Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra, and welcome to the Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. For years, we’ve been hearing a lot of talk about training police officers to do a better job at de-escalating difficult situations and preventing more civilians from getting hurt or even killed by the police. The San Jose Police Department has been seen as a leader on this. Since 2017, all officers have undergone what’s known as crisis intervention training. But an investigation from the Bay Area News Group, KQED, and the California Reporting Project highlights the limits of that training. Today, KQED’s Rachael Vasquez speaks with Robert Solanga of the Bay Area News Group about the investigation and its findings. Stay with us.
Rachael Vasquez: Well, Robert, you and your team reviewed thousands of pages of police records for this story. What’s the most important takeaway in your mind?
Robert Solanga: The most important takeaway is the limit to which so-called crisis intervention training had an effect on the rates of people with mental illness or psychiatric emergencies, suffering serious use of force at the hands of San Jose police. There was a demarcation line in 2017 when the department instituted it department wide. And what we can tell from before and from after is that the numbers of people were being seriously injured who are mentally ill, have a psychiatric crisis or are intoxicated to the point where they exhibit similar behavior did not change significantly. So it definitely calls into question how effective this training is and bolsters a lot of movements and programs all over the country about finding an alternative to police when it comes to responding to these kinds of emergencies.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: One example highlighted in the investigation involves the violent arrest of William Wallace in May of 2021. Wallace was stopped by Officer Barron Kim for jaywalking with his bike across an empty street near downtown San Jose. Officer Kim ordered Wallace to stop, but Wallace walked away erratically instead, according to police records and body camera footage. Officer Kim grabs Wallace, who responds with threats, pushes his bike at the officer and reportedly throws a punch. Officer Kim chased Wallace and beat him with his hands and a baton, leaving Wallace with a broken nose. According to the investigation, Officer Kim suspected. Wallace says, quote, Bizarre behavior stemmed from mental illness or intoxication. But as Robert tells Rachel, this example raises questions about why the officer confronted someone he thought was mentally impaired in the first place.
Robert Solanga: At no point did it seem like Mr. Wallace was posing any kind of imminent physical threat. His offense seemed more that he was not complying with the officer and eventually got physical and between both sides, and it resulted in a broken nose for Mr. Wallace for, again, an underlying offense initially of jaywalking.
Rachael Vasquez: Robert, what do San Jose police have to say about your findings?
Robert Solanga: The general response from San Jose police has been to point out that the data we looked at, which covers strictly serious injury and death, are a small fraction of the psychiatric emergency calls and calls of that type that they encounter overall. So what they’re arguing is that this is a small slice of outcomes that typically and peacefully. They also state that the number of calls that involve someone in psychiatric emergency or with an apparent mental illness has more than doubled over the last few years. And so generally their point is the number of times they have to deal with this scenario has skyrocketed. And so that’s generally what what their responses.
Rachael Vasquez: That said, if training hasn’t worked so far, what can police do to make these interactions less violent and in some cases less deadly?
Robert Solanga: I think one of the main takeaways we got from doing all of this data review is there are a lot of scenarios in which the underlying offense for a police contact is relatively minor, such as jaywalking, for instance. And so the question that arises out of this. Absent more effective training or a new alternative to responding to these kinds of cases, because right now police are often our primary people to turn to for any kind of 911 call or nuisance call or anything along those lines. I think there ought to be a review and some introspection about when they can let things go and when they should it. And when we’ve brought that question and posed that question to police. They generally agree and say their officers have full discretion on whether to walk away. But we know that the reality is it’s not that easy and it’s not that simple.
Rachael Vasquez: And in fairness, I would guess that walking away from a situation would be pretty counterintuitive to police.
Robert Solanga: It’s a very difficult thing to consider because when people call 911, they call police. They expect police to solve the problem. They expect them to respond and do something about it. And if police officers exercised that discretion of the offense that we’re being called in for is not worth the potential escalation of violence, then they also have to be accountable to the public and residents and again, people who expect something to be done when they call for help.
Rachael Vasquez: Well, I know you’ve talked to families whose loved ones have been killed by police in these kinds of interactions. What do they tell you about what they want to see change?
Robert Solanga: The families of victims want to see more recognition of mental illness in psychiatric emergencies in the moments they understand that this isn’t black and white, it’s very gray. There’s a combination of both a psychiatric emergency and some danger to the officers or to the public, but they don’t believe that should necessarily equal what they call a death sentence just for calling. That’s the broadest take away is this idea of taking time, exercising patience, keeping distance when being up close to someone isn’t absolutely necessary. It’s along the lines of wanting to make sure that serious use of force and lethal force are really used as a last resort.
Rachael Vasquez: All right, Robert, thank you so much.
Robert Solanga: Thank you.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That was the Bay Area news groups. Robert Solanga speaking with KQED’s Rachael Vasquez, KQED’s Lisa Pickoff-White and Mercury News reporter Harriet Rowan also investigated this story with reporters from the California newsroom. Berkeley journalism’s investigative reporting program. and Stanford University. We’ll leave you a full link to the investigation in our show notes.
