Tag: ACLU of Michigan

Civil rights attorneys, former law enforcement officials, and mental health experts tell Metro Times that the Warren Police Department’s handling of 26-year-old Christopher Gibson was not only unnecessary but, according to several experts, it was illegal and should have led to charges.

Gibson was “brutally battered, tasered and threatened with a barking K-9” while in custody in December 2022, according to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Michigan. The suit says Gibson, who has schizophrenia, was denied psychiatric help even after his mother pleaded with police to take him to a hospital. Instead, they arrested him and locked him in a cell, where body-cam footage shows officers pepper-spraying, hooding, and repeatedly tasering him as he screamed for help. He was later hospitalized with heart and kidney damage.

Despite the severity of the allegations, Macomb County Prosecutor Pete Lucido, whose office would be responsible for criminal charges, has not taken any action. It’s unclear if Warren police even forwarded an investigation to the prosecutor’s office. 

“I looked at our database. I do not have any information related to the incident you reference,” Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office spokesperson Esther E. Wolfe, tells Metro Times. “Therefore, we do not have any comment on the matter.” 

Warren police declined to comment and wouldn’t even say if the department trains officers in handling people with mental health crises. 

“At the recommendation of attorneys for the City, no additional statement or response is available,” Warren Police Lt. John Gajewski told Metro Times in a written statement.

Civil rights attorney Amir Makled, who has represented numerous victims of police violence, says the video evidence and accounts in the ACLU lawsuit leave no doubt about what happened.

“I hope the officers are charged because the excessive force was a clear violation of civil rights, and it’s excessive force, and it’s totally illegal,” Makled tells Metro Times. 

Makled adds that crisis intervention teams (CIT), which are designed to prevent violent encounters between police and people experiencing mental health crises, are critical to deescalating tensions and ensuring that a person struggling with mental illness is properly treated. CITs typically pair mental health professionals with specially trained officers. 

“It’s most important to have a crisis intervention team of officers who have a really good understanding of mental illness so they can calm the person down,” Makled says. “In this case, there was zero de-escalation done. It was almost done maliciously with an intent to harm this young man who was going through a mental-health episode.”

Makled also says the incident reflects a deeper, systemic problem within Warren’s police culture.

“It’s almost as if the culture of the Warren Police Department has been to be aggressive and abusive, and that’s inappropriate and illegal,” he says. “The city of Warren and those police officers had a choice. They could have tried to help this individual. It was clear these officers were trying to hurt this individual.”

Former Detroit Police officer and attorney David Robinson, who spent 13 years inside the department before becoming a civil rights lawyer, says Warren’s actions were “definitely excessive.”

“They went from 0 to 100,” Robinson says. “There was never any real effort to speak calmly to this guy and try to convince him that they weren’t a threat. They had guns and uniforms. Their voices were stern and insulting.”

He says the incident “was a calamity of indifference, and it was ignorance on the part of the police. It was a lack of training and a lack of sensitivity.”

“We saw the full force brought down on this guy,” Robinson adds. “Had there been some distinction in the use of force on people with mental illnesses, we would have had a different outcome. Gibson perceives them as a threat, but they don’t perceive him as anything but a target. There’s no discretion.”

Gibson’s mother, Awanda Gibson, said she begged police to take her son to a hospital, not jail.

“Had they just listened and handled the situation better, we wouldn’t be here now,” she said in a video released by the ACLU. “They need mental-health experts to respond to these types of situations. It’s gonna keep happening over and over again unless the Warren Police Department changes.”

Instead, she says, officers refused to tell her where her son was. It wasn’t until three days later that she found out he was in the hospital.

Detroit-based public safety expert Darrick D. Muhammad, a former police chief and author of Reform the American Police – Eliminate Slave Catching Tactics, says Gibson’s case is part of a nationwide failure to reform policing around mental health encounters.

“That was disturbing but not surprising,” Muhammad says of the Warren police video. “Police often lack the training and resources to effectively respond to mental health crises, creating heightened risks for those in distress and added strain on law enforcement. Although Crisis Intervention Training aims to improve officer response, it is not universally implemented and cannot match the expertise of mental health professionals. Consequently, many crises result in individuals being denied appropriate care or facing harmful outcomes, such as arrest and the continued criminalization of mental illness.”

Muhammad questions why a police dog was even brought into the cell.

“Why was a K-9 police dog brought to this apparent mental-health crisis?” he asks. “Dogs, once trained by slave patrols to track and viciously maul runaway enslaved people, embody a brutal legacy of control and dehumanization. Today, echoes of those tactics persist, as some modern policing practices continue to mirror the slave patrol system, binding America to the lingering chains of slavery.”

Amy Watson, a Wayne State University social-work professor who has spent decades researching police encounters with people with serious mental illness, didn’t speak on this case but emphasizes the need for alternative interventions. 

“Generally, what we want officers to do is take an approach that uses time and distance and gives the person time to de-escalate,” Watson explains. “It’s about really slowing things down and getting some information. If they have information that a person is experiencing a mental-health crisis, that is an indicator that it’s something that needs to be addressed.”

She says officers must recognize that someone in psychosis may not process commands quickly or they may react out of fear.

“If officers recognize or have information that someone is experiencing psychosis or a mental-health crisis, they should understand that the person might not respond quickly to commands or instructions,” Watson says. “You need to allow the person time to process the information you’re giving them. If someone is really agitated, they don’t process information as quickly, and if they’re experiencing feelings of paranoia, they may react out of fear. We try to get officers to help the person feel safer.”

Watson says cities need non-police alternatives, like mobile crisis teams with proper training, to respond to calls involving mental illness. 

“If someone calls 911, they should be able to be transferred to a place that is trained in mental health,” she says.

In Wayne County, the Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network (DWIHN) operates one of Michigan’s most widely recognized CIT programs. Since 2019, DWIHN has trained more than 1,000 public safety personnel, including 799 officers, 61 executive staff, and 140 dispatchers across 12 agencies. Warren, located in Macomb County, has no comparable countywide program.

DWIHN emphasizes that their model depends on close collaboration between law enforcement and mental health professionals to prevent crises from turning deadly and to connect people to mental health care. 

Experts say these violent incidents go beyond a single department. Muhammad points to the state dismantling its public mental health system decades ago. Former Gov. John Engler closed more than a dozen psychiatric hospitals in 1997, saying that treatment should return to communities. But he failed to provide sufficient funding or infrastructure to replace the hospitals. 

“The burden has shifted to encounters with law enforcement,” Muhammad wrote in his book.

Makled says the Warren officers’ actions demand criminal charges, not just a lawsuit.

“This case was really bad,” he said. “The officers acted as if they were above the law. And so far, the prosecutor’s office has done nothing. That’s unacceptable.”

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