Santa Cruz community forum address police dealings with mentally ill

Many people who have had experience with mental illness shared emotional stories at a community forum in Santa Cruz Tuesday night. This comes after the police shot and killed a mentally ill man in October.

Sean Arlt, 32, allegedly tried to break into a home and threatened to kill everyone inside. When the police responded, they found Arlt wielding a rake. Arlt did not respond to officers’ order to drop the rake or their attempts to use a Taser on him. An officer then fired their gun, killing Arlt.

But people at the forum say this isn’t a time for pointing fingers. It’s about coming up with a plan for the community to move forward together.

Sandy Brown came because this sounds too familiar.

“I grew up in a home with a mentally ill mother–paranoid schizophrenic. And it made me really sad to see how the lack of services for her and all of the interactions she had with the police force not trained to deal with that,” Brown said.

But the Santa Cruz police chief said his force is ahead of the training standard in the state.

“We try and train our officers around 80 hours per year. The California Peace Officers Training Commissions only requires 24 hours of training every two years,” Kevin Vogel said.

Still, Brown and others say police training alone isn’t enough.

“We have to do more. We have to have more of a conversation about putting resources into dealing with mental health issues, so the police don’t have to show up when somebody has an episode,” Brown said.

“I mean we cannot identify all people and all their illnesses in Santa Cruz, but more community involvement and interaction with peer facilitators or just more people working with mental health, homelessness and substance abuse issues,” Michael Barney said.

Vogel said he’s not able to discuss details of the Arlt case because it has been handed over to the D.A’s office. But he did say he expects the names of the officers to be released in due time.