A mother called the police after her then-14-year-old came home with dozens of stolen vapes, wanting to teach her child right from wrong. But after police came, the situation took a violent turn.
Cathy Austrian hugs her teenage child, who she says was traumatized by an encounter with police in Burlington, Vermont, last spring.Emily R. Siegel
Austrian spent about 15 seconds trying to get the teen to hand over the vape. Then the officers moved in, repeating that they would have to arrest and handcuff the teen if it wasn’t turned over, the body camera footage showed.The officers pinned Austrian’s child to the bed and pried the vape out of the teen’s hand. The teen lunged at them, hands and arms swinging, prompting the officers to force the teen to the ground and into a prone position, the body camera footage showed.
Mental health and criminal justice experts say the majority of police departments, even the most progressive, are still far from implementing best practices — especially when it comes to the thorniest cases, such as those involving children or interactions in which a crime is alleged to have been committed.
“It will give us much better outcomes than the current take-charge approach of the police in these situations, which so often leads to tragedy.” “I think that chiefs look at it like a liability issue, let’s check the box off,” Bruno said. “I’ve literally had chiefs tell me that they’re not going to let anybody tell them how to train their cops. They’ll do what they want.”
In 2013, an officer fatally shot Wayne Brunette outside his parents’ home after his mother called 911 because he was behaving erratically. In response to a lawsuit by the family, the city said that the use of force was objectively reasonable, but later settled the suit for $270,000. The state attorney general declined to file charges against the officer and said the force was justified but the officer’s actions before the fight led to the altercation. The officer did not face discipline from the department, but did receive a letter of reprimand for swearing. The city ultimately settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the family for $45,000.
“I would certainly love them to be more active, given the culture up there and what’s going on,” training coordinator Kristin Chandler said. “I think it could be more helpful.”Austrian said she didn’t hesitate to call the police on her adoptive child — who has been diagnosed with early childhood developmental trauma, ADHD and an intellectual disability — that day in May.
Austrian said the teen’s ADHD medication had recently been increased, they’d received an MRI for a heart condition, and they had been acting both erratic and distant. She also told police the teen didn’t have any weapons. She handed them the bag of vapes and explained that there were more upstairs, the footage showed.
According to acting Police Chief Jon Murad, the police referred the case to the Burlington Community Justice Center, which provides an alternative path to resolving charges without going through the court system. Brian Higgins, a retired police chief in Bergen County, New Jersey, who serves as an expert witness in use-of-force lawsuits, reviewed the footage from the incident and described it as “horrific.”“At some point, they could have thought, ‘What’s the purpose? What are we going to do with this young man?’” said Higgins, who also works as an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Murad also said the department relies more heavily on a different training program, known as ICAT, for its crisis response. ICAT trains officers in how to respond to situations in which subjects are behaving erratically but do not possess a firearm.
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