(July 6, 2015) Shane Watkins, 39, was shot and killed by Alabama police last March while suffering a psychotic break after he stopped taking medication to treat his schizophrenia (“Mother seeks peace, answers in son’s shooting death,” Times Daily, July 1).
Watkins’ mother, Darlene, said she tried to get her son committed in the days leading up to the fatal encounter. She convinced Watkins to go to the emergency room for treatment, but he was turned away.
The pair located another hospital, but they were turned away again.
It’s no surprise that Watkins was turned away from the psychiatric hospital. In Alabama, a person must be a “real and present threat to self or others or aggressively suicidal or homicidal” in order to qualify for inpatient treatment.
What’s more, judges cannot commit someone to treatment in a facility if there are no beds. With just 23 public psychiatric beds per 100,000 people, Alabama fails to meet the 50 bed minimum standard considered necessary to provide adequate treatment for individuals with severe mental illness.
Just days after Watkins was turned away from the hospital, officers responded to a domestic disturbance at the home he shared with his mother.
According to witness reports, Watkins answered the door armed with a box cutter and dared police to shoot him. But Darlene insists her son did not attack the officer with the weapon. The encounter ended in tragedy.
“I just can’t believe that he died at 39 and that that’s the only way they know how to handle any situation,” Darlene said. “Instead of working that situation out, they shot him.”
Perhaps if the law enforcement officer had received crisis intervention training (CIT) - which consists of specially trained officers who respond to service calls involving mental illness - Watkins would be alive today. But Alabama does not use the evidence-based practice for reducing tragic outcomes between people with untreated severe mental illness and law enforcement.
Last week, the Lawrence County grand jury announced their decision not to indict the officer involved in fatally shooting Watkins. They concluded there was not probable cause to determine a crime had been committed and that the “actions of the deputy were justified” (“Mental health issues played part in deadly LawCo encounter,” Decatur Daily, July 5).
The Watkins family is heartbroken by the decision.
“I was praying that justice will finally be done and that my son can rest in peace,” Darlene said.
“There should have been a better way to handle that,” said Watkins’ sister, Yvonne Mote. “I was hoping that the jury would have compassion toward someone that had mental illness and what they were going through.”
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