Hawaii Ignores National Survey On Police Burden To Transport Psychiatric Patients
A new national survey finds that law enforcement agencies nationwide are spending vast amounts of money, time and resources on intervening when people have a mental health crisis.
Hawaii is one of two states that failed to participate in about the burden on police officers and sheriffs’ deputies who serve as pseudo street psychiatrists, transporting people with serious mental illness to hospitals for treatment.
Published Tuesday by the , the study surveyed more than 350 law enforcement agencies about the drain on resources and financial cost of responding to psychiatric crises.
Alaska is the only other state that did not respond to survey queries.
Key findings:
- An average of 10% of law enforcement agencies鈥 total budgets was spent responding to and transporting persons with mental illness in 2017.
- The average distance to transport an individual in mental illness crisis to a medical facility was 5 times farther than the distance to transport them to jail.
- Nationwide, an estimated $918 million was spent by law enforcement on transporting people with severe mental illness in 2017.
- The amount of time spent transporting people with mental illness by law enforcement agency survey respondents in 2017 sums to 165,295 hours, or more than 18 years.
- 21% of total law enforcement staff time was used to respond to and transport individuals with mental illness in 2017.
- The average distance to transport an individual in mental illness crisis to a medical facility is five times farther than the distance to transport him or her to jail.
- Law enforcement officers waited significantly longer 鈥 almost 2.5 hours longer 鈥 when dropping a person off at a medical facility than if transporting to a jail.
- Some officers reported having to wait with the individual for 72 hours or more until a bed becomes available.
- Survey respondents drove a total of 5,424,212 miles transporting individuals with serious mental illness in 2017 鈥 the equivalent of driving around the Earth鈥檚 equator more than 217 times.
In Hawaii, when police hospitalize people in crisis who pose a danger to themselves or others 鈥 but have not committed a crime 鈥 those people can鈥檛 be held against their will by doctors for more than 48 hours.
Often those interventions are inadequate.
Honolulu Police Department data released in 2018 shows hundreds of patients go on to repeated hospitalizations and brushes with law enforcement, sometimes just days or weeks after their release back into the public.
The doctor鈥檚 job in these situations is to yank the patient out of the throes of crisis. But for people with persistent mental illness, it can be all too easy to slide back into crisis again.
The hospital tracks thousands of what it dubs 鈥渟uper-utilizers鈥 鈥 patients who come to the emergency department repetitively for reasons including mental illness.
Last year, Queen鈥檚 spent more than $80 million on these super-utilizers. About half of the hospital鈥檚 resources are consumed by less than 5 percent of the patients, according to Dr. Howie Klemmer, chief of emergency medicine at Queen鈥檚
It鈥檚 a complex problem that鈥檚 overwhelming emergency rooms and raising questions about the state鈥檚 lack of mental health resources and the merits of protecting a person鈥檚 civil liberty to refuse psychiatric treatment 鈥 even when they鈥檙e too sick to recognize they are suffering from mental illness.
The Treatment Advocacy Center gives Hawaii a in its analysis of the state’s involuntary psychiatric treatment laws and its efforts to divert people with mental illness away from the criminal justice system.
Read more about Hawaii’s mental health crisis here.
