Law enforcement decries state hospital admissions freeze

OSAWATOMIE — A crowd of roughly 50 gathered at Memorial Hall Monday to discuss the fallout from the recently instituted freeze on patient admissions at Osawatomie State Hospital.
In late-June, the psychiatric hospital — which services 36 counties, and comprises a catchment area stretching from Wichita to the state’s eastern border — reduced its number of available patient beds from 206 to 146 after commencing a series of building renovations required by federal inspectors.
Monday’s meeting centered on the strain the moratorium — as well as the state’s consistently lackluster mental health funding — is creating on local law enforcement and community mental health experts who too often find themselves without a reliable treatment option for the mentally ill individuals who end up in their custody.
Sen. Molly Baumgardner as well as Representatives Jene Vickrey and Kevin Jones — all from affected districts in the state — also participated in t he forum.
The first speaker, however, was Bill Rein, chief counsel for the Kansas Department of Aging and Disabilities Services, the agency that oversees Osawatomie State Hospital.
Rein updated the audience on the status of the renovation, which he claimed was “slightly ahead” of the scheduled October due date.
While acknowledging that the current freeze has created a backup in the system that forces a burden onto law enforcement that they’re not usually trained to deal with, Rein disputed the rumor that patients linger long on the waiting list prior to being admitted into OSH. “Our average wait for a bed is 23 hours. And 80 percent of the patients on the waiting list are admitted within two days.
“I can say in all honesty, from the depths of my heart and experience, that things have gone pretty well under the moratorium.” But he acknowledged that his isn’t the majority view. “I mean, I don’t mind people being mad at me. And I don’t mind hearing angry voices. What I mind is if we stop communicating.”
The speakers after Rein, though not obviously angry, sustained a message of measured dissent, starting with law enforcement.

A POLICE OFFICER since the early 1980s, Ottawa Police Chief Dennis Butler recalled the halcyon years when the local mental health system was “stable, reliable and predictable” — when an officer, having taken a potentially dangerous individual into custody, had the means to “get that person the help they needed [instead of] having to sit on them for hours or having to release them or being faced with arresting them when they really needed mental health treatment instead.”
By contrast, Butler recalled two recent cases in which individuals were taken into custody and, after a screening by a mental health expert, recommended to the care of OSH. However, OSH, having reached its maximum capacity, refused to admit the patient (i.e. the hospital placed them on a waiting list) — at which point Ottawa police released the individual back into the community.
Officers arrested the same person on a new charge the next day, and had to begin the process anew.
“I run out of things to tell my officers when they keep dealing with the same people who aren’t getting the help they need,” explained Butler.
He recalled a scarifying scene a few months ago in which an evidently suicidal man pretended to have a gun in hopes of luring officers into shooting him. “Our well-trained officers did not shoot him,” said Butler. Instead, the man eventually submitted to a mental health assessment and was sent to Osawatomie. The hospital, however, under pressure, released him after three days. “And I can’t count how many calls we’ve been on for him since.”
(Last year a scenario in Ottawa proved less pleasant still: Ottawa police shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old, who had been treated and released from a psychiatric care facility the day before. In October, the Franklin County attorney decided the officers, who attested to seeing what they thought was a weapon, were justified in their use of deadly force.)
A theme of the evening — invoked repeatedly by Rein and Tyson both — was communication.
According to Butler, though, communication hasn’t been much in evidence during the process so far. “[The] spigot that just opened a minute ago with all this information,” said Butler, referring to Rein’s summary speech on the moratorium, “well, it was not opened when all of this started.”
Echoing Butler’s concerns in their brief remarks were Travis Shelton, police chief of Fort Scott, and Paul Filla, the sheriff of Linn County. In attendance, too, were the sheriffs of Bourbon and Anderson counties, and the police chief of Osawatomie.
“None of us want a Louisiana or a [Tennessee],” said Sheriff Filla. “That’s what we’re up against. Law enforcement doesn’t have the expertise to care for these people. Sooner or later, somebody’s going to get hurt. … These people need help. It’s an illness.”

COMMUNITY mental health centers make up the other half of the front-line effort responsible to mental health crises at the local level.
Bob Chase, the executive director of Southeast Kansas Mental Health Center, expressed at least nominal sympathy for KDAD’s Bill Rein, whose frown lines seemed to lengthen as the complaints against his agency accumulated as the evening wore on.
“You couldn’t find a more dedicated public servant than Bill Rein,” said Chase, offering the beleaguered lawyer a breeze for his sails before quickly subtracting it. “But — you’re working behind the eight ball, Bill. You don’t have the resources. You went into battle with a quarter of a battalion, but you needed a whole battalion. You’re not going to win that way. … The system is in dire need of correction, now.
“It’s a terrible thing when they have to push people out the back door [at Osawatomie] to make room through the front door for people coming in, and that’s exactly what’s happening. I can’t tell you how many clients have been turned around two, three times in the course of three months. You cannot tell me they’re getting adequate service.
“If you believe in prayer,” Chase counseled the audience, “start praying. Because this is a dire situation.
“I don’t mean to get too political here, but there are some issues here of management and responsibility that need to be addressed,” said Chase, as he handed the microphone back to Sen. Caryn Tyson.
Tyson organized Monday’s gathering.
Stephen Feinstein, on the board of trustees at the Elizabeth Layton Center, a mental health center serving Franklin and Miami counties, decried the consistent reduction in state funding, which many in the mental health community believe spells the key difference between a healthy system and an ailing one: “I tell you, honestly, I watch at our board meetings as our reserves dwindle. … You cannot keep asking your mental health centers to do more and more and more without more money, bottom line.”