Father of Jacksonville man killed by police hopes for reform of mental health laws

Dec. 20--The father of a man fatally shot by Jacksonville police in November wants to see changes in the way Alabama treats the mentally ill.

Brad McBrayer's hope is that his son's story will help save lives, and he is working with a mental health advocacy group to make that happen.

David McBrayer, 24, was shot by police on Nov. 11 after refusing to drop a knife and while walking toward an officer. Police had arrested McBrayer three days before the shooting for allegedly threatening to break a store window with a hammer.

Police noticed something odd about McBrayer's behavior while he was in the Jacksonville City Jail. His family now believes McBrayer was suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness.

"We already knew that this guy had a problem. We had enough to do a commitment on him, but not enough to do an emergency commitment," said Lt. Jon Garlick, the mental health officer with the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office.

But some time before that process began, police called Brad McBrayer in Atlanta and asked him to come pick his son up and get him to a hospital.

McBrayer came that night, but instead of driving directly to a hospital, he decided to spend the night in his son's Jacksonville apartment. His son locked him out, and he spent the next day trying to find him and get him help. McBrayer was shot that night.

Getting help

A petition for an involuntary hospital commitment of a person thought to have serious mental health problems usually takes several days and an order from a probate judge, Garlick said.

In a crisis situation, there are others ways to get someone help, but under state law that person must pose a danger to himself or others, cannot be under the influence of drugs or alcohol and must show the inability to make the decision for themselves as to whether they need care.

If all those stipulations are met, that person can be held for 72 hours for an evaluation, but in practice it's not always that easy, Garlick explained.

The only designated mental health facility in Calhoun County is the 16-bed crisis residential treatment facility in Alexandria, run by the Calhoun-Cleburne Mental Health Board.

Eventually, if everything aligns, Garlick said he can get some of those people into a state-run hospital, but there are too few such beds in those hospitals, both in Alabama and across the country, he said.

In the U.S. there are about 14 beds for every 100,000 mentally ill patients in need of care, Garlick said. Alabama has just 370 or so beds to serve about 250,000 in need of long-term mental health care, Garlick said.

Looking for answers

John Snook is the deputy director for governmental affairs at the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national nonprofit that advocates for better treatment of the severely mentally ill. Snook said that he believes laws meant to prevent unnecessary involuntary hospital commitments, which were all too common at one time, have gone too far.

"I think that the reality is that the pendulum has just swung too far in the other direction," Snook said.

Advocacy Center staff are working with McBrayer to provide possible solutions to what he and the center believe are inadequate state laws related to getting help for the mentally ill.

"Everybody in the room; families, doctors, the police. Everyone is saying it's obvious where this is going to end up," Snook said. "But we have to wait for the person to attack someone or hurt themselves. That's a terrible situation for the family and the person to be in."

Alabama in the 1990s began closing state-run psychiatric hospitals, both to save the state money and to create a less restrictive system of care, state officials have said. That care is now provided by smaller mental health clinics, private hospitals and group homes.

"What we're finding is that it doesn't actually save the state very much money," Snook said.

Snook pointed to a Huntsville man who has been arrested by police more than 100 times for various petty crimes. The man would be committed to a mental health facility by court order, then released once his condition stabilized, but rearrested for minor infractions.

"They cycle around and around and around, and it isn't fair to the mentally ill," Garlick said. "It's terrible for them."

Assisted outpatient treatment programs are court-ordered treatment of those with mental health problems who have a history of medication noncompliance. A judge can have a person committed for care if that person is deemed to have a mental illness that, if left untreated, will continue to deteriorate, and the person is unable to make a rational decision as to whether treatment is needed.

A 2005 report by the New York State Office of Mental Health found that arrests in New York were reduced by 83 percent after patients began taking part in those court-ordered outpatient programs.

Getting people into those outpatient programs can reduce homelessness, improve mental health outcomes and reduce rearrests, according to the center, but that isn't as easy as Snook said he'd like it to be. A person must still pose danger to themselves or others, and be unable to rationally decide for themselves if they need medical treatment, he said.

It's the "and" in that sentence that troubles Snook. Many other states with similar laws allow a person to be committed when either of the two conditions is met, not both, Snook said.

"At the end of the day, it's a really easy fix," Snook said.

Working for change

"David was paranoid. He didn't want help. He just wanted to be left alone," McBrayer said, speaking of his son.

McBrayer said he'd like it to be easier for a loved one to help someone with a mental illness, and he worries too about the use of deadly force by police against the mentally ill.

"The national media is focused on race, but there are larger issues that apply to everyone," McBrayer said.

Once a list of possible solutions to these problems is drafted, McBrayer said he plans to meet with Alabama lawmakers in hopes they'll take action.

"This way people like David will receive treatment and live," McBrayer said.

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