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SALT LAKE CITY — No one could tell from looking at Clint Anderson that he hears voices.
And because the Cache Valley man's psychosis isn't readily apparent, his perception of a situation could be vastly different than another person's, especially if the other person is a police officer.
Anderson told a legislative committee looking into police use of force Monday that the outcome of an officer's encounter with someone who has a mental illness often depends on the tone of the questioning.
"It's not necessarily what is said but how it's said that's the problem," Anderson told the Administrative Rules Review Committee.
Since the beginning of the year, police in Utah have shot and killed four people and wounded at least one. Those and several high-profile shootings across the country have prompted questions about the tactics police use and the type of training they receive.
"This is not a trial on any particular incident," Rep. Curt Oda, R-Clearfield, said as he started the committee discussion.
Committee members spent most of the time talking about how police deal with mentally ill people on the streets.
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Training prepares officers to deal with mentally-ill suspects
Training to make law enforcement officers more sensitive to explosive situations involving the mentally ill is expanding rapidly, not only in Utah but throughout the world."Our police have not been trained often to deal with those folks in any way other than in a criminal justice approach and now we're expecting them to be social workers," said Ken Wallentine, former Utah Attorney General's Office chief of law enforcement.
Wallentine, who now works as a consultant, said some agencies are teaching police intervention methods that don't involve guns, Tasers or pepper spray. "But (they) rely on the officers' ability to know when to retreat, when to negotiate and, frankly, some days just to walk away."
Some police officers in Utah have gone through a Crisis Intervention Training program put on by several agencies including Salt Lake police, the Utah chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Valley Mental Health.
"You learn what it's like to be Mr. Anderson. You see what it's like to have voices in your head," said Rep. Lee Perry, R-Perry, a Utah Highway Patrol lieutenant who took the weeklong course two years ago.
Most police agencies don't require officers to take the crisis intervention class. It also isn't part of the state's police training academy, though Peace Officer Standards and Training does provide instruction on mental illness, reading body language and de-escalation.
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Autopsy report in Taser death released; officer cleared of wrongdoing
Prosecutors in southern Utah will not file charges against Hurricane City police for the death of a mentally ill man they subdued with a Taser.Recalling the death of a former student, Rep. Carol Spackman Moss, D-Salt Lake City, said the training should be mandatory for all officers.
Brian Cardall died in the middle of a bipolar episode after a Hurricane police officer twice used a Taser to subdue him on a remote stretch of highway in 2008. Moss, a retired high school English teacher, called it one of the most egregious cases in the state.
"That is the example of why it's needed," she said.
POST director Scott Stephenson said Crisis Intervention Training instructors work for various agencies and can't deliver the training as often as the academy would need it. Also, he said the training is more effective for officers who already have experience in the field.
Stephenson also said the cost of the training makes it difficult for small departments, many of which would struggle with taking an officer off the street for a week.
Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Saratoga Springs, said police training needs to go beyond dealing with mentally ill people.
"At some point we need to talk about just dealing with the general populace because that trust has been broken, that faith has been lost," he said.
Madsen said control is the underlying issue for the tension between police and the public. People, he said, feel their lives are at risk when an officer stops them.
"We have to go a lot further than the mentally ill and around the edges," he said. "We have to deal with this, 'Who is in absolute control? The government or the citizen when these situations arise.'"
