Policing mental health crises

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

4.4 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What can go wrong when police are the ones responding to mental health crises. And grieving virtually during the pandemic.

The final moments of Stacy Kenny’s life are captured on a recorded 911 call.

Kenny, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, begs an emergency operator to explain why she’s been pulled over.

The officers – Springfield Sgt. Rick A. Lewis and Officer Kraig Akins – smash the windows on her car. They Taser her twice, punch her in the face more than a dozen times and try to pull her out by her hair. She is unarmed and restrained by her locked seatbelt.

Her life ends – as does the call – when she tries to flee by driving away with one of the officers still inside the car. He shoots her in the head.

In 2019, her death in Springfield, Ore., was one of 1,324 fatal shootings by police over the past six years that involved someone police said was in the throes of a mental health crisis.

Investigative reporter Kimberly Kindy breaks down why such fatal shootings of people in mental health crises are on the rise in small and mid-sized cities – and what those left to live with loss, like Stacy’s parents, Barbara and Chris Kenny, hope police departments will change about how they respond to mental-health-related calls.

The pandemic has changed the way we process grief. Animator Kolin Pope and audio editor Ted Muldoon bring us a meditation on Zoom funerals.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From the newsroom of the Washington Post.
0:06.0	Hi there is the Mayor and Marissa Lang with the Washington Post.
0:10.0	Hey it's Dossie, I want to pick your brain on the floor.
0:12.0	Hi, thanks.
0:13.0	Janet Johnson.
0:14.0	This is Post Reports.
0:16.0	I'm Martin Powers.
0:19.0	It's Friday, December 11th.
0:24.0	Today, what happens when police respond to mental health calls?
0:28.0	And grieving virtually in a pandemic?
0:36.0	Just a warning before you listen, this story contains some explicit descriptions and tape of violence.
0:43.0	Stacy Kinney is somebody who lived in Springfield, Oregon.
0:53.0	Highly intelligent person, held two degrees, was able to purchase property with the money she made off the stock market, very close with her family.
1:05.0	And in the last year of her life, she decided to change her name and her gender.
1:12.0	Because as she told her family, she felt like she would be safer if the outside world believed that she was a woman.
1:20.0	I'm Kimberly Kinney and I'm an investigative reporter on the National Desk for the Washington Post.
1:27.0	Earlier this year, Kimberly spent some time with Barbara and Chris Kenney, Stacy's parents.
1:33.0	They told her all about Stacy's interest growing up and about how they bonded as a family.
1:39.0	And just to note, Stacy legally changed her gender, but according to her family, she preferred male pronouns with them.
1:45.0	So you'll hear Stacy's parents refer to her as Patrick throughout most of the story and use he-him pronouns.
1:52.0	He was at a very early age interested in math. He did a lot of mathematics stuff.
1:58.0	He just liked different kinds of puzzles. He liked doing mazes.
	...

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