Spurred by Overland Park police shooting, JoCo citizen group seeks answers in Topeka

The tragedy that brought JOCO United’s founders together can’t be undone:

A suicidal teenager named John Albers was shot and killed by an Overland Park police officer inside his family’s minivan.

People who were distressed that a 911 call to check the teen’s welfare could turn so deadly met each other in public hearings and online, realizing they were all looking for some way to respond.

“We developed out of a terrible situation,” JOCO United board member Brad Haag told Topeka Police Chief Bill Cochran in a meeting last week, when a half-dozen leaders of the citizen group took to the road in search of mental health reform ideas.

“Some look at that and say this is a group of hatred,” Haag said. “But it is really a group for advocacy.”

Several of the organization’s members traveled to the state capital to meet the architects of the Topeka Police Department’s Behavioral Health Unit because they want to alter the equation that set up Albers’ death on Jan. 20.

They had heard that Topeka broadly trained all of its officers to respond to people in mental distress, and that it had expanded its collaboration with a local mental health agency to have specialists on call at any hour to work side-by-side with officers to save lives in a crisis.

These are the kinds of ideas JOCO United wants to seek out, learn and bring back to hoped-for conversations with Johnson County’s law enforcement and mental health programmers.

“What advice can you give a group that wants to promote that?” Haag asked.

On the night he died, Albers was 17. He was in a suicidal state, which someone speaking to him online realized, prompting them to call police for help.

Two Overland Park police officers arrived, but before any contact was made Albers got in the minivan, opened the garage door and began backing down the driveway.

One officer who stood nearby drew his weapon.

What happened next is under dispute and is the subject of a federal lawsuit.

The Johnson County District Attorney’s office, based on an investigation by police from several Johnson County agencies, ruled that the officer was justified in firing into the moving minivan, saying he had reasonable fear his life was in danger.

A lawsuit by Albers’ mother, Sheila Albers, contends the officer was in no such danger, was not in the path of the van, was not properly trained and used unnecessary and unconstitutional force.

Several members of the community, distressed by what happened, joined with Albers’ parents, Steve and Sheila, to create JOCO United to advocate for better mental health services and greater transparency in government.

The trip to Topeka helped them imagine a different outcome in future encounters — where officers keep weapons holstered and the scene of the person in crisis is made secure so a mental health specialist standing by can step in, whatever the hour.

“At two o’clock in the morning, who do you call when you have a situation?” Topeka Police Chief Cochran said, describing a dilemma familiar to all police departments. “You have to identify who’s in charge, who’s with behavioral health, who transports — and get it all together.”

What JOCO United is imagining would expand the work already being done by Johnson County Mental Health with multiple law enforcement agencies in the county.

Co-responder programs — where a mental health specialist embeds with police to help with behavioral crisis calls — began in 2011 in Johnson County between the mental health program and the Olathe Police Department, said Jessica Murphy, supervisor of the program.

The program now employs eight full-time co-responders. Olathe and Overland Park police each have two assigned to them. The Shawnee and Lenexa police departments, and the local fire service each have one. Another co-responder splits between a handful of other police departments in the north part of the county.

Johnson County publishes its resources for law enforcement and for the public and has a 24-hour crisis line, 913-268-0156.

“Our motto,” Murphy said, is to provide “the right intervention at the right time with the right person.”

Johnson County Mental Health is adding two more co-responders in 2019 — one embedding with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office and the other adding more help to the northern county police departments.

But those services are limited to 40-hour work weeks, and no weekends. During off-hours, police can call the crisis line and talk to a specialist over the phone, but not in person.

Without someone on hand to make mental health assessments, Chief Cochran said, an officer with a person in crisis often has no choice but to take the person to an emergency room. That could tie the officer up for hours while they wait for someone to become available to help.

And often the person’s mental health episode would subside, leaving nothing for the mental health worker to see to compel treatment for someone who does not want it. And the cycle is bound to repeat.

Getting 24-hour coverage comes at a price, but the Topeka Police Department, Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office and the local mental health agency Valeo are splitting the cost, Cochran said.

The sales pitch, he said, is that police don’t have to make repeat calls for recurring problems with people who don’t get help, and the public isn’t paying for so many indigent emergency room visits or nights in jail.

“It irritates me when someone says the problem is cost,” Cochran said. “Cost is what it is. It’s doing the right thing for the right reason. Someone has to make the commitment.”

JOCO United would like to help rally support for such investments in Johnson County, the group’s president, Mark Schmid, said.

They’ve met with Johnson County Board of Commissioners Chairman Ed Eilert to begin shaping plans on how they might take ideas to that board.

Cochran suggested JOCO United reach out to the Kansas Law Enforcement CIT (Crisis Intervention Training) Council to meet with the region’s specialists in police response to mental health crises.

“We’re not out to judge the police or create a conflict,” Schmid said. The question the group took on is, “How do we channel (the emotions after the Albers shooting) in a more positive way?”

They know that law enforcement agencies value mental health response training and want more co-responders in the field. Their group can stand in support.

Said Schmid: “Maybe that’s where we can carry the water.”