GLENDALE, Arizona — It’s been almost 7 years since police arrived on the doorstep of Michelle Cusseaux’s apartment.
Her mother had called police to give her daughter, who suffered from multiple mental illnesses, some help.
Instead, Cusseaux was shot and killed by Phoenix police as they say she came at them with a hammer.
“A person with a mental illness," said Cusseaux's mother, Frances Garrett. "You know you kinda come prepared for that. You don’t come with guns drawn, guns at her door. They sent the help that ended her life."
Cusseaux’s death sparked change in the Valley, with a renewed focus on how police handle mental health calls.
“The volume of those types of cases we've gotten have exponentially increased,” said Glendale Police Department Officer Glenn Doerr.
Every department 12 News contacted has at least some Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) trained officers. Those are officers who learn from mental health professionals on how to better handle these calls and get resources to those who may need it.
RELATED: 'They should’ve brought mental health services': Valley man tased while holding baby, bodycam shows
Some departments also used video-based virtual training.
Doerr has spent more than a decade on the force. He says the awareness of mental health cases has increased.
For years Glendale and other police departments like Phoenix have used Virtra Screen to help train officers in a risk-free environment.
“[It] lets us reenact things they will probably deal with on the street.“ Doerr said.
According to Doerr, the system has more than 100 scenarios, each with a multitude of different “paths” each situation can down. He said between 40 and 50 of those dealing with mental health situations.
After going through the use of force guidelines, Glendale police allowed me to run through four of the scenarios.
SCENARIO 1
The first thing that hits you is the speed.
The five screens flash on, and suddenly a man in an abandoned, run-down parking lot was yelling at me.
“You heard me. you heard what you said. You don’t care,” he screamed.
I tried to introduce myself. I tried to ask what’s wrong. I tried to establish some sort of connection.
I was too passive. The man just yelled louder.
“Shoot me, shoot me shoot me now. Huh. You better take me out. You better take me out now “ he yelled.
Before I started this training, I decided to see if I could avoid pulling my gun. After all, I talk for a living. I should be able to establish a rapport. Be able to de-escalate.
I told him (confidently) that I wasn’t going to shoot him. I tried to ask again how he was doing. My mind was trying to think of a connection, but I had no connection with this guy. I didn’t know what was wrong. Just that he was yelling at me. He was mad and circling me.
“You go home to your wife and kids.” The man yelled as he reached for his waist. “You know what? I'm going to see who goes home to his wife and kids.”
The next sound was a pop of a gun as the screen went dark.
The entire scenario took 45 seconds.
I was shot. If it was real life, maybe I would have been killed.
As the lights in the room came on we debriefed with what went wrong.
Safety-wise, I never took command. I never pulled out a Taser or gun, even as the man slowly reached for his waist.
Emotionally though, I never connected with the person in the screen.
“There were different paths," said Glendale police public information officer Officer Tiffany Ngalula. "That’s another thing we try to do (is tell officers to) not repeat themselves."
All I could think of was to ask what’s going on. Officers are told to try and find some connection.
RELATED: For those suffering with mental illness, Phoenix's Crisis Response Team can make all the difference
Scenario 2
I arrive in what looks to be a rundown property. We are outside, it’s sunny with barely a cloud in the sky.
A man is sitting alone on the bench. He seems homeless. He is muttering to himself. Swearing about how people are always bothering him.
“Are you having lunch today?” I ask. Maybe this will have the conversation go in a different direction than my failed last attempt.
The man isn’t really listening to me.
“This is my house, and I’m not leaving and he’s not leaving, and neither is he," the man yells, alone on the bench.
Quickly, he unleashes a swear-fueled tirade at me. I take a step back.
I tell him to calm down and pull out my Taser. The man starts to throw his plates and bags at me.
Admittedly, if I knew how to operate the Taser, I would have fired. However, I didn’t know how.
The threat of the Taser is enough. The man walks away and the scenario ends.
“Try to figure out what is the root of the problem. Sometimes you can’t, sometimes you can” Glendale officers tell me during the debrief.
What I did right was getting my taser out. If I didn’t, I was told the man would have come at me with a knife.
If I fired the Taser after I had plates thrown at me, it would have been within policy.
Again, the hardest part was establishing a connection. How do you talk with someone who may not be in a stable headspace?
How do you improve on something like this?
“Trial and error,” Doerr said.
This is training, after all, but for me at least, it doesn’t come naturally.
SCENARIO 3
I’m told by a radio call that a man is acting strangely. I arrive to see a man, clad in dirty blue jeans. He’s disheveled, staring up at the sky. He’s surrounded by an assortment of cardboard boxes.
“You can’t be here,” the man says. “This is top secret stuff”
I ask him what’s all top secret?
“This is government property. NASA," the man said.
“Oh NASA? What’s going on with NASA?” I ask.
The man then tells me I’m doing a good job, that I “seem to know more than most and to keep up the good work.”
I honestly didn’t know how to respond. I try asking again, what’s going on with the boxes. The man gets agitated.
“You messin' with me?” the man said. “You know who I am. You better back off.”
I apologized and told him I would back up a little bit. Again, I repeated myself. I could not think of anything better to say.
“I’ll kick your ***,” the man said, fists raised.
Again, I pulled out my Taser. I told him if he did not calm down I would tase him.
From that point, the man calmed down. He told me I had “the proper permits” and the scenario ended.
What I lacked, at least with these scenarios is the gift of gab. Maybe it’s the screen. Talking to folks who you don’t understand, makes it hard to establish a connection.
The scenario was technically a success, but it still didn’t feel like it.
SCENARIO 4
The radio tells me there is a call of a suicidal man.
A man in scrubs greets me at the side of a home. He tells me a man, named Kevin has been talking about killing himself. He was off his meds and needed help.
I walk to the back of the home. The man walks is in a blue sweatshirt and athletic shorts. He turns slowly towards me. I see he has a knife inches away from his chest.
“I need to die," the man screams “You can kill me.”
I tell him I’m not going to kill him. I ask what’s going on with his life.
He starts to cry as I pull out my Taser. Worried where he may go with the knife next.
“Put the knife down and everything is going to be okay. We will talk through it okay?” I try to keep my voice calm, but forceful enough to be heard over Kevin who is crying.
“No one wants to hurt you,” I tell Kevin.
It’s all your fault, it’s all your fault,” Kevin said as he turns towards the man in scrubs. He raises his knife, and charges. I fire my Taser. Kevin doesn’t stop. Instead, he stabs the man in the scrubs. The screen again goes dark.
Officer Doerr tells me there's a malfunction. The program registered that I tried to pepper spray, not tase Kevin. It’s not clear if a Taser would have stopped him from killing the innocent bystander.
“There are those instances, where no matter what you have to say, they don’t want to hear it that day,” Doerr said.
Establishing a connection is incredibly difficult. It didn’t come naturally to me. The only time in any situation I felt I had any success was when I pulled out my taser. I had no idea how to talk with someone going through a mental breakdown, where life and death were truly on the line.
Virtual training is not the only training officers can go through.
Weeks later I went to Cottonwood to see officers go through Crisis Intervention Team training.
In the 40-hour training, officers are trained by mental health professionals to do exactly what I struggled to do: Talk to those having a breakdown.
“This is a vital service and training that is needing needed for any first responder, that is going to ultimately interact with somebody experiencing a mental health crisis,” Spectrum's Paige LeForte said. “How to communicate with somebody that is experiencing hallucinations or that is diagnosed with schizophrenia or we are put off by somebody that appears abnormal. That is my day-to-day.”
Ideally, mental health professionals would be there to safely help every one of these mental health calls.
“Just as they aren't psychologists, we're not police officers,” LeForte said.
Officers were taught how to look for any little detail, from dog tags to the type of shoes they are wearing to try and find a connection. To change the subject to de-escalate the situation.
Try to have only one person talking at a time. Try to understand their viewpoint. Empathize and see if you can convince a person to sit down or move to a safer location. It's training that LeForte said has become more and more common in recent years.
“There's a dramatic shift,” she said.
Officers also have more resources. LeForte is part of a local crisis response team that can help officers work through these mental health situations. The hope is it can get people the help they need, instead of putting them behind bars or using lethal force.
“This is the difference between somebody completing suicide or getting hurt in some way versus living and getting a chance to thrive in their life,” LeForte said.
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