers fired their weapons during the shoot out. They were placed on administrative leave until investigations were completed.
https://mentalillnesspolicy.org/states/connecticut/mental-illness-connecticut-violence.html

To people critical of this type of program, there have been cities that have used non-police intervention teams to work on non-violent public nuisance calls successfully. There is always a possibility of a call turning ugly. Many paramedics, EMTs, ER staff and others in the first responder jobs deal with that risk everyday, but it doesn’t stop them from providing the care and services that their job entails. If you take on these jobs, you understand there is a risk.
I have seen with my own eyes growing up in the city multiple incidents of police called to handle homeless persons, substance abusers, and mentally ill persons. Often their training and protocols are not helpful to the person’s situation, and the police also get sick and tired of having to deal with people who they know will be right out on the street again for the next public nuisance call to police because the person has nowhere else to go, can’t stop feeding their addiction, or wrestling with their personal demons.
Mental healthcare and substance abuse care providers often have the training, patience, and resources to handle a person in crisis with compassion, and to connect them with resources to improve their situation.
When society stops treating these persons with hostility, to be kept out of sight or locked up, and treats them with compassion and dignity and care, then maybe we can start impacting the cause of the problem, rather than simply criminalizing their issues and wanting them to just disappear.
I for one, hope that this program will be given the time and adjustments and funding it needs to become a success, and not abandoned or understaffed or underfunded out of existence. It’s going to need a lot of fine tuning, trial and error before it becomes an established system. I would hate to have one bad incident end it.
I appreciate the authors of this article raising questions about the program, and I hope more people constructively criticize it to make sure it is run correctly,