Officer-involved Fatal-incident Reports The 2007-2008 Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury reviewed three Fatal-Incident

The Law Enforcement Employee-Involved Fatal Incident Protocol requires that investigations be conducted "free of conflicts of interest." For that reason, the investigations were conducted by a law- enforcement agency whose employees were not involved in the incidents. The District Attorney’s Office also participated in the investigations and had the authority to investigate separately.

Upon completion of each incident investigation, the District Attorney’s Office reviewed the physical evidence, the transcribed witness interviews, photographs, and all other evidentiary material.

Based on the evidence, the District Attorney’s Office reached its conclusions and issued fatal-incident reports for the cases. In each, the District Attorney’s Office concluded there was insufficient evidence of criminal liability.

The agencies that employ the involved officers conducted their own Administrative investigation of each incident. Administrative investigations seek to determine whether the agency's policies and procedures were followed in the incident and whether there could be improvement in those policies and procedures. They also make a determination as to whether any disciplinary action should be imposed against a particular individual or individuals.

Two of the incidents in this report involved the fatal shooting of mentally ill people. The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department is committed to its Crisis Intervention Training Academy (CIT) and has obtained $360,000 in funding over the next five years from the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to support the program. The initial 32-hour class was started on March 8, 2008. The Sheriff’s commitment to CIT will result in the training of 35 Sonoma County law-enforcement officers twice a year. The overall program goal is to train 350 Sonoma County law- enforcement officers over the next five years. This class deals directly with the problems that officers encounter when confronting a mentally ill person. Conclusions Two of these cases were truly tragic deaths because they involved mentally ill subjects. It needs to be said that in Sonoma County there is no viable crisis-intervention option for the families of these mentally ill subjects. As a result, some of the responsibility for these deaths may be placed on the Sonoma County mental health care system. A domestic violence call involving a mentally ill person is by far the most dangerous situation that a police officer will encounter. An officer is called to resolve this crisis when no one else can. The mentally ill subject is often irrational, experiencing delusions, and acting unpredictably. When there are weapons involved (as was the case here), the risk to the officer and everyone in the vicinity escalates dramatically. If your loved one is wielding a weapon or firing a gun, the consequences are predictable. Police officers are human beings with families who take a sworn oath to protect lives and preserve peace. When they are confronted with violence they are not trained to retreat. They will react and use the force necessary to diffuse a situation safely. In some cases, lethal force is a result of the escalation of events. Saving their own lives, as well as those they are charged with protecting, is their duty. In both of these cases non-lethal force was used, but had no affect on the mentally ill subjects. It was only after the failure of non-lethal force that lethal force was used to protect the lives of others. The Sonoma County District Attorney has concluded that all officer-involved protocols were followed and that no wrongdoing was found. After reviewing these fatal incidents, the Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury concurs with the District Attorney’s findings. The public is understandably shocked and dismayed when it hears about a mentally ill person being killed by a police officer. The thought that immediately comes to mind is that there must be a better way. Sonoma County law enforcement shares this concern. The new CIT program described in our findings is a giant step towards the achievement of a better outcome in these extreme situations. The course outline we reviewed should help our police officers understand and apply techniques to minimize the use of lethal force in these crisis situations.