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Chicago Tribune

May 11, 2002

Reprinted with permission of the author. All rights reserved.

COLUMN
Fatal shooting by cop renews angry debate

by Eric Zorn

Two years ago, Chicago police shot and killed a deranged man who was menacing an officer with a fork. Monday, they shot and killed a deranged man who was menacing an officer with a four-inch knife.

All they need now is a deranged man with a spoon and they'll have a place setting. Or maybe not. Maybe they'll be able to disable, disarm and arrest Crazy Spoon Guy without killing him.

Hey, it's just a thought--a thought that pleases Jerry Dincin, executive director of Thresholds Psychiatric Rehabilitation Centers in Chicago, and angers Police Department spokesman Patrick Camden.

Dincin said he is "absolutely outraged" that when Tim Crotty, 49, wandered into the Town Hall District police station Monday morning, holding up his pants with one hand, brandishing a knife with the other and babbling incoherently, police found no other way to stop his advance on a plainclothes officer than to shoot him in the stomach and kill him.

Crotty reportedly received medication for mental illness through Thresholds, though privacy regulations prevent the agency from commenting on those reports, and Dincin said "it's disgusting how quickly police use fatal force on the mentally ill."

Camden, however, is disgusted (once again) that outside critics would ask hard questions about the split-second, self-defensive actions of a police officer. "Have you ever faced a deranged man with a knife?" he asked me. "Why don't we try it sometime?"

Police officials met with witnesses and prosecutors and announced Tuesday that the shooting was in accordance with state law and department policy. Camden said that five officers on the scene--three behind the desk--gave Crotty "numerous" and "ample" warnings to drop the knife he was holding over his head, and that the officer fired only when he felt himself in imminent danger. 

No, the department doesn't have Tasers or other kinds of electric stun guns. No, officers don't ever shoot to wound. No, they didn't have a beanbag gun handy. Yes, they were sure this was the only way to handle the altercation.

Camden said almost exactly the same things to me two years ago after police killed homeless fork-wielder Arthur Hutchinson in an alley near a CTA station and I'd presumed to ask if, gee, isn't there a better way to subdue a guy acting nutty with a potentially dangerous implement in his hand?

This is not to second-guess either officer involved. It's to ask if perhaps additional non-lethal weaponry ought to be at police disposal or if the loss of life shouldn't prompt departmentwide strategic review or additional training in dealing with the mentally ill.

"Too many mentally ill people are dying in confrontations with police," said Jonathan Stanley, assistant director of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va. His organization keeps track of such "preventable tragedies" on its Web site, psychlaws.org. The database includes the controversial 1995 death of Chicagoan Jorge Guillen, a mentally ill man who was asphyxiated by police officers attempting to subdue him, and an incident last month in Springfield in which Andrew Sallenger, a schizophrenic, died after police allegedly beat him during a confrontation.

Stanley was not familiar with Monday's shooting in Chicago, but he said yelling at or threatening a mentally ill person who appears on the verge of committing a violent act often "is the worst thing you can do if you want to de-escalate the situation."

Stanley said the Treatment Advocacy Center urges departments to add non-lethal weapons for dealing with the mentally ill and to emulate such programs as the one at the Memphis Police Department, where select officers get 40 hours of special training in dealing with mentally ill citizens. (Chicago police receive "five or six hours" of such training, Camden said).

But Stanley said the main thrust of his organization is to secure good medical treatment and appropriate supervision for the mentally ill so that police would far less often be placed in the difficult and dangerous position of diagnosing, assessing and dispatching psychotic individuals.

Any constructive review of the death of Tim Crotty--which is all I'm suggesting--would look beyond last Monday morning for object lessons in dealing with my hypothetical Crazy Spoon Guy.

Yes, the outcome of the confrontation raises questions for the future. But among those questions is, what could have and should have been done so that Tim Crotty didn't end up in a predatory and incoherent state in a police station? And how can our society reduce the number of times police officers have to handle such terrible situations?

Visit the author's website at www.ericzorn.com.