 You're watching FJTN the federal judicial television network When we walk at the door in the morning, we have to make a personal commitment to safety your life and perhaps your partner's life May depend on how focused you are. How am I going to park my vehicle? What am I going to look for before I walk up to the resident? What if you walk in and a fender comes in behind you? What we try to do with safety training is put the odds in our favor. Try to expect the unexpected with every contact. There's always going to be something that's not on paper. You just forget that even in your office, you could have an incident. Luck may or may not be there for you one day, but it's not a strategy. Be determined that whatever it is that you have to do, you're going to go home. Get your mind right. Plan to go home is real. Safety Series, offenders and defendants with mental disorders. Hi everyone. Welcome to the federal judicial center safety series where today we're going to talk about safety and offenders and defendants with mental health disorders. I'm Mark Maggio and I'll be moderating the broadcast today. To discuss this topic, we've got three panelists with us today. We have Rich Feldman, who is a senior U.S. probation officer, retired from the district of Maryland. Rich recently retired in December of 2004 and we kind of nudged him out of retirement to come down for the broadcast, so we appreciate that. We have Matt Foubert and Matt is a USPO from Sacramento, the eastern district of California. And we have Miggy Bayerga. Miggy is the mental health administrator with the Office of Probation and Pre-Trial Services at the AO. We've got two scenarios we're going to show you today. Scenarios that, as we've done in the past, are based on actual incidents taken from the hazardous incident reports from probation and pretrial services. Peppered between these two scenarios, we're also going to include an interview with another retired probation officer, Terry Childers. Our producer, Robin Roland, sat down with Terry a couple of months ago to talk with him about safety and mental health issues. And I'll tell you more about that interview a little later on in the program. Okay, that's what I've got for kicking things off, so why don't we start our program? Let's look at our first scenario. We call this one changes. Let's roll the tape and watch. Yeah, Jay Warren is here now. All right, tell him I'll be right out to get him. Oh, wait a minute. Does he seem disturbed or upset at all? Okay. I'll come out, but would you please call Sarah and also let her know that he's here? Thanks, Rosemary. I had last seen Jay Warren three weeks ago. I had him transported to the emergency room when he confided during a routine office contact that he planned to cut his wrists. At the hospital, the nature of his threats changed from suicide to homicide. He was committed to the mental wing with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, but he was back out in a week. I had been unable to locate him since his release. My request for a hearing to impose mental health conditions was pending. Have a seat, Mr. Warren. I don't think I can. How are you doing? Not good, Ms. Perry. Not good at all. I need you to put me in jail. Why do you say that? A lot of reasons. Maybe I can sit down now. I need to relax. You said before that I should put you into jail. Is that because of anything you did? I'm not going to tell you anything. How do I even know you're trustworthy? You're the question lady. You were at my job before asking questions. I was just trying to get in touch with you. Well, I don't work there anymore. Hey, where's that guy? That guy? Are you talking about Officer Blanco? He's the one you talked to before you were sentenced. Yeah, Blanco. He is trustworthy, unless he's changed. You want me to call him? Don't worry. He's still the same. Hi, Alex. See you got your phone line fixed. Oh, I don't think so, not yet anyway. Jay Warren is in my office right now. He's telling me he's been having some problems. Yeah, well, he's asked if you could join us because he knows you're trustworthy. Okay, good. He'll be right here. Hey, Mr. Warren, how you doing? Bad. Very bad. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Mr. Warren was just going to tell us why he thinks we should put him in jail. The floors there are really cool. They have the coolest floors. They're green. And if I could just lay down on that floor, it might relax me. How about at the hospital? Could you relax there at all? No! No! And no! That was a bad scene. Terrible. I told them and told them and told them no drugs and they tied me up. Stuck needles in me and got me addicted. Now I'm out on the street. I'm coming down from this stuff and I don't even know what it is. What's it like coming down? Having fits is what it's like. I freak out. I punch things. I crash into walls. Look at that! How did that happen? I attacked a building. I never know what I'm going to go off. I could be any time. They turned me into a fucking time bomb. Can you tell me more about what happens when you go off? Maybe you'll find out for yourself. I'm ready to kill you right now. I could just go off. And that's that. Not a good idea, Mr. Warren. Miss Perry is trying to get you some help here. You do want to stop going off, right? I'm having body changes happening to me right now. At least three. You can't help me. It's too late. Mr. Warren, we can help you. We can get you into treatment so you can relax and stop going off. But to do that, we're going to have to change the conditions of your supervision a little bit. I'm going to ask you if you would be willing to sign a paper letting us change your conditions so that we can get you some help. I don't think so. I don't need your help. But we're concerned. We're afraid you're going to hurt yourself or somebody else. And we know you don't want to do that. Do you feel my hands around your throat yet? No? You know something? I don't either. You may be in luck, my friend. I don't think I'm going to hurt you. And I can't hurt myself. Nobody can. Everything is copacetic. Goodbye. Now we're going to give you some time to discuss the scenario at your site. And when you come back, we'll engage the panel and see what they have to say. Welcome back. Let me start the panel discussion. Rich, I'm going to throw the first question to you. From the defendant Warren, what behavioral clues that he displayed that you think should have alerted the officer that he was in a mental health crisis? And how do you think the officer handled the situation early on? She had some, the first clues officer she had was that she knew that he had been committed against his will to a hospital because of suicidal and homicidal ideations. So she knew that going in. But when she saw him in the office, it seems clear to me that his hygiene was poor. He hadn't shaved. His clothes were disheveled. Then when she brought him down to the office, he indicated quite readily that he was agitated. He couldn't sit down. He couldn't relax. That was a clue that something was still going on, I think. I think she handled it real well. First of all, when she was walking down the hallway, she was expressed concern, kind of a nurturing attitude. She wasn't antagonistic towards him or even appearing frightened. When he came to the office and he could not sit down, she stood up with him. She mirrored his reactions, which I think would help him with some level of comfort. So I think as a safety factor was a good move on her part. Standing when he stands, sitting when he sits, that type of thing. Exactly. I think it was clear to her at that point that something was still going on despite the fact he had been released from the hospital. Let me ask you about just real quick standing and sitting issue, because every once in a while it raises its head during safety discussions. And I know some officers said they will sit regardless because they just feel like it helps put the defender offended at ease. In this situation, dealing with a mental health offender, given the behavior we saw, I'm not hearing from you that you think doing what she did would have exacerbated it. It was a good move on her part from a safety point, but also didn't create any undue anxiety in him, apparently. I don't think so. First of all, I think the defender was clearly engaged in his own presentation and what he was thinking, what he was doing. I'm not sure he was paying much attention to her reactions, at least in the scenario. In addition, if someone's standing up and walking around, I don't think you really want to sit down and be at a disadvantage, because his behavior at that point was clearly unpredictable. So I think she made a good move. Okay. Maggie, let me jump to you on this kind of tying into what Rich was just talking about with some of the behaviors the defendant displayed clearly in some sort of stage mental health crisis. Comment on the officer, given what she knew about this guy going in, given the homicidal-suicidal situation, meeting up with him one-on-one in her office. Well, given the little data that we have in this scenario, I think the officer could have used an alternative option in terms of meeting the... I would have met this offender in an interview office where I had an escape route. She didn't have this. I mean, if you notice in the scenario, her desk was facing the wall and the offender had the escape route. Yeah, the day he sat down, she went around sat down, he's got kind of a way to block that escape route. Right. The other thing I would have done a little differently was I would not have met with him so quickly. I would have went out there, acknowledged that he was there, not put this responsibility on the clerk, but go out there and say, hey, you know, I'm working on something else. Can you please wait? Give me a couple of minutes. And then I would have went back and tried to contact the hospital and get some information as to what his mental health status was when he left that hospital. Did he leave? You know, was he discharged or did he leave against medical advice? Or, you know, just to get an idea of what am I dealing with now? Or, if I couldn't get information from the hospital because that's not always possible, I would have at minimum tried to reach the family, somebody, to see, hey, what kind of frame of mind this guy's in. I would have tried to do that. Okay, when you bring him back, one-on-one, in the interview room, you're going to alert officers or supervisors at your meeting with him there. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. That's another thing that I probably would have done differently. Would you bring one of them into the room with you or would you just hold off and do the one-on-one in a different way? You know, not initially. I think that I wouldn't do that for a couple of reasons. One, this tag team in an initial meeting, I think it exacerbates things. I mean, with someone like this who has a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, I think that would exacerbate his paranoia. You know what I mean? So I would not have done that. But I would certainly, before I met with him, alerted supervisors and colleagues, hey, be my eyes and ears, watch out. You know, just in case things get out of hand, call the police or call the marshals, have some kind of a plan before I met with him. Okay, good enough. Matt, let me go to you. Do we have, in your opinion, did this contact come in time where this became a crisis situation for the officer? We know the offender was pretty much in a mental health crisis, but how about being in a crisis situation with the officer? Well, with his, with the offender's escalating behavior, it's becoming a crisis. It becomes a crisis when the offender threatens to assault her, threatens to put his hands around her neck, is threatening to hurt other people. At that point, it does become a crisis. Now, in the scenario, you'll see that she's moving things off of her desk, which tells me that she is cognizant of the fact that it's becoming a crisis situation for her as well as for the offender. So in that respect, it's good that she is increasing the level of awareness to meet the crisis situation that's occurring with the offender. When she called the second officer in, do you think that helped diffuse somewhat or kept it the same? How do you think that worked out? I think it was to her benefit to have him in there. I don't know that it diffused the offender's escalation, but it was certainly a good move on her part to have him in here just for her own safety, especially since her escape route was blocked. Let me stay with you on this for a minute. Is there a third party risk? There's definitely a third party risk. He leaves a building. If you're in a building that has martial service, you need to notify the marshals. You also need to notify local law enforcement to do a welfare check on him, just determining whether or not he is currently suicidal, homicidal, gravely disabled. And in California, local law enforcement can write involuntary holds on offenders, so you would have to check with your state to see if that's applicable. Good suggestion. Maybe you wanted to say something? Yeah, I just wanted to add that in order for officers to effectively deal with a crisis like that, those of you who know me personally or have worked with me or I've trained you, I'm very proactive. And I truly believe that if you have a prearranged crisis intervention plan in place where you have emergency contact numbers, names of local law enforcement officers, or at least their numbers, definitely the names and numbers of a treatment provider and family members, you can deal with these situations a little bit more smoothly, I think, when they arise. I always have a plan in place. I just want to encourage you, I think it's our obligation as federal probation officers to follow up in this case. More often than not these kinds of cases will show up at four o'clock on a Friday afternoon and you've got things going or I really think this is not the kind of individual that if he's able to leave the office, if he has to leave the office, that you're going to have to drop it, that you should follow up with the family, you should try to get services in place for him, or do something so that it doesn't continue until the next day because clearly he has issues and if he was suicidal or homicidal before, even though he was in the hospital, he could be again. And that's not something a probation officer should drop. I would like to add one last thing. In our office, at least, we have panic alarms. And if you're an officer and you feel like you're in a crisis situation, then you can hit that panic alarm and get some help up there. So you shouldn't have to necessarily wait until the offender actually threatens to kill you or threatens to kill other people. If you feel like it's escalated to a crisis situation, then you should hit that panic alarm and get some help up there. Great point. One of the other things we touched on, and I want to move on to the next question, Rich, and throw it to you. But we talked briefly, as we were preparing for today's program, about letting the guy just walk out of the office at that particular point. And, Miggy, I think you brought up a discussion you had had, if I'm not mistaken, with David Adair, about the ability to physically restrain. Right. Because of our limited statutory authority, we are not authorized to physically restrain someone. Of course, David Adair suggested that we contact the marshals or the police. I mean, make somebody aware of what's going on after they leave, if they leave without your control. But don't try to hold them back. Okay. Rich, let me go through the last question for this scenario. You notice, as the offender went through, his body changes. And during that time, or shortly after that, the officer comes back and tries to get him to sign that change of supervision conditions. Comment on sort of the task-oriented approach there. First, let me say, as a probation officer for so many years, I understand her concerns. I think she had a pending hearing going on, and she wanted this sign. It would have made the hearing perhaps easier or go more smoothly. But it seems clear to me that the offender, his head was not in that place, as they say. He was having difficulty with the sneaking processes. I'm not even sure he would be considered competent later on, looking back to have signed a document like that. I also think asking him to perform a task like that may have been construed by him, if he, in fact, was paranoid, as being confrontative or antagonistic. I think there were other issues going on. Her safety being number one, number two, determining what was going on with him, and maybe even preferring him out for services. I think signing the document may have been the fourth or fifth thing to do at that time. To bottom line, all things considered, we could let that, in your opinion, That's a short answer, yes. Good point. Okay, that's the last word for this scenario, and what we're going to do now is go to our interview. As I said, our producer, Robin Rowland, sat down with Terry Childers to talk about this topic of safety and mental health offender population. I believe I mentioned Terry is a retired probation officer. He was an Illinois Northern in the Chicago office, and Terry had spent time as a mental health specialist, as well as when he retired, he was a suspo. At the time of the interview that we conducted with Terry, he was the executive director of the sex offender conditional release program with Liberty Health Care. So let's take some time, watch the interview, and we'll come back and talk a little bit about it. Terry, welcome. Thank you. Let's get right into the subject of this broadcast, which is officer safety and mental health disorders. Do offenders and defendants with mental health disorders pose a greater safety risk to officers than other offenders and defendants? I think that depends, and I think what's important is not necessarily that they have a mental health disorder, but if they are symptomatic, a person can have diabetes, and if the person has taken insulin, the person is going to be fine. If the person may have schizophrenia and he was under medication, he might also be fine, but if he's not taking the medication and becomes symptomatic, then that raises all sorts of issues for the officer, including the safety issue. For instance, a person who has bipolar disorder who might stop taking medication might experience what we call a manic episode. And during a manic episode, people with bipolar disorder usually do things that they would usually not do under other circumstances, and violence could be one of those things. Another thing you'd always want to be concerned about with any mental health disorder, and it's no different from any other offender, is drugs and alcohol. A mentally ill person who stops taking his psychotropic medication might begin to self-medicate by taking illicit drugs or alcohol, and that's always pretty bad news relative to safety risks. If you were supervising an officer who was about to take on a mental health caseload for the first time, what advice would you give? Well, certainly I think the first meeting that any officer has where the mentally ill offender should not be in the offender's home. I think it's much more safe for that meeting to be in the office itself. Another thing that I cannot suggest strongly enough and we can easily overlook it is reading the file. Before you see the offender, please read the file. I had one case in particular that it was a person who had schizophrenia and was a presidential threat. He had sent a hand grenade to the White House when President Clinton was still there. And he was a very, very small man. He had a master's degree from Purdue University in electronic engineering or something and just appeared to be the most non-threatening person that one would ever seen. But before I met him for the first time, I read his entire case file and in there were included assaults on police officers with knives. Wow. And the only way I knew that was because I read that file. Are there particular qualities that you would look for in an officer you think would be suitable to take on a mental health caseload or conversely particular qualities that you think you would want to avoid in somebody who is going to have that job? I think I would want to look for a person who has a certain amount of comfort with ambiguity. So in other words, I certainly wouldn't choose a person to supervise mentally ill people as I would choose a person to supervise financial crimes offenders. Flexibility is an absolute necessity and being able to adapt to situations. Being able to hear everything the offender is saying through its entirety and just not stopping to hear it because there's one thing that's said that sounds absolutely bizarre. Any particular advice on collaborating with mental health professionals? Probation officers and therapists have one thing in common. And when they refer to a case, they use the pronoun my. It's my case. Let me tell you what my case did the other day. I had this case yesterday and blah, blah, blah. When we begin to deal with mentally ill offenders, we have to work collaboratively and we have to work very closely with the treatment provider and my case becomes our case. And that does require a shift not only from the probation officer but from the treatment provider as well. But the onus is on the probation officer to educate the treatment provider as to why that is so important. And how do you do that? I would do it by sitting down and talking to the treatment provider hopefully before the offender meets the provider for the first time. Explaining that confidentiality is very different in this case as it is in any private cases that the therapist might have. And focusing on that what I'm really interested in is seeing that the offender maintained compliance with the conditions of supervision and be well, be mentally well. Seeing that you two are comfortable with each other probably is helpful to the offender as well. It is very helpful. Because very frequently different types of offenders will work very, very hard at splitting the probation officer and the therapist. That's a very common occurrence. That's interesting. And it's a form of manipulation. What about partnering when you're dealing with a mentally ill offender or defendant? It sounds like you might get into similar issues if you were sharing your caseload with a partner as to what you would have with a mental health professional. I think the optimal way is to have one officer responsible for the one case. I think partnering can be very good, however, if you're looking for another probation officer to be some sort of a witness to hear what the offender might be saying to you. Because he might deny he said those things later. But I don't know if that's any different with a mental health case than in the other case. We often think that there's a safety benefit to having two officers there if somebody is volatile or a safety risk. I realize there's a lot of debate about the safety in numbers, and I've probably never settled down on either side of the argument. But I think if you're about to make a home visit and the person is clearly volatile in making threats and all these other things, then I would just say, don't go. If it's more of a situation that you want to bring a partner with you just because you want to get a feel for what's happening here or you want another eyes and ears for you. What do you think? You're saying these things. What do you think about that? I want another opinion. I think that's fine. I would think that establishing rapport and trust with an offender with a mental disorder might be particularly challenging. Once again, it's true depending upon the type of person you're dealing with. But so frequently the level of trust needs to be established, I think, for really effective supervision. And it can be. I think something that I was always struck by in all my years in probation, and I think there's a pathos to this that I never got over, is for many of the mentally ill offenders that I supervise, I became the most important person in their lives for their emotional support. I don't think that's a good thing. It's a lot of responsibility for you. It's a lot of responsibility, and I don't think it's a good thing, and I think it's a reflection on how we treatmentally ill people in our society. Ironically, I think sometimes, and I hate to use a psychoanalytic term for this, but you become apparent to them. You might be the first person in their lives who are telling them, no. You might be the first person in their lives who are giving them some sort of very concrete direction. And they might resist that initially, but if they do come around to it, you become a very critical person in their lives. And does that make you safer or less safe, or neither? I'm just thinking of the sort of balancing being this trust figure, parent figure, whatever, for the offender versus being constantly mindful of your safety. When I say the parent figure, I'm talking about their perception. My safety glass never comes down. It's always there. I'm not saying that there should be what they call a counter-transference, and you feel toward him as a parent would for a child. I don't think that should happen. It never happened with me. I think if you did let that happen, and it somehow crosses the line and becomes a much more familial relationship than a professional one, then I do believe that compromises your safety then, because you no longer are the professional. There's no longer a helping relationship, and that can be very unhealthy for a lot of reasons. Safety is just one of them. I suppose an officer is supervising a defendant or offender who doesn't have a diagnosed mental condition, but the officer is concerned that something is going on here, that the person may actually be suffering from a disorder. What are some of the common behavioral signs that the officer might look for? Look what he could look for are changes in behavior, as you said, attitude and appearance. Behaviors might include any changes in his life, changes in sleep patterns, changes actually in speech patterns. A person who's in a manic phase of a bipolar disorder will begin to speak very rapidly like this and have all sorts of thoughts going on all at the same time. If that's not how he usually speaks, that can be somewhat of a clue to you. Attitudinal things. A person who's usually very expressive with you might suddenly not be expressive at all, might appear to be very reticent to provide you with any information, might not let you in for a home visit when historically he always has. And as for appearance, any changes in personal grooming, significant changes, that he hasn't washed his hair, washed his teeth, or changed his clothes. So it's easier to determine with an offender or defendant that you've been working with for a while so you know what a significant change is. Yes, exactly. You have to have a baseline of some kind. Looking back, Terry, over the career that you have had dealing with federal offenders with mental disorders, any last thoughts, recommendations that you'd like to leave us with? You know what always gave me the most gratification working with a mentally ill is that you can truly make a difference in a person's life. And I love that job. You can do that with both your clinical intervention and frankly with the authority of your office. A therapist can't make a person go to treatment ironically. Sometimes a probation officer by virtue of the court order can do exactly that. In all my years in probation, I love being a mental health specialist more than anything else. Terry, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Terry gave us a lot of information, a lot of things to think about. There are two items that he mentioned that sort of got the panel involved a little bit while we were watching the interview. And I want to put one of the questions and comments that Rich made. Talking about what Terry said going on being the most important person in the defendant's life, he kind of, well he didn't kind of, he actually said he doesn't really view that as a good thing. And you were kind of disagreeing with that. So we're going to comment a little bit on that, Rich. Okay, I think, I don't think it's necessarily a good thing if the defendant, if the offender is dependent on you. Or if he sees you as a father figure because we have an authoritarian role, even a clinical role sometimes. So that's not really that good. But I do think there's a different take on it, which is many times the offenders we've been working with have gone through the mental health system and the criminal justice system and never really gotten continuity of care or maybe no one person's had a whole picture of what they've been through. And generally within our system, which I think is a great thing, we have the pre-sentence investigation which hopefully will contain a lot of information about where they've been through the mental health system or professionals in criminal justice. We will have a lot of information about them and I think that's comforting to the offender. It's also comforting to give it to the treatment specialist to give them the information, the whole picture of the offender. I think if the offender knows that, that's a good thing and that's very important in their lives. So operating really from the offender's mindset in terms of they view you as the most important person is kind of something, it's a relationship you can make work to the betterment of the treatment for the offender is what I'm hearing you say this morning. Most definitely and I think it's a role that we sometimes under-appreciate that we have that information that we can actually help them and they see that often. We do want to take control of the situation though so that it doesn't get out of hand so they don't see us as having a special relationship so to speak. Appreciate the perspective. And Amiga you had mentioned, you wanted to comment when Terry mentioned the importance of reading the file and you had some things you wanted to say on that point. I can't overemphasize what Terry said about reading that case file. As a former mental health treatment specialist I used to go out to the field with officers who were line officers but did not carry a mental health case load but had mental health cases and I can't tell you how many times I went out and would ask them certain questions as we're driving there. What about this, what about that and they wouldn't know the answers and I basically would say well did you read the file? Well I didn't have time and what I would say to you out there in the field make time to read that file because that's your life and the life of the partners that are going out with you so don't take it lightly. But those of you who do not have a mental health background or may not have a mental health treatment specialist to go out with you in the field in cases like this don't worry because OPPS has identified resources for you that could help you in getting just a general idea of general mental health disorders and treatment and medications and the like. You can find our website on the OPPS webpage to access that. You go to the JNET, click on especially for and go to probation and pretrial services. From there you click go to working with defendants and offenders and click on mental health treatment. There you'll not only find links related to mental health but you'll find legal opinions, frequently asked questions and better practices to consider. Okay, thanks a lot Meggie, appreciate that. All right, let's move on now. We're going to look at our next scenario. The title for this one is called The 357. And once you watch it I think you'll understand why. Let's roll the tape. Lowell's life is severely affected by post-traumatic stress disorder. He is now in federal probation for false statements in acquisition of a firearm. He was convicted of second degree murder 20 years ago. He's in a methadone maintenance program and is also on Valium and Prozac. At the time of this routine home contact Mr. Whirly had just undergone a psychiatric evaluation. I hadn't seen the report yet but the evaluator told me it had revealed a number of pathologies. What about the home detention thing? Have you heard from the judge yet about that? Yes, I did get the memo back from the judge. I have it right here. Maybe I don't have it. You know what, I think I left it in my briefcase in the car. I'll just run and get it. Okay, I have it right here. Just take a look at... Get the 357 honey, he doesn't have a gun. Go on, I'll hold him here. I'm going to get the gun so I can shoot him. I wish you could see the look on your face. You can come down off the ceiling. I'm just kidding. This is not funny. Geez, can't you take a joke? Hey, what does the memo say? Step away from the door please. I'm not going to hurt you. Haven't you ever heard a joke before? I want you to report to my office at 8am in the morning. We'll talk then. Alright, now it's time for you again to discuss the scenario at your site. We'll give you a few minutes to do so and again we'll come back afterwards and join the panel. First question, Rich, to you on this incident, what do you think the probation officer or officer Surrell could have done differently, if anything, in your opinion, while he interacted with Worley, given Worley's mental health case history? It would have been helpful if he had read the psychological report to know what pathologies were evident before he made the home visit, but he knew that he had diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD. Given that, he could have expected the offender to have an elevated startle response, perhaps have some kind of sleep disturbance, perhaps some bowel to mood swings, and certainly some irritability, which I found in cases that have had this diagnosis. Given that, he would want to have been flexible in a home visit situation. I think he was, I think he understood the kind of person he was dealing with. I'm not sure that I would have gone into the kitchen in that situation and had my doorway blocked, but I think he handled it the best way possible. You bring up a good point when you talk about just some of the characteristics of PTSD. I imagine it certainly would be important, again, for officers, particularly those you alluded to earlier, Miggy, who are not mental health specialists, maybe not necessarily familiar with certain diagnosis and behaviors and characteristics associated with this to become familiar. Yes, if you have an offender that has a diagnosis, I think you should do some research on it. In fact, looking at this offender, it looks like he may even have a serious personality disorder engaging in that kind of joke, as he called it. I think maybe the report would have indicated that, and the officer could have looked at it, could have researched that. Matt, let me go to you. Talking from more of a real safety perspective, what were Surrell's options and what were the officer's options once his escape route was blocked? I agree with Rich in that I think that the officer acted appropriately. He followed the latter of force in that his next option was to tell the offender to move away from the door, which is where his exit was. The offender complied, although he got some help from his wife. I don't know if he was carrying an OC spray or not, but that would have been his next option. Had the offender not moved away from the door, he could have deployed the OC. Besides that, he acted appropriately. He followed the escalation of force. Unfortunately, the offender moved. The wife helped him, but suppose she had been more compliant with his directive whether or not we don't know if there was actually a gun present, but how do you control her in addition to watching the offender's behavior? I think at that point your main thing is getting out of the house. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a partner with him. He's going to have to try to keep his eyes on both of them at the same time, but his main focus at that point is getting out of the house. If she makes a move for a weapon and he doesn't have his weapon with him and he doesn't have OC or a baton, his main thing is getting out of the house. And a greater concern because he's in the kitchen, which we all know probably the room in the house that has the most weapons available. If he has a cell phone, he can also employ that. He can call law enforcement and let them know that he's in a situation. Okay. Miggy Matt alluded to the issue of the partner. You think having a partner in this would have made a difference? Absolutely. I think had there been a partner, I don't think he would have joked like that. I mean, I don't think he would have taken the risk to do that. I'm a big, a huge proponent of partnering with someone because basically it avoids situations like this possibly. And secondly, your partner brings an extra pair of eyes and ears. You know that you wouldn't have if you're alone. I think... But dealing with mental health cases, again, understanding that a lot of situations could have an element of unpredictability. Oh, absolutely. Depending on who these individuals are and whether they're on medications or not, maybe that issue of unpredictability can become even, you know, more pronounced. Do you just, do you grab a partner at this point or do you want to go to this situation with someone you've worked with in the past? Oh, yes. I'm glad you're bringing up that point. I thought somebody that's not going to be a liability for you out in the field or raise, you know, create problems for you. There are certain people that I just would not go out in the field with just because of their personality style or, you know, they were too law enforcement oriented and they would exacerbate the situation if a crisis did arise. So, yes, you have to be careful who you partner up with. And of course, if you're going out with a partner, I'm assuming you all would agree if he or she is not, say, a mental health specialist or up on certain diagnoses and you know you've got this particular case with this particular diagnosis, you're going to educate them up front or tell them. Oh, absolutely. As you said, Rich, to read about it. Here's what we can expect. Here's what to look for. I want to add, though, that even if you're, especially in mental health cases, I think, if you have someone who's on medication but had a violent past but because they're on medication, they're doing well and you feel you don't need to take a partner that day, I'm not sure that's a good guess. You're a client, you're an offender. It could be on medication and still decompensate and still have symptoms. There could be a stressor that happened the night before that you're not aware of. Or the doctor, in many of my cases, doctors with lower dosages that I haven't even been aware of and doctors usually do that, in fact. They want to get the lowest possible dose. So it is unpredictable and it's just hard to predict what you're going to find out when you make a field visit. And your point about just because they're on meds doesn't mean they're going to be asymptomatic. Absolutely. I think it's a good one for folks to remember. Matt, let me come back to you again. What does that conversation sound like the morning after when he's ordered this guy to come back and meet with him at 8 a.m.? What does that conversation sound like? What's going to happen there? I think, although we do wear counseling hats, so to speak, I think it's more punitive than anything else. I think that we have cause to notify the judge of his behavior, although we may not want to take formal action. We need to notify our Suspo. We may even want to have our Suspo in there with us during this meeting. I would want to get this guy into some counseling because that's what we have vendors for. And they can determine what was going on with him. I don't think it's a time or the place to start getting into a counseling session with him. I think you need to let him know that that was inappropriate, that it wasn't funny, that you're taking this very seriously and handle it from there. But counseling outpatient basis is definitely warranted. I'd like to add also that, especially this is a new case, it's also an opportunity when they come into the office. Before we become punitive, before we lay down the law, is to try to get as much information from him as to why he engaged in that kind of episode. What was his attitude? Was there some kind of stressor going on? Because I think once we become more directive, that kind of information is going to shut down. And if you're going to have a case for one to three years, one supervised release especially, you're going to be back and forth to this guy's home and you want to find out what caused this to happen. So you're going to take kind of a dual approach, kind of tying in what Matt says, but also, it sounds like if I dare use the word a little more clinical approach. It's interesting you say, I don't see it as a clinical approach. I see more as an intelligence, an intel kind of thing. But if you are a clinician, I do think you have a heads up to get into his head so to speak to find out what's motivating this guy. Are we bringing the wife in the next morning, by the way? Is she coming in with him? Are we going to talk to her? If we are, what point? I would ask him to bring his wife in and talk to her at some point. I just want to respond to your clinical approach. Our officers are not hot. Well, even though some of us have a background in mental health, our role is not as mental health providers and that's why we have contracted treatment providers. That's their role to do. And I think that that's something that we should keep in mind. I agree with you. I would want to do that maybe later on and, you know, as I get to know this case. Well, I'll be fair to Rich. The clinic goes my term. He used intelligence, so we'll keep that balance there. So we're going to bring the wife in, talk with her one-on-one. We're going back to do a search. We've got an issue of the possibility of a gun there. Are we going to talk about coming back to a search, Matt? I think search is definitely appropriate in this case if your district has a search policy in place. But definitely a search is warranted. Okay. And, Meggy. We're going to report this as a hazardous incident. I'll give you the last word. Absolutely. This is... He made a threat to kill the officer. It should be reported immediately to the Chief Probation Officer or the Pre-12 Services Chief in writing and fax to the Office of Probation and Pre-12 Services. Definitely. On that note, I want to thank my panel for joining us, Rich Feldman, Matt Feaubert, and Meggy Bayerrigan. I always want to thank as well our participants, those of you out on the site, so it took time out of your valuable days to watch, sit and watch. We hope you got some benefit from watching the program. Be interested, as always, in reading your evaluations. And with that, I thank you and enjoy the rest of your day.