When police respond to mental health crises calls

Campton Hills police officer Scott Coryell remembers a time in the 1990s when he worked for Bensenville and they were called to search the woods for a woman who was a possible suicide.

“She packs a few little things, leaves the house and walks up to the forest preserve and the kids are like, ‘What is going on?’ ” Coryell said. “We find her that day. And we get her into a hospital and treatment.”

A couple of weeks later, he learned she later committed suicide on her second attempt.

“You sit there and go, ‘What more could we have done?’ You realize that at some point it stops being my ability to do anything,” Coryell said.

Before coming to Campton Hills, Coryell worked for the St. Charles Police Department for nearly 20 years.

“Toward the end of my career there, we were doing more mental health than anything else,” Coryell said. “Are they a danger to themselves or others? We as police officers, we can’t just walk away. We still have a duty to act to protect them from themselves and to protect society from them.”

If a person in the throes of a mental health crisis does not want to receive service, it can’t be forced on them if they’re not a danger to themselves or others – the hospital will have to release them, he said.

“Every person I’ve ever seen, on the second or third trip to the hospital, they know what’s going to happen. They’re shaking their head, ‘I don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna go. I know what’s going to happen.’ They’re going to be locked down for a day or two or three, and they learn to stop talking,” Coryell said.

“If you go back 100 years, we didn’t give people that choice,” Coryell said. “We used to have 12 [state] mental institutions in Illinois, and now we have seven or less. What do we exchange that for? Prison.”

Responding to mental health crises

While police increasingly are asked to respond to people suffering mental health crises, Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain and local police departments, such as St. Charles, North Aurora and Geneva, now have social workers on staff.

Hain and Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser have taken steps to address the issues by assisting people suffering mental health crises rather than jailing or releasing them without support.

This spring, Mosser received Kane County Board support to establish a Mental Health Unit to be staffed by attorneys at the AMITA Health Mercy Medical Center in Aurora and at Elgin Mental Health. This was to facilitate medication petitions for people in the hospital so they would get treatment rather than just be released “right back into the criminal justice system because we are not treating them.”

The intersection of mental health issues with drug addiction – usually self-medicating – and lack of opportunity are generally the first time people become involved with police and incarceration, Hain said.

“Of course, sometimes those are co-existing but those three pathways are going to be the primary pathway into our custody,” Hain said.

Toward that end of assisting people in crisis, Hain’s office now has a social worker on staff five days a week and available for emergency calls, including crisis intervention for mental health and substance abuse.

New within the Kane County Jail are pods – another name for cellblocks – specifically for detainees with mental health and addiction problems. The sheriff’s office has contracted with psychologists, social workers and addiction specialists from Lighthouse Recovery to assist detainees.

There also is a Recovery Pod because of the propensity for mental illness and addiction to be co-occurring, Hain said.

“That intensive addiction treatment from Lighthouse Recovery is not just getting away from their drug of choice, it’s digging in and identifying the trauma that makes them go back to drugs for relief,” Hain said.

In 2020, about 280 detainees went through the Recovery and Mental Health pods, Hain said, and 22 corrections officers received certification as mental health officers because they are with detainees 24 hours a day.

“I wanted them to have that elevated understanding,” Hain said.

Hain also set up a reentry plan with mental health support through Ecker Center for Mental Health on the county’s north side and Association for Individual Development on the south side, Hain said, for when detainees are released.

“We obviously make sure they make the reentry,” Hain said. “Lighthouse continues addiction counseling free to them. Even when they leave us, that continues. And all these programs are costing taxpayers zero dollars.”

Hain instituted additional job training services at the jail, and connects detainees to jobs, further assisting them on their release to live sober, have a means of support and to stay out of the criminal justice system.

“And this is the toughest on crime anyone has ever been,” Hain said. “I’m soft on people.”

In the Kane County Sheriff’s Office’s 2020 annual report, Hain wrote, “I often reflect on the words of Charles Taylor, a 70-year-old Black man from Aurora, in and out of custody 12 times over 50 years who said when [he] left our jail for the last time after experiencing our Recovery Pod: ‘Sheriff Hain, I never realized anyone in uniform ever cared about me until now.’ ”

Recovery after sobriety

One of the people who assists detainees once they are detoxed and receive treatment is Daryl Pass.

Pass works with clients who are in Drug Court, one of the county’s specialty courts, helping them get into halfway or sober living houses. He’s also a recovery coach because it’s not enough for the clients just to be sober. Sobriety means a person is no longer using drugs but recovery means that person is learning how to live without using drugs.

“If you are a dry drunk, nothing has changed – you are what you are,” Pass said, using an expression for people who sober up but don’t deal with their underlying problems.

“But recovery – this is where I work. … When you really start understanding that it’s imperative that you live better – not perfect – but intentional in your actions to be a better person,” Pass said. “Recovery is a beautiful thing. It is transformative thinking and behavioral change. It’s a totally different way of living. ... Life is life. You’ve got to suit up.”

Pass said he understands the challenges as he himself suffered from heroin abuse for 23 years and is now nine years sober as of June 18.

“Since being sober, my understanding of what that really is, and what my issues really were, have evolved,” Pass said. “We are so immersed in the stigma that … they’re losers, dope fiends, addicts, crackheads. Those labels do not apply. These are individuals who struggle and suffer with a substance abuse disorder. … Left untreated, it’s progressive and deadly.”

Pass works for the Kenneth Young Center, leading its Com­pre­hen­sive Addic­tion and Recov­ery Act Project, according to the Kenneth Young Center website, kennethyoung.org, where he also coaches those in recovery. Pass also has a nonprofit, New Beginnings Recovery Mission, with two halfway houses in Elgin.

He said he has seen where people leave prison or treatment without recovery, then pick up where they left off and die of an overdose.

“I’ve seen three people die personally,” Pass said. “They left treatment after 28, 30, 30-plus days, got high and died the same day. I worked at Lutheran Social Services for five years and kept a diary – 94 people died just from substance abuse disorder.”

If you are depressed or thinking about harming yourself, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 and https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ is open 24 hours in English and Spanish and provides free confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones and best practices for professionals.