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Police Advisory Board wants input on BolaWrap, no cops on mental health teams

Buffalo News - 1/24/2021

Jan. 24—Buffalo police should collect data on the city's pilot project using the BolaWrap restraint and provide that data to the Police Advisory Board and the Common Council'sPolice Oversight Committee before that committee endorses employing any more of the devices, the board is recommending. And the Advisory Board wants to have input before any such decision is made.

The citizen board, in a pair of recommendations it will present to the Oversight Committee at 11 a.m. Monday, also recommends the city adopt a diversion model in which 911 calls involving mental health issues are dispatched to a team of mental health and health care experts from a community-based organization or a city department outside of the Buffalo Police Department.

The board notes that, because of the way police are taught, "even trained officers may misunderstand the needs of an individual experiencing a mental health crisis, fail to deescalate the crisis, and respond using unhelpful or dangerous approaches for the circumstance."

The Advisory Board is an independent committee created by the Council to focus on policing and community-police relations. Its recommendations follow September's non-fatal police shooting of a man with mental issues who refused to drop a metal baseball bat.

The board says the city's priority should be "verbal and nonviolent de-escalation techniques as opposed to adopting the use of new types of weapons (such as BolaWraps)." With the city already looking at the device, it recommends that police collect data on the six-month BolaWrap project, including the number of individuals the tool is used on, the race, gender and ethnicity of each and what part of the body is enwrapped by the device.

BolaWrap is a lasso-type restraining device used as a nonlethal means of capturing suspects, police say. The city announced last October that it would start a BolaWrap pilot program for members of the Police Department's Behavioral Health Team to test the device over a period of six months to determine how effective the technology is in keeping residents and officers safe, how easy it is to carry and whether it can be effectively deployed. Wrap Technologies is partnering with Buffalo police to allow the Behavioral Health Team to run the pilot program for free.

In its recommendation for the city to adopt a Mental Health Diversion program, the Advisory Board noted that officers with the Behavioral Health Team, who would be trained in crisis intervention with behavioral health clinicians, are not mental health experts.

But a "diversion program would place the process of working with mentally ill individuals in need of assistance in the hands of professionals with extensive professional training and experience needed to successfully attempt de-escalation and link with long-term services," according to the Advisory Board's report.

"By including officers in this process (other than when an expert determines officer presence is absolutely necessary), the City threatens the safety of individuals and communities, furthers mistrust, and burdens officers with work outside of their realm of expertise," the report said.

A diversion program should include training 911 dispatchers to handle mental health calls and placing mental health professionals in the 911 call center for guidance, as well as community education on mental illness and how to communicate about it, according to the board. The diversion teams should include an EMS worker and a qualified mental health professional, and funding should come from the police budget and not from grants acquired by community-based organizations. Funds could also come from a collaboration between the city and Erie County, the board said.

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