The term “Defunding the Police” has become a political hotbed in recent weeks and months. Some say it means just that, taking money from police and reducing the force. Others say it means reallocating funds to change the way police work.
In this episode we invite Carole Shrader to the show to share some personal experiences of police interactions with the mentally ill and we examine what it means to “Defund”. Maybe the answer is to actually INCREASE funding.
Tune in to this episode to see “Defunding Reframed” Through a Therapist’s Eyes!
Book quoted by Carole in the episode: A Towering Man by Rachael Hays
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Episode #99 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Well, welcome to another edition of throughatherapistseyes. Hello everyone. I’m Chris Gazdik and he is Craig Graves. As always, I am still a mental health and substance abuse therapist. And are you still a coach, sir?
Craig Graves: [00:00:30] Last time I checked.
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:31] All right, got a book coming out soon after a little while, and you have launched with your coaching career to grow.
So we welcome you to, Through a Therapist’s Eyes the podcast, seeing the world through the lens of a therapist and a coach being aware. This is not the delivery of therapy services in any way. Checking out the website throughatherapistseyes.com Where you can get full show transcriptions. And Mr. Neil, our producer has been working hard to get us now closer to having books listed on there that we’ve talked about and, categories that you can search.
So we’re asking now that we’re kind of little bit reborn and refired up here with shows that every Wednesday coming up. we want to ask you to help us grow. You do make the show go subscribe. That puts us on an automatic download. You said that last week, Craig, is that a true statement? When you
Craig Graves: [00:01:21] subscribe, it should download automatically when your shows are released.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:25] I never realized that I’m glad you pointed that out. Sharing episode, specifically with a friend, they’re more likely to listen to it and catch the good shows that we produce. So help us out. And when you go to this new website throughatherapistseyes, hit the donation button, don’t forget that’s out there.
So Craig, this is the human emotional experience, and I think we got some serious things trying to figure out together. What do you think about that?
Craig Graves: [00:01:49] Yep. I think so
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:52] we’ve taken some time off the last few weeks. I told you when we started doing shows, we’re going to kind of, you know, take it a little bit easy after we did those tough ones coming back, you know, we’ve done some, some things on.
mental health tips strategies. We’ve done a show on burnout, really taking care of yourself. And then we did a show on, on nutrition and, and, you know, the cornerstones of what we do in my office were really kind of touched on and, and we’re diving back into a pretty tough one. Today, this is a, this is a tough issue, that we’re dealing with today.
And, and I, and I, and I hope that people are tuning into it because I think that we have, I have a lot of really good ideas, because it’s been a, it’s still, you know, tough time with the pandemic, tough time with policing in our country and race relations. And there’s just a. There’s still a whole lot going on now.
And you know, we didn’t talk about it last week, Craig. I think we forgot, but we made a challenge in the suggestion to our audience to take two weeks off, right. Two weeks off in the news. And so now people can start tuning back in seeing what’s going on and this show might be perfectly timed for that. We had a guest.
That’s going to join us, this afternoon or this evening, while we’re recording it this evening. So it’s whenever you’re watching it, I guess the morning, the afternoon, the evening, or maybe midnight, who knows? is it okay? I didn’t ask you ma’am if it’s okay to use your full name today. Yeah. Okay. So Carol Schrader is with us and Craig she’s she’s with us with, you know, w we sometimes, Carol, we have a, I was told that Carole with an E by the way, too, right?
Yeah, we can’t can’t leave me off. I was, I was told that very distinctly. So, lot of times we’ll have, you know, experts on guests, people written books and all this kind of stuff, and we’ve had, and we haven’t had for a little while. It’s why I’m excited about tonight. Because we have a different flavor.
Craig she’s, she’s coming at this issue of, I titled the show, equipping the police, defunding reframed so that we’re reframing and talking about what is meant by the defunding, the police and the issues with race relations and police brutality, all those things. And seeing, you know, in the news, with, with somewhat of a personal touch.
Craig. So, she gave me some information to kind of introduce you and then, and then Carol, I’ll kind of turn it over to you. Oh no, no, wait a minute. Before I do that, I wanted to start the show off absolutely. By highlighting. and this is just Chris, Gazdik speaking. So nowhere where I’m coming from myself and Craig I’m, I’m wanting to speak for you, but, I want to express that I support the men and women that are, or executing the laws in our nation, in the police.
I think it’s important that we, we recognize that. I think it’s, I think it’s crucial that we understand the mental health. Factors that go into that. you know, we do have an issue in, in the psychology world called group. Think, you know, where somebody starts thinking a certain way and you get great polarization.
And I’m very concerned that we’ve got some, some serious broad strokes that are going out there about our men and women that are policing. You know, be careful about joining the crowd all the time, think for yourself, you know, recognizing that, You know, we have a, a massive, massive issue, I think, with the police and the things that you see in the news where mental health is right smack in the middle of this thing.
I don’t think it’s periphery. I don’t think that it’s, parallel. I don’t think that it’s a minor issue. I think it’s right smack in the middle of, of this thing. And maybe by the end of the night, I’ll be able to make an argument for that. But, you know, I support the men and women in policing and the men and women in our military.
And we learned in, in the Vietnam era, when, when men, mostly men at that time, not as much women at that time when they were coming back from the war and we spat on them and we treated them with terribly disrespectful and horribly. So in many instances and, I don’t, I don’t like watching that. I don’t like seeing that.
people that are struggling with PTSD in the military are accepted now. Well, I believe that that is a major issue in our policing today as well. And these, these men and women that are serving us and helping us in our communities do need the respect and support from our society. I do believe so. I want to start out that way.
so I jump off a soapbox.
Craig Graves: [00:06:18] Keep going, man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:06:20] All right. So Carol’s got some stories though, because we also have the other side of mental health that also has a great problem in, in how to, how to handle it. And, and a lot of times police circumstances are coming right up against this tough as nails issue with, with mental health.
So Carol, welcome to throughatherapistseyes. I am understanding that the, you kind of come from this whole angle as a white middle class, middle aged woman. I might say Craig, on a zoom link, she looks quite young. I don’t know what middle aged is. I’m with you though. Two beautiful grown daughters who keep her young and keep her searching.
youngest is, youngest of six kids with loving parents is a foundation that’s kept, Yeah. Kept you close as a family, even as a, your parents have both passed, raised in an assembly of God church, the created a, a culture and an attitude of trusting God and searching for the truth and guidance in the Bible.
the age 11, her older sister ran away and when her parents finally found her, she was in the midst of a literally Craig, a psychotic break. ended up hospitalized. we did a show Craig on the nuthouse. Remember that it ain’t no nuthouse, it’s a place where people do get well, but she was hospitalized, ended up in family therapy with her as part of her process.
And that experience started the journey that Carol says, facing the best, the beast that has mental illness and Carol, I can appreciate. That comment of it being a beast, because it does take over people’s lives. I’m passionate about mental health. So through the fan, through the years, other families have dealt with issues of bipolar two depression.
and in, in, until in your early thirties, you’re always had a fear like it was in your mind. I’d be curious to hear what you mean by that. that you can lose touch with your own reality, like, like your sister did. but you were successfully raising your own children to appreciate the fragile balance of mental health and, and to take measures, to give yourselves the best opportunity to stay in a healthy mindset, which is what I’m all about.
In my practice. So mental health was not foreign to you, and it also was not taboo. It was okay to talk about, to deal with and, yeah, something that affected people that you loved and respected. And because of this, you don’t go down on it. You deal with it through a nonjudgmental lens and, trying to give, you know, an opportunity to, to, to have that sentiment be spoken out.
To, you know, whenever you have an opportunity to do so. How did I do ma’am? Who is Carol and what I missed?
Carole Shrader: [00:08:46] I th I think he did pretty good. That kinda sums it up. You’d mentioned how you elaborate on my fear. Of myself, having him maybe having a mental illness or having a psychotic break. And when I was 11 years old and I think that’s such a crucial age anyway, for a child to have something traumatic happen.
Yeah. And I just remember so well that being in the emergency room with my sister and she, it was so surreal because she was, Just in a fantasy world. And I just remember her talking to me and I didn’t realize it was psychotic break. I just thought, Oh, this is like, cool. Make-believe. and then of course, I realized as I got older, obviously it was mental illness and what it meant to, to kind of lose yourself in that.
And, and so it just was something that was always in the back of my mind. Like I said, dealing with the beast that has mental illness. It’s it’s like always lurking there in the dark. And, and is it gonna affect me? And, and it wasn’t until, like I said, I was in my early thirties, I finally started feeling like I was safe that, you know, that I wasn’t cause I, I do, I have the mood swings and you know, I have some minor depression type situations, but I finally started to realize maybe I was going to be okay.
And what I will preface that is I’ve always. Valued, you know, getting good sleep, watching whatever medications I take. I mean, all of those things because I’m not a doctor, but I realize that it appeared from my family history that I, you know, share some of that. I must be predisposed because I do have number, you know, I have a couple of family members that are bipolar.
You don’t have family members who deal with severe anxiety. And, you know, and things like OCD and debilitating type conditions, you know, that require medication, that and therapy. And, and so,
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:41] yeah, well, you know, you know, what’s funny, Carol, I’ll just jump in and, and, and, and honor that. Because, you know, this is, this is a, the particularly the segment is all about you and what, and the experience, you know, that you can speak to, that, it really is like the beast, you know, I mean, and, and, and, and there is a predisposition and, and people, people really are fearful of this, which is part of what we’ve tried to do on this show.
Right? Like to break down the myths and stereotypes and stigmas that are out there and, You know, you might know a whole lot more about it than I ever pretended to remember to know, because when you’re, when you’re living this, this stuff, as you mentioned, OCD and bipolar, and, you know, I mean, there’s, there’s a lot that, that, that has been in around in your family as what I’m hearing is that does that.
So
Carole Shrader: [00:11:25] that is a, and that’s, and, and I’ll even say, I, by no means consider myself a mental health expert. I mean, that’s why I value the opportunity. I’ve wanted to share my story. And I’ve wanted, you know, I have a compassion for issues and I, I just want to normalize the conversation. Like I said, I call myself, you know, a middle aged white woman and, and, and, you know, it’s, I, I just, I feel like if I just talk about it and I ha you know, I have, have my sister, I have a sister that, We, you know, they’ve shared some stories here lately and specifically talking about, you know, the subject that the defunding, the police, that, that terminology.
And I like how you’re saying, you know, we address it as, you know, re equippting, you know, reequipping, but she’s, she, has dealt herself with some mental illness and, and, you know, close family member of hers is still, you know, dealing with mental illness and. I know I have a more progressive thought I’m on a journey and that’s what the real estate now.
And in it in a podcast is going to go out in the public. If I say something today that 10 years from now, someone’s going to judge me for, I’m going to just say right now I’m on a journey and I’m discovering. And I’m just saying what my experiences are and how I feel. And so those are things that I’ve been sharing with this.
A sister of mine who. Didn’t quite have an understanding of what I meant when we talked about defund, the police. And so I love how you kind of changed the terminology a little bit, because I think it’s important to have terminology that people understand and reequipping, it actually might relay the information better to someone like my sister, because.
Once we started talking about some circumstances and about defunding the police. And then I went, might go ask to have a story to share, in fact about her going to the emergency room with a family member. that kind of was an epiphany moment with her in regards to his mental illness. So I, you know, I tried to explain to her that defunding, the police, we’re not taking money away, but.
You know, when it comes to mental illness, there is not a support system necessarily within the police department. And, and so she, close family member of hers, he was a young man he
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:45] dealt with, well, I guess, I guess real quick, let me jump in there, Carol, before you, before you go to that, to say that, you know, I, I really appreciate what you’re saying there, because.
We really all are all on a journey. And I think our nation is on a journey and you know, it’s funny because we think of, you know, we have such a short term memory. Craig, how long has our country even been in existence?
Craig Graves: [00:14:10] A little over two hundred years.
Chris Gazdik: [00:14:12] Okay. There are countries that have been in existence times 10 or 20, or shall I say 30 of that yard.
Right. And so I think that we have to recognize where we are as a country with this issue. And these types of issues as well, the progress that has made the progress. That’s not enough. There’s a lot of people still hurting. There’s just a lot of people really still in pain and anguish and have trauma and mental health in the middle of that.
And so we recognize it that way Carole about, like you said, if you say something 10 years from now and as different from now like that you don’t know. That needs to be okay. It needs to be part of what we’re doing. We say let’s make things better. Like let’s, we’re trying to grow as a person. What we say with our show, Craig, right?
Let’s figure this thing out together. We were trying to grow like, the tagline of Metrolina psychotherapy associates, where I work is working with you towards emotional growth. But yet we think about it in such a black and white term. And I don’t mean racial, I mean, concrete or, you know, absolute terms, it’s it doesn’t need to be that way.
So I really appreciate that, Carol.
Carole Shrader: [00:15:26] Yeah. And that’s the thing that I feel like that I tag growth in my eyes being open. And in that I, I I’ve always had the feeling, with that, that it’s not fair to public officials, whether it’s the police. Or, you know, or even, you know, therapist and they, there needs to be proper training and support networks for the people dealing with the mentally ill as well.
You know, mentally I’ll need support and need networks with people, dealing with them. Also need that support and the pool. And it’s like the police, it’s not fair. I feel like it’s not fair to them. Police to be put in situations that they’re not equipped to handle.
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:09] Apple, listen, if you are coming across lost mental health, but, you know, can we make that point Carole?
If you’re a parent with a child and you identify significant mental health issues, and I’m not talking about some of the basic things either because we talk about mental health, we all have mental health. W w I think you can agree with me when we’re talking about this, where we’re talking about, you know, maybe we almost need a different term, like, you know, significant mental health issues, you know, that, that need to get identified, that, that lead to like chronic hospitalization and chronic bipolar disorder.
And, you know, addiction is a terrible beast. Craig, we’ve talked about on this show a whole, a whole lot, you know, because these, these are, these are, these are things that when you come across I, as a therapist, look, I’ve got to take care of myself. You as a sister, as, as you say, I would imagine. I need to take care of yourself when you’re supporting and coming in close contact with this, you have to debrief, you have to take care of yourself.
And, when you come across it professionally or personally, it doesn’t matter. A matter of police officer come across it a lot. I would say
Carole Shrader: [00:17:11] raw. And I’m sure. I mean, because if you consider, you know, just doing some research before I talked with you tonight to have some background, I am not an expert. I didn’t want to be somewhat informed, but you know, the statistics, I looked at that 15 to 20% of people in our prisons have serious mental illness and anywhere from like 50 to 65% have mental health problems.
That way, that police officers aren’t coming into contact with mentally ill people on this with this type of statistics,
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:44] 50%.
Carole Shrader: [00:17:46] Yeah. And so, you know, it’s like, and that’s the thing, even. So even if 15 to 20 are severe, if you have 50 or more, that hurts mental health problems. As we’ve seen too much here lately, especially, and then I even, you know, have experiences from years ago that a small situation can escalate.
So even if someone has, it’s not a serious mental health problem, it’s still something that can escalate. so there’s so much opportunity for things to go terribly wrong.
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:16] You know, Craig, Craig crunch, crunch, crunch those numbers for a second. Let me say this to you. See what you think, judge and Carol about what you just said, Craig.
So. Look, 50% of the people probably have some sort of mental health and I’m going to say substance abuse issue in, in their, in their life. That doesn’t sound too crazy to me. Does that sound crazy to you at all?
Craig Graves: [00:18:39] I have no idea.
Carole Shrader: [00:18:42] You got called was it said, you know, jail or inmates.
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:44] Okay. Well, think about this though.
So we’ll just, we’ll just say that doesn’t sound crazy to me at all in every person you shouldn’t, it. A police officer comes in contact with, does go to jail. Right. And there’s a lot of people that have, you know, are actually, I said that wrong, everybody that, that has mental health issues that police come in contact with, don’t go to jail or prisons.
So there’s a higher, there’s a, I would submit it T there’s a high percentage of people that they do come in contact with that. Have it, we just add on 15 or 20% of that time, I was just thinking about how like 60, 65, 70. Maybe as high as 75% of the time when they’re coming in and pretty significant contact that probably has something to do with mental health or substance abuse.
Is that, are you following me when I’m saying that? Does that sound kind of legit possibly?
Craig Graves: [00:19:36] possibly. So yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:38] a lot. And I’ve never thought of that before. But that’s all a lot. Listen, when I say mental health is key front center in the center of this thing that I think that leaves, I think that’s pretty significant factor of that.
So I don’t know that was just blowing my head away. And, and I
Carole Shrader: [00:19:54] think, and you know, too, as a therapist, I’m a substance abuse therapist from what I’ve read it, it does seem like the problem is worse now than it’s been. You know, five, 10 years ago with, and so it, I can see where that number would be so high and who people and the place are coming in content.
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:12] So well, we’ve got a lot to cover and I’ve took you away from your story. What happened that you wanted to share,
Carole Shrader: [00:20:16] okay. Back. Oh, police interaction. So. Oh, I have a family member for a young man he’s bipolar, has substance abuse issues that more than likely stemming from self-medication and growing up. And, and so he, he had, had, I believe he had been drinking and he was apparently suicidal and, a family member, another family member that he was with in the home, they were kind of at their wit’s end and scared for him that a situation that it escalate, which is very common with the thing with having family members that are mentally ill.
When you see them kind of going down a slippery slope. There’s first, there’s a tingle that something’s not quite right. And then it normally you’re like, it gets you get to the point where this, this isn’t good and I can’t handle it. You try. And the last thing you want to do is to put them in a situation where you have to call in someone, the police or escalate.
Well, in this situation, there was a danger for this young man’s life, this family member. And so 911 was called, well, what happened. Was once 911 came in and then, and the police came in and he was upstairs and they went upstairs to this room and he had a knife and the knife was, my understanding is this, a knife was at his throat and when the police officer went to subdue him or interact with him, everything happened pretty in a pretty crazy manner.
So I don’t know exactly all the details, but there was a knife it was at his throat, the police officer in the interaction. I don’t know if he was actually even cut, but this young man went towards the police officer with the knife. And so finally they took him away and I’m pretty sure they probably even took him away.
And he may even been arrested that night, but they ended up charging him. With assault on a government official, which is a severe charge. It’s a really, that’s, you know, that’s a charge that, that is used to show someone that very disrespectful for government official. And that’s an order we need to keep order.
And I appreciate it. That that is a charge that’s available, but it just baffled me. That when you have a young man who’s not in his right mind, not sure, capable of being responsible for his own actions at that time, because he was pretty much out of his mind. And it’s the interaction with this knife was not that him trying to attack somebody.
It was him. He was trying to take his own life. And so that in itself was, you know, interaction, I feel like is one that had this been someone that had a crisis intervention team, what they call the CIT. And we might, you know, get a chance to talk about a little bit later, but that this wasn’t a team that came in with a social worker and this wasn’t a team that came in and tried to deescalate.
they came in full force. You know, power blazing to, to subdue the victims, to Sue the bad guy is how you stream it. And, and so then, and once that happened, then, this year families left in a position where they w w they don’t know what to do if this person gets in trouble later, because they don’t want to call the police.
They don’t want to ask for help because they’re afraid of what’s going to happen.
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:44] White coats come and take me away or I’ll go to jail charge and I’m already suicidal. And, emotions are raging. Chair of, trauma is, is, is engaged. you’re right. When you say there’s a lot happening all at once, that might be, an understatement.
Yeah. Wow. So,
Carole Shrader: [00:24:06] so then sadly, the same young man, he ended up going to jail for a few years. He was released from jail and after he was released from jail, there was no support network. you know, he, he, when the family was working with him to have a home plan, if, if they were scrambling to get a home plan that could be approved, they didn’t want to prove a particular apartment.
Cause it didn’t have this certain thing it needed. But if that apartment wasn’t approved, then they were going to put him on the street or in a homeless shelter. And it wasn’t impossible transition from jail. Once he got out, there was no support network for him. There was no. You know, especially, you know, there to get him into some type of therapy.
and then he ended up with, in a position where he, once again, the, you know, the family was concerned about him.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:57] Okay, well, hold on, hold on their books. So, so you’re kind of talking, this is now, you know, what a couple of years later after, and, you know, in life has kind of continued on. I mean, and I think that the thing that I want to kind of point out there is when you’re, when you’re dealing with this kind of stuff, like you got to understand this isn’t a, a one off event.
This is not a bad moment. This is a, this is a process that people go through. Craig you’re, you’re, you’re usually kind of up on the news. Do you, do you remember in, the state of Virginia, there was a Senator or someone? and I think it was Virginia that had a son and they had chronic mental health issues and they were constantly trying to get treatment and whatnot, and probably about four years ago.
It’s ringing a bell for you at all?
Craig Graves: [00:25:41] No, not at all.
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:42] Not at all. So like four years ago or so, you know, G yet another one of these events kind of that you’re kind of talking about Carol, occurred and it ended up being a, a suicide, you know, and the center, I mean, it’s a center, you know,
Carole Shrader: [00:25:56] Senator Creigh deeds, his son stabbed him.
Is that the one you’re talking about? Maybe.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:01] So I think so that does sound familiar. So my point there is though, I mean, this is a family that has got resources. This is a family that, you know, you would assume can, can exit engage treatment and whatnot, but they had it. They had an, a, a terrible scene such that you’re such a, you’re kind of describing.
Carole Shrader: [00:26:18] Well, it’s interesting. You say this is a well off family, cause you know, I have another example. I don’t know the details on this, incident that happened, but, I had a neighbor and I, you know, my, neighborhood, it’s a pretty nice neighborhood and gated community golf course. And. And so people just accepted they’re, they’re pretty well off in there.
And there there’s one of my neighbors and she’s very open about the struggles that our son has and so that it can be something to help others. And. She was in a situation where she had to, and she had to call the police or call assistance before. And this was, so this last time that she had to call for assistance and she, I, she just had posted something on social media.
And I reached out to her, you know, in regards to how she was treated, she was treated like a criminal. Her son was treated like a criminal and, and, and it’s not even a case where he was like, brandishing a weapon or getting really violent. It’s just that it would just come in with no compassion. And it’s the same thing.
It’s I think this is a situation where it’s not, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, you know, you don’t have, if you have police officers responding to a scene, someone in, in the midst of a mental illness, you know, episode mentally, all episode, it it’s, it’s not good. It’s going to end badly. It’s you know, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor who you are.
Chris Gazdik: [00:27:44] Well, it occurs to me as you come in in, on the scene, it might not be without compassion, a good way of saying it might be on complete guard with fear and concern for what you’re coming in to deal with.
Carole Shrader: [00:27:58] Yeah. And I guess that’s a good way to word it because I don’t want to speak to the heart of, you know, that I’m sure people go in and they have compassion.
And
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:07] fear.
Carole Shrader: [00:28:07] Yeah. And there’s fear and, and, and rightfully so there are such things or dangerous situations. And that’s what I said. I don’t attest to have, have all the answers and, and these are really hard problems to solve, but I, we’re not going to solve them if we don’t start making the efforts. And, and I think for me, what I can offer is.
That might just my experiences and the fact that I said the most important thing is, you know, people who are mentally ill and people with addiction issues and you know, better than me, I’m assuming there that does that have a DS nine code or, you know what, yeah, that’s mental illness want to make sure I didn’t want her.
And the thing is. I’m not, I’m just not geared to be an, a judgmental person. I just am the type of person that sometimes to a fault will give people the benefit of the doubt. And I’m glad I’m that way, you know, because I, you know, having people that I know and I love and deal with, even specifically addiction, if someone that has bipolar, I think that there is some chance that they’re going to have a little more compassion.
You know, judgemental people for someone with bipolar, maybe, but someone with addiction, they’re just ready to throw them out and dismiss them more so, and it’s a vicious cycle and I know it’s very frustrating dealing with someone with addiction because you want them to get help and they don’t want to get help.
And, but it’s, it’s interesting. Cause it’s saying young man. You know, we get five years down the road, he gets released from prison. He, starts to spiral the family’s afraid a family member afraid to call the police or what to do. Things got so bad and they were so concerned. They took him to an emergency room and, he was having, some issues with, he, he was finally at a point where he wanted to get help.
He thought he was going there to get admitted. He was willing to, he was willing to have some kind of assistance. And he went in there and basically by the time he was dropped off in the emergency room and, you know, someone went around the parking lot. 30 minutes later, they had him out on the sidewalk.
They didn’t do anything for him. So when the family member took him back in and said he needs help, he needs some medicine. He, in this particular case, he had some feeling of like itching. That was really bad. And the family member said, you need to give him something. And the doctor said, well, let me look into that.
That should work. And the doctor, you know, left, didn’t come back, the nurses, some ended dismissing, and don’t give him anything for this, this specific itching. And of course, this is a short version of much longer story. When all of a sudden the, the person that was with this young man, they look outside.
They’re five and six. Please stand outside the door. So finally, they’re like, you know what? Let’s just go. If you’re not going to give them the medicine, that’s fine. Let’s just leave. So he’s there needing help, willing to accept it. And the police show up outside. And so they walk out the doors, the police follow them out the door.
And then when they get in the car to leave, there’s a place that follows him down the road that stops them to check their credentials and license and stuff. But the young man wasn’t driving, but the other thing,
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:18] wow.
Carole Shrader: [00:31:20] You know, that was a situation kind of a wake up call with. Oh, So, you know, when this person that I spoke to about like, you know, with the police and, and, and adjusting funds and, and having funds for more social, and interact, social work type interaction, they’re like, I can see that now because instead of having five police out there, there could have been a T a crisis intervention team.
That could have spoke for this young man deescalate. And in this case, the situation really wasn’t even escalating except for the family member trying to advocate for, for this young man who was, who
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:55] needed help. Well, what kind of emotions and what kind of a do you say? So you’re talking about your sister there.
Carole Shrader: [00:32:04] Sister was there with this family member.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:07] Okay. And so how do I want to get at that? So you, you obviously weren’t there as what I was getting at. So, but do you know of the emotions they were feeling and what they were kind of reliving? Should I say, or yeah, years later we’re in this situation and it reflects back to that from before in the here and now and all of that plays together.
So I guess I’m trying to get at like, well, what was the, what was experienced by
Carole Shrader: [00:32:35] my sister? She, she was the one that was with the young man, the family member and. That she went into, she was hesitant because of what had happened to him before, to even call anybody, to bring him to the hospital, to do anything.
But because she was at, you know, just at the end of her rope, didn’t know what to do. And he was willing and expecting that this was going to get him help. So she, you know, she’s like, okay, we’re going to do this. And she went in. So once we were, they were in that room. And they pretty much just looked at a drug addict and kicked him out the door.
They weren’t even exploring the option that maybe this is that one in a hundred time that this, this person is going to get help or ask for help drug addicts recover. I don’t know the statistics you would know better than me. And it may be 95%. Don’t recover. I don’t know, but we’re going to throw away what if it is the one, I mean, even Jesus to get all my, you know, religious soap box, you know, it’s like, So he went after the one lamb that was lost.
And if we can create a system in this case, if there had then suddenly it’s like, okay, we have a drug addict. Yeah. ER, or that is a mental illness. We’ve determined that that is what it is. So you’re going to treat this with a crisis intervention team to at least explore the option of maybe this was the one in a hundred that’s in here to get help and not to get drugs.
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:01] Well, and let me speak to that for a moment, you know? Cause cause, cause Carol, you touch on something there. That is very, that’s very important. from very early on in my career. You know, I hated the notion as I was learning about drug and alcohol addictions. See that back in the nineties, the eighties and nineties, Craig, I think we’ve talked about early treatment where it was very confrontive and very forceful and very, you know, break them down and break the denial.
I remember how we’ve kind of talked about that. Well, there there’s this expression, you can’t lead a horse. To water, you know, you can’t get a horse to drink and whatever
Craig Graves: [00:34:36] you can lead them to the water, but you can’t make him drink.
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:37] Right. That’s the expression that I’ve always heard and rivaled all the way back when I was a DUI instructor, I was a little bit more idealistic than I have than I am now.
And a little bit more naive, but I still believe what I was thinking back then, because that drove me nuts. And I added a line to that phrase because I, it bothered me and I, and I would say, yeah, you can’t, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink, but you can make them thirsty. Yeah, you make them thirsty.
And I believe that to this day, and, and there’s a, there’s a certain amount of jadedness. There’s a certain amount, you know, there are clinicians that just cannot stand to work with it with substance abuse in my field where they don’t, or they don’t like to work with, you know, borderline personality disorder folks, you know, or, or, or different things that are frustrating because, because people do relapse, people have a hard times, you know, Things that things that people really struggle with and fall back into bad behaviors with, you know, it’s a tough issue, but pedophilia, right.
Or sex addiction, you know, there’s these issues that people are just like freaked out about weirded out about and drug and alcohol addictions is a big one of them in the. Legal profession and in the first response profession and in the mental health and therapy profession ourselves. And, and, and, and if you, if you begin to realize that people can get well, and we began to wrap our conversation around re equipment, And, and dealing with our own feelings of frustration or our own feelings of fear about mental health, our own feelings of anger and fear towards somebody who’s an addict because they seem like really terrible people.
I mean, they’ll steal your grandmother’s TV, but you know, Craig, if you think about our show and we did the book, fearless, Jim was with us. Hey Jim, he’s in Nashville. Now you remember Jim. And, and how that show ended. I get, I get, get stories like that. I guess, listening audience in my office that I want you to understand that I try to convey, like, you know, Jim got his wife back after being divorced a couple of times, at least once and got a promotion for his job.
He was five years sober from cannabis addiction and, and, and, and he, and he shared very courageously on our show, man. I don’t know how much you remember his story, Craig, but I mean, he was living in garages and he was kind of a bad dude and he got well, and we really don’t know Carol, as you say, you know, like when is that moment that somebody gets well, when is that event where it snapped some and they, and they, they never use again or whatnot.
Carole Shrader: [00:37:32] I don’t think that’s the point is that they’re not going to find that opportunity unless there are people in the profession that can help them ready to, to at least give, you know, a couple of minutes to whether this is that moment. And I think in this particular instance, when my sisters with this, this family member.
Do you have someone in this situation advocating for this young man and she couldn’t get anywhere with them. Where are people that don’t have someone advocating, but, you know, it’s like why it’s just, if there had been someone to just say, you know, to consider that he could maybe he’s ready to accept some help now. and it, It just makes me sad and you know, I don’t have, like I said, I don’t have all the answers.
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:22] I will not, no, I will say this. There’s also the other side of the coin. Okay. I’m not a passive as therapist. I tell, I tell this to people in my office all the time. Like you’re not going to find a lot of passivity.
you know, and when I’m working with you in a therapy process, I’m also challenging you, right? The responsibility is yours. The responsibility is for you to create that moment where you get well. And so there’s a lot of personal accountability, which is part of what goes into policing. You know, we don’t like to talk about that difficult part, but people do need to be held accountable.
Their actions are now they’re operating just because you have addiction. Doesn’t mean you can steal your grandmother’s TV, and I’m going to say, Oh, that’s okay. You have addiction. So, you know, I hope you enjoy the
TV. I hope you
hope you get well, next time when you steal the car or whatever, like, Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, it doesn’t work that way neither.
Right. So, and that’s where, you know, that’s where that, that grinding in our society kind of goes back. Just. You know, your audience can’t see me, but my fists are just grinding amongst each other because you know, the, the, the, the compassion and the wellness that is possible in any given moment, coupled with the personal responsibility that somebody has and guests who is right smack in the middle of that police officers.
Carole Shrader: [00:39:37] Absolutely
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:38] not a place to be. I’ll tell
Carole Shrader: [00:39:39] ya. I think just like you said, you know, it’s like at what moment is someone ready, you know, specifically for, you know, In regards to addiction, where there is some type of, of a recovery. Well, and, and even with mental illness, it’s kind of the same situation that there are people who are mentally ill, who unlike drug addicts who need to quit taking drugs.
There are people who are mentally ill that need to realize they need to take the drug. So I think there’s an epiphany moment for both those groups of people and the more people who are trained. To recognize the moment where someone might be able to do that or where they are trained to bring these people to the water, to make them thirsty.
The more opportunities we have for people to, to be able to get better. Because I, I think that sometimes it is just that moment. If you don’t catch somebody right at that moment where at their rock bottom, they’re ready to do the hard work. And to just flip that switch. In, just in this case, I don’t know if this could have been that moment for this, this young man and the emergency room, you know, but it could’ve been that if someone had that discussion to see if he was ready for the hard work or, you know, are, do you need help?
Do you recognize that. And he could have said yes, go on into a program in a perfect world. And, and, and things gotten better. It, that may not have been the case, but, you know, possibly if someone had given him that opportunity, it could have been. So I think that’s the important of, of having more people trained to, to work within these situations and to, to recognize, you know, how to help, help people your would give me a founder, the funding then that’s where
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:25] funding is always.
Yeah. We try to get to that, but Carolyn, forgive me if I go too, too direct, but I can’t help it sometimes. It’s what I do. Can you speak to. Just kind of, you know, as a family member and as you shared yourself with, with mental health challenges and whatnot, like, you know, kind of watching this, what do you, what do you go through kind of watching these events?
Because I’m sure we’ve talked about two now, but there’s probably been several, you know, that you’ve seen just with this one family member, but what are you experiencing it with it from your angle?
Carole Shrader: [00:42:00] So there, there are a lot of different, so specific to my family. It even with this young man he has, with addiction issues and, you know, in that case, it just makes me sad.
And, and, and some part of me has to put I’m the type of person that, when there’s a crisis, I don’t, I, I don’t react. I’m not real emotional. I’m just like no nonsense. And when I was younger, I used to think maybe something’s wrong with me. I should be crying right now. Like I have, you know, even like with this young man when he’s got in trouble and things happen.
And instead of someone’s telling me, instead of crying about it, I’m just like very stoic. But I, you know, I just kind of put up walls. But on the inside, it just makes me feel hopeless because, you know, I don’t, I’m not sure how I can help. And then when I have, you know, I can’t guide other family members on how they might want to deal with with the situation and then even, you know, for, for family members,
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:59] that sounds like a certain sense of helplessness.
Carole Shrader: [00:43:02] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and then, you know, there’s another family member as that dealt with situations that within his family unit. That he wasn’t able to, live peacefully. And, and so he was in a situation where the family, you know, that family unit, that they were like, well, being in this home and may not be a good situation.
And you know, you never want to say that, that you have to put one of your family members out of the home. Or, or that family member in this case wanting to leave and then not knowing where they’re going. so it’s all of those situations make me sad, but it also makes me want more. If there were just more ways to help or more options, I just feel like I’m wanting to give advice, but I don’t even know what to say because you know, it’s, and because there aren’t a lot of options and I feel for people like yourself who are in, in this business, Because they’re, you know, if there’s someone who’s ready.
You know, to go into, it’s not like you can just say I’m a drug addict. I’m ready to get clean. I want to go into a program. It’s not that easy. It doesn’t work like that. You know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:14] go ahead, Craig. Okay. Are you go? Okay. And then I’ll come over to you because you know, you, you, you, you we’ve, we’ve talked about on the show, you know, from a parent perspective.
Now you’re not a parent, I guess you’re talking about your family, but you know, the, the, the best thing that I’ve gotten to, because you’re right, there’s a grind there too. You know, if I take my finger, my hands again, and grind, you know, accountability of what somebody is doing with their behavior. You’re in mental health versus the compassion for, for, for work with them.
And, and, and we had a lady named Linda hacker that was on our show, a few, well, a couple well months ago. And she, she had, she was dealing with her son and it was heroin addiction and, the best landing spot, well that I’ve gotten to with that kind of thing. Carol is. You know, when you look at having a child struggle with these things in their behavior, just, you know, illegal behavior and all sorts of things, you wonder, you know, dude, they just say, you know, Hey, kick them out, kick them to the street, kicking with the side because they’re beating you down there, stealing your TV, they’re wrecking your life.
They’re wrecking your family and, and you cannot allow that. And that is true. But so my landing spot is, it is reasonable to. Provide home and food at a minimum for your loved one, unconditional, no matter what they do, never kick them out, but only provide those two things. But it’s also reasonable to absolutely say you can’t live here, that’s it.
And it gets to that point of needing to, to be, to be done that needs to be executed.
Carole Shrader: [00:45:43] Yeah. And that’s, and that’s, that’s, it’s so hard and I’ve seen, I’ve seen family members have to go through that as well and, and, and make that decision or agonize over that decision.
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:55] And honestly, that’s what we’re doing as a society with a person, man, or woman who is just not acting in a way that we can allow it’s reasonable, just the same as it is for a parent.
And that’s a tough, that’s a tough reality to really swallow, but it, but it gets right down to that point. And again, mental health and substance abuse, right in the middle of that. What are you thinking, sir? Well,
Craig Graves: [00:46:21] I’m hearing what you guys are saying. And, Carol, you know, I’ve got a lot of experience with family members and friends who were, who were addicts.
So I can sympathize with what, a lot of the things that you’re saying,
but let’s, let’s bring it back to.
How do we tie that to reframing the term, defunding the police, whatever. Where, where are we going with that?
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:44] Yeah. You know what? I was starting to think about it as, as we’re going on. I mean, I might make this a part two.
I don’t know how you feel about it, Craig. We can kind of kick it around. you know, I’ve, I’ve got a lot of thoughts about a lot of that, and I’m thinking that I feel a part two coming on with this where you and I kick around some of those things. Yeah. We’ve got a lot of show notes and we had a lot of things that I’ve thought about and prepping for this and have been thinking about for a while.
So I’m kind of feeling like we may do that. What was, as you.
Craig Graves: [00:47:09] Let’s just see where it goes.
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:10] Yeah, because we do, I mean, we, we, we have a lot of tough topics, you know, here in insofar as, you know, defunding and what that means and how do we equip and you know, and Caroline, I understand that you, you, you know, you say he’s funny, you don’t have a lot of the answers.
Well,
Carole Shrader: [00:47:26] and I did have one other, I know we’re kind of running short on my time with you guys. I do have another story that I want to share, that has to do directly as a police interaction. So crisis intervention training is there is out there, there are police forces, offering that. And, I’m not sure how effective that is, and that might even be part of your part too, to do more research on that, but even salt Lake city where that the young autistic boy, that was just this past week, that was shot, 13 year old, boy, who was shot and that was in salt Lake city.
And. His mother had called because of an episode and they offer. And when I was doing some research on that they offered and it was like 2013, 2014, they were commended for their crisis intervention training. So I don’t know, department, you mean that police department, salt Lake city police department. And so this could have been an isolated incident that outside of that training.
And, and this stuff it happened, or it could be that it was trained in those implemented that wasn’t followed. I can’t speak to it exactly, but the trainings there, but in order to do training, there needs to be funding for people to be training and to have a crisis intervention team. You need to have personnel that are specialized in that area, which is going to take them away from other areas.
So there has to be staffing. So that’s where we’re funding, we’re funding and things that directly need to be funded. But
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:55] yeah, you know, and, and the thing is I can speak to that a little bit, you know, I’ve talked about this with, with, with my own personal family and friends and, and whatnot. Cause it’s a big issue in our country.
You know, we have, we started in about the eighties as a matter of fact, you remember John Pope.
Craig Graves: [00:49:09] Oh, yeah. Greg John,
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:11] John. Who’s a colleague of mine at my current agency. He he’s across the hall from me. He actually was a part of the very first funding efforts for mobile crisis teams in the country. he, he was receiving and getting those grants and setting those programs up.
John’s got some age, Carol. He’s not a young chicken. He’s been with us for awhile and, and he actually set those up. And, and honestly he probably, you know, was doing and creating those programs wherever he was at the time at the same time that I was just out of school. Being one of the employees doing that work.
So I worked at a mobile crisis team, Carolyn Willis, Virginia, and we do have those programs and you’re right. That they can be beefed up. And that’s part of what I have as far as, you know, a thought process, you know, to, to, to some of the things that would be helpful. Mobile crisis teams are a great part of the solution and the answer I believe because we are trained, like I did that.
I was on scene and West Virginia. We did, we did mobile. Well, we call it mental hygiene, commissioner commitment hearings. So 2 clock at night, whatever time of day or night we would go out and we’d literally have a whole court case there, Craig, where we’d have like a judge, he was a mental hygiene commissioner and they would receive the information and receive the data about the circumstances that were in there.
And they would decide whether or not right then and there, if, if, if they were going to be transported to, to the facilities and sometimes the mental hygiene commission and be like, nah, we’re not doing this, this doesn’t hold up. We’re not, you know, and, and that went in right there because I’m there sometimes some crazy situations where some wife was upset at the guy and they fabricated some crazy events and, and, and it didn’t hold up.
Cause cause part of this, you know, we, we talked about the homicidal and suicidal ideation and the complicated, moral and legal and the intersection that, that all had. Do you remember, that’s been a while ago. You remember any of that? That’s a complicated. Process to get into, because you’re talking about taking somebody’s civil liberties away, such that when he was in the hospital, Carol, we might’ve made a decision that he doesn’t now have any ability to make any decisions for himself.
Cause we’re going to take that Liberty away on our assessment. That he’s not well, that’s a big deal to do that,
Carole Shrader: [00:51:30] and can’t be done lightly. And hence going back to having training and a unit. With checks and balances within that unit that you know, is so important.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:40] Boom, boom, boom. And on a spot of a dime, this has got to happen.
Like now that’s the complicated nature of these situations that just come from nowhere.
Carole Shrader: [00:51:51] So I, so one other story I want to, so when I was in high school, there was a young man, that I was young, those in those days in high school and after high school, I had heart, small town and heard that he was dealing with mental illness.
And in 2002, I heard the story, that he, he died. He was at an appointment. my understanding was that at a therapist and, busted through a glass window. from the therapist when he realized that he was going to be going back to the hospital or they’re going to try to make him take medicine or it, and so, and he, once he blessed it out of there, then the police, were involved to subdue him, subdued him within seven minutes after him leaving that planet, he was dead.
The, in the
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:44] I’m sorry
Carole Shrader: [00:52:45] he was dead. He leased and down on the ground there. and he, there was someone commented about, they could stop kicking him or stop hitting him. There was a comment about that. The after many, like eight months, finally, the family was able to get some information about the autopsy and they said it was, It’s the same type of condition that athletes will drop dead suddenly from overexertion, AB nodal and something like that.
Okay. And. The, it appears that the police interaction with this, I mean, and I’ll say is on the internet and found his information. And there’s a book that is just a rope from notes. And I wanted to share a quote from him. That’s why I was bringing this up. So this is all public information. So the young, young man’s name is Charles Anthony Hayes is what is on the book and his, the, a book called a towering man by sister, by Rachel Hayes.
And he, this interaction with the police. It’s it consents, he died. It’s just something in the back of my head. And then what’s the preparation for the show. I, when I just came across it, when I was given and this one article came up, it appears that is something that could have been deescalated. And then after this interaction, that was 2002.
And then as our research, this small town where this happened, they implemented, crisis intervention training in 2010. That was eight years later. And so, but anyway, the biggest thing that would be nice is if people, people could understand people with mental illness, people with addiction issues, somebody loves them.
There’s somebody’s son, somebody’s daughter there they’re human beings. And, and so if somehow we could dig deep, if we’re in a situation that we have to interact with these people. That we could try to find that love, like mother Teresa had here for everybody. And so, so this young man, Tony, Charlie, Anthony Hayes, he said he, he wrote that he believed communication was possible.
Well, between the chemically balanced and unbalanced, it just takes a clean heart and attentiveness those with heavy and unusual brain activity can spot fear of false behavior day, or that is we don’t respond well to it. Humble wise and sincere behavior works best. Refrain from wide-eyed well-intentioned condescension.
So this was writings that his sister had found and she, and she put into a book after he passed. But
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:12] you want to read that one more time? I don’t want to catch all that. Say it, say that again and highlight that a little bit.
Carole Shrader: [00:55:17] So he said he wrote that he believed communication was possible between the chemically balanced and unbalanced.
It just takes a clean heart and attentiveness those with heavy and unusual brain activity can spot fear of false behavior. They, or that is we don’t respond well to it. Humble wise and sincere behavior works best. Refrain from what I, well, intentioned, condescension,
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:43] there’s all a mouthful there. I think in that.
And, and, you know, I think that kind of plays off onto what we were talking about before, you know, with the idea of, you don’t know when that moment is when somebody’s going to get well, and then that magic moment might be this moment. And, and, and it’s neat that they say, you know, the, the. The minds can meet in, in that time.
You know, when we have crisis situations, I have found, you know, here’s a little bit of a thought. I mean, I was just listening to you, Carol and I, and I was kind of going out with this idea of equip the police and, and, and I do want to talk probably about a lot of ideas that I have that are very specific to that because I have become to believe that you have the most potential.
To have a major life, of course change in a major crisis event. Now you think about that, found that in my career and that’s, I really miss doing that crisis work because when I was doing that crisis work, I was very aware of the fact that I was in that moment. And the reality of it is, you know, We might have in the idea of reequipping the police.
An opportunity to really tap into getting really a lot better at a lot of moments that might be magical moments for people in mental health that can absolutely get well from that. So maybe, you know, I’m going to start changing my thought process a little bit. And, and, and taking this from that angle as actually an opportunity that we have, you know, with all of the questions that we have that are going on around now and the discussions that we’re having with BLM and, you know, defunding the police?
And I’m trying to say, reequipping the system to operate better. This might be a really awesome opportunity to take some steps in growth as a society in our journey, in what we’re managing.
Carole Shrader: [00:57:44] It’s interesting with, with what has, recently been going on since George FLoyd died and now Daniel prude and being black men.
African-American whichever terminology, is preferred.
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:59] It’s fine. It’s fine.
Carole Shrader: [00:58:02] I had had began begun to think what you probably have begun to think. Just like I said, mental illnesses in the middle of all this and. This crisis, which is a time that makes change available and people may be open to change. the changes that need to be made my opinion, and it seems for, black Americans to be treated better.
But in these situations, by the police is the same, same mindset and training that would make police be better equipped or a team. To deal with mental illness, it’s perception of the person you’re dealing with. You know, if, if you perceive this person that this person in front of you is a human being, just like other human beings who deserve a chance for you to show them the best that you can do for them right now, whether they’re black, whether they’re mentally ill, whether they’re white.
And, and so I just think that the training that’s going to make. The situation better when apprehending the criminals is going to be the same training that will help when dealing with mental ill mental illness as well. I kind of rambled a little bit there, but I just think that it’s a, it’s a good time to, to go hand in hand.
So there’s mental illnesses right in the middle of so much of the situation right now.
Craig Graves: [00:59:23] So, Carol, are you, are you talking about retraining police officers to deal with with mentally ill people? Or are you talking about sending. Chris Gazdik and to deal with the deal with the, with the guy who has a mental health issue.
Carole Shrader: [00:59:37] And I mentioned this to Chris when we were preparing for this, I, I I’m, you know, in my mid fifties, I grew up with a very favorable impression of police and my situation. I personally. Didn’t have that experiences with police officers. And so, you know, before these last six or eight months, I was just, I was like, Oh, they’re there, you know, sure.
There’s many good police, bad police. And, and, and which may still be the case, but I will say, and I mentioned to Chris that I have two millennial daughters. And their experience is not that there are any good police that they feel pretty strongly that any of their interactions are inner and they’re not, my children are, are, are educated and they work and not children have had interactions with know, been in trouble with the law, but just with friends that have had interactions with police and different things that have happened.
They don’t have a favorable opinion of police and they feel like the whole system needs to be done away with, and they need to start from scratch. Yeah. So that’s made me think more. I think every, you know, there’s a left and there’s a right and you need to meet in the middle. So that’s made me feel like more that, yes, we do need people like Chris to, to be on a team.
when you’re dealing with, when you’re, when you’re responding to a situation, Where there’s someone who is having a, a severe mental episode, it, that running naked outside, out of their mind, which I came across multiple those stories and interactions with police or where the person ended up dead. I think, yes, you need someone more than just a police officer who said 40 hours of training.
I think it’s important that they have that 40 hours of training or. To have some concept, but I think there are situations where you need a team of people who are who’ve had years of training and experience as well to deal with with the more difficult situations. It’s not, it goes back to what Chris said, too.
Those decisions are made in the moment when they get a 911 call, someone’s gotta determine what team did we send.
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:43] Yeah, you know? Oh, good.
Craig Graves: [01:01:44] Well, I just, you know, say that there are good police. Some of my best friends are police. And one of my best friends in the world is a place a police officer.
So there are definitely good ones in my interactions in the past. Apart from one has been, has been really good. And even the bad one, the guy was, you know, he didn’t, he was just not very friendly, you know? So it wasn’t a, he slapped me around or anything. The other thing I would say is. And Chris and I talked about this the other day, as my concern was sending Chris in somewhere, you know, is the, what did you say?
The big naked gal or we’ll kill him? I mean, you know, you send a, you send Chris into a situation where a guy has a weapon and somebody going to get killed. So my, my vision of what it would look like is it would be to train police officers to deal with these crisis kind of situations.
Carole Shrader: [01:02:36] I don’t D I don’t disagree.
I think police officers need to be trained. It’s it’s the same situation. If you have a situation. And, and I get a lot of my information from watching police procedurals, but before firefighters go in to deal with the situation, if there’s guns in place and the police have to clear that it’s safe. I mean, so I think similar type of measures can be put in place.
So that people like Chris could go into a situation. Now, there are many situations that I’ve perused and read where there’s a perceived, you know, someone thinks it looks like they have a weapon, but it turned out that it was, you know, just, it was a cell phone and different situations like that. So I think that police can be trained, but I think that there are also situations where.
our gun, you know, you could safely use the crisis intervention team.
Chris Gazdik: [01:03:29] I have a lot of thoughts about this. And I think part of what I decided a little while ago is I kind of wanted to put a, you know, a little bit of a story on this and, and a little bit of a face on kind of what it is that we’re dealing with.
And I know we don’t have a name and that’s fine. I w we totally respect that. Or our name is, is, is, is Carol with the family and multiple experiences with this. I think that. You know, we will, we will most certainly talk about this again soon, quite possibly Craig and I will bounce our heads together and see what we want to do, but, you know, When you put a, a mental health clinician in the scene that change the dynamic, all pulled altogether, you know, just by the nature of the police are going to act differently.
The patient, I look at them as clients are going to act differently. And, and, and so am I going to act differently when the police are there? There is a triangle here that can be very different than a. Power one-on-one long arm in law coming to take me down and I’m suicidal. And I’m going to go out with a blaze.
You put some other elements into that picture and that’s going to be a very different flavor. It’s going to be a very different, you know, experience. And I just want to lay down through this list. Part, part, part of what I’ll throw out, you know, is it, you know, we, we didn’t get to talk about a lot of the thoughts that I have, and I got a super lot of them, but we will get to that listening audience.
I promise. Probably not as much today, but what should we fund? Cause Carol, you talked about funding, right? Funding is a big part of this. And I’ve been battling this Craig as a mental health clinician, my entire life, because know, guess what we are the red headed stepchild of the healthcare industry. You know, how many people want to pay for healthcare?
You know, in my career, half of my career, we didn’t even have the ability to have insurance companies pay for therapy and mental health treatment. You had mental health benefits not be a part of your parole policy, you would come to me and like a blue cross blue shield, Chris. Well, yeah, but your, your, your product doesn’t have mental health and substance abuse benefits.
Sorry. So you have to pay cash. That is not more than like 10 years ago. So you want to talk about funding? Yeah, you’ll get my blood up because I’ve been dealing with that for a long time. What do we want to fund community mental health centers that they don’t exist anymore? Because we downgraded, you know, insane asylum, so to speak, to create mental health centers, to treat people in the home.
So they’re not in hospitals, but now we don’t have community mental health centers that are bigger agencies. We got a bunch of small little therapy agencies. It try to do the same thing that mental health centers do. Do we want to fund them therapists? There’s going to be contracts for that. Craig, you’re going to have to pay me if you’re going to get me on a team to go with that, because I’m kind of happy in my job right now.
Do we want to fund DSS? Because department of social services has a lot of expertise in dealing with children on site, particularly on a murder scene or something that’s been traumatic for a kid to DSS professionals can be, but people are afraid of that. They don’t have to come in and take the kids away.
Do we want to fund universities for training and get our brightest minds in research to kind of come into this situation, to get universities tagging into police departments, to for help you, we want to get planned Parenthood. You know, what about private investigators with human sex trafficking? How, you know, we’ve talked about that.
Before we’ve got job training with community colleges. Do we get boys and girls clubs? Is that a community resource? The CDSA my wife works for the community, a child development services administration to get, you know, families that are struggling with, you know, developmental delayed kids, because they have a lot of police interaction from time to time when they’re raging in their developmental delays.
And we just gyms for exercise. Gyms are pretty important for healthcare. Right exercise that and the list can go on and on and on. As I just started to brainstorm, like what do, and, and, and I, and I did that list, Craig, because I want to get us talking. I think I want to frame this as an opportunity. When we talk about defunding, the police people generally are talking about, you know, And I think it’s a much better word reequipping.
I mean, I feel like we’re talking about
Carole Shrader: [01:07:31] reallocating that will have people have more of an open mind question for Craig. So you, you, you have friends that are police. So my question is, do you, do you think they feel like they’re equipped to deal with mentally ill or would they be, would they feel like they might benefit from.
More training or do they already get it?
Chris Gazdik: [01:07:55] Well, I want to comment real quick too. They do get a lot of stuff. Departments are, have been on this guys been working on it. It’s not like they’re just flat footed here. Oh, I’ve got to, I do want to say that
Craig Graves: [01:08:04] Carol, I don’t know. I’ve never had those conversations with them and I haven’t talked specifically about their training protocols.
So I don’t, I don’t know the answer to that question, but I’ll ask some of those guys.
Carole Shrader: [01:08:13] Yeah. And, and just to clarify that my statement I made is that I also know police officers that, that I respect. And, and I just, I feel like that it’s to their benefit as well, to be put in a position where a system, a situation doesn’t escalate and something terrible happened.
So.
Craig Graves: [01:08:36] Yeah, I don’t disagree with that at all. I was looking up the statistic after you guys were talking earlier, and it does say according to the Bureau of justice statistics, more than half of those in the criminal justice system suffer from a mental illness. So I definitely think that having people who are equipped to deal with mentally ill people would be definitely beneficial.
I think that at least from Chris and I may disagree on how to deliver that service. You know, I think that probably somebody who can also deal with, with somebody who could do them harm. Is better equipped to have that knowledge, no fence than some of my, like Chris who may be a sitting duck to a, to a guy who’s jacked up on whatever
Carole Shrader: [01:09:18] exactly. I mean, and, and, and it’s like, let’s go back to this situation with this family member that has a knife to his throat. So if you have a mental health person coming into this situation, He’s in a room, getting ready to slit his throat. You could have a social worker or someone, a Quip to help deescalate, which could possibly be a specialized police officer that has specialized training.
It’s not like someone’s going to throw the knife across the room and hit this person and kill him. So, and that’s, you know, it isn’t, we need to keep. Are public servants safe who are dealing with situations as safe as possible anyway.
Craig Graves: [01:09:54] Oh yeah, I get that. Let me, let me just clarify there. So Chris and I had this conversation the other day about this topic and he said, well, you know, when somebody who’s in crisis sees a police officer, you know, they, they, they, they, they immediately puts them up to a different level of anxiety.
And so I’m thinking what he’s saying is he’s going to go in that room alone without the assistance,
Chris Gazdik: [01:10:20] do this guys, because I did this, this was my first job. And honestly, that sucks because I was a green clinician and I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I didn’t know what the hell is it. Matter of fact, I’ll tell you this story. Real quick. it was, it, was it a whole different state? Well, people know what state I was from.
Doesn’t matter, it was in a different municipality and different state, but it was one of those, Holy shit, what am I gonna now? Moments? Because this wasn’t in textbook. It was like my first foray into this whole world. And it was, it was a simple call that the jail had made and it was doing a suicide assessment on this gentleman and it freaked me the hell out.
Okay. It freaked me the hell out because they brought me in, down into the industry jails and kind of walked me through and nobody was really comforting to me. Nobody was really like, Hey, it’s okay. This is what we’re going to do, whatever, you know? And they were just like pretty nonchalant and honestly, not very.
Kind to me at all. And they called me to come and do this. I’m walking through the, you know, the doors are clinkin and you know, you’re in the jails. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a jail Craig, but it’s kind of a scary place. It’s, it’s really pretty jacked up. And they, any of the lead me down a few corridors and stuff and they, and they get to this one cell and they say, okay, here he is.
And he just walked away and he left me. Remember looking at that, like, okay, you want me to talk to this guy? I had no idea what to do. No idea. And so unfortunately, and I did, and I figured it out. I mean, I talked to the guy, I assessed him. I, I figured out, you know, we can kind of start to come back to me after I talked to him.
Cause he was literally in the fetal position in the corner. Or were there in a padded cell, you know? And so the point that I started to lead there is we do need more experience clinicians because I do know what to do in those situations. And I think I am going to be effective at being able to deescalate that situation, but I’m not going up in there by myself when somebody is all hype.
And jacked up on what I don’t know and has weaponry. I’m going to go in there with a police officer and I’m going to be talking and the police officer’s going to be validating my experience and presence there, and he’s going to be there if it’s needed, going to be able to, because I’m trained in, in math, we had, that was one of the first trainings I had in mental health.
I forget what it stands for, but it’s personal defense. Like I know where my positions are. I know what’s in the room. I’m thinking around about safety. You know, we go through some of
Craig Graves: [01:12:31] that. I still think that you, okay, so you go in there with an officer. I still think that officer needs some training.
Carole Shrader: [01:12:37] No, absolutely.
Craig Graves: [01:12:39] Because he’s gonna have a different view of the situation than you are and you might think, well, I’ve got this guy talked down and he might think, well, this guy’s still jacked up. Yeah. So you would need to be on the same page as the opposite.
Chris Gazdik: [01:12:50] I need their training and they probably need my training.
Yeah. We need those positions.
Carole Shrader: [01:12:56] Yeah. Earlier talking about how a police officer walks in and automatically the anxiety level for anybody. All of us. I mean, I’m doing five below the speed limit and go draft past a police officer. My anxiety level goes up. I was watching a video, in regards to a crisis team and the police office and this particular team.
There were two police officers who were in street clothes. They had their badge around their neck, but other than that, their, their weapons were not visible. And they made a point of saying, we wear street clothes or weapons. Aren’t visible. They were on the forefront, dealing with the person they had gotten called to help.
And then at the door, there actually was an officer who was in uniform. So, I think to offer what you were saying. The full picture. Like you have the officer in uniform to show someone that, to try to keep things in order, but the people closest, the police officers who were closest to the gentlemen that was having an episode, they were in plain clothes and had been trained in this program that the video is about.
You know, it’s
Chris Gazdik: [01:13:56] funny. You talk about Carol plainclothes, Craig. I got an awesome metaphor and this is fresh off my brain, right in this moment. To be honest with you,
Craig Graves: [01:14:04] we just lose Carol.
Chris Gazdik: [01:14:05] Yes. Oh dear. Just lost Carol on the zoom. We’re going to have to try to fix that. let me go into my thought though. And we’ll, we’ll try to bring her back.
and you know, the, the sh, although she might want to hear this too, why don’t, why don’t
Craig Graves: [01:14:21] you want to recap if she comes back?
Chris Gazdik: [01:14:23] She might not know that, that she can click that same link. do you want to try to call her Craig? I got the number on the notes up top. So here’s my metaphor though. That is a complete change and it’s actually pretty freaking cool.
I think real fresh in the, in the live brain of mine. So she was just talking about plain clothes and the way that you feel and how that can work. In how you’re operating. Think about a metaphor of what we do did in changing this system a different system. Okay. We have a hospital system and that’s very similar to the police system.
You know, she said, you see a police officer, she started freaking out and things are kind of going all over the place. Well, the fact of the matter is when you go into a hospital, but will you also get massively freaked out and scared to death and whatnot? Right. So immediately when I go into hospitals, because I had all kinds of problems, what I was saying, a kid I had, I had lots of medical problems and you know, every year I went in for tubes and it hospitals to this day make me edgy.
I don’t like going to hospitals. They give me the willies. They give me, it makes me very uncomfortable. Think about it. What have they done, Craig to maternity units? You’re a bit into a maternity unit in a little while. It’s
Craig Graves: [01:15:41] like a hotel.
Chris Gazdik: [01:15:42] They have absolutely redesigned redefined. I’m gonna to use the word they have re equipped in a massively different way.
All hospital in maternity units. I don’t mind walking into a maternity unit. Now my oldest kid’s 19 and my youngest was 15. So when my kid was 15, 15 years ago, I’m sure it’s gotten a whole lot better now. You’re right. It’s been, have you when’s the last time you’ve been in a maternity unit?
Craig Graves: [01:16:12] my daughter is
Chris Gazdik: [01:16:13] 12.
Craig Graves: [01:16:14] Yeah. So you were here.
Chris Gazdik: [01:16:16] You’re much more recent than I was really nice places. Aren’t they.
Craig Graves: [01:16:21] Oh, absolutely.
Chris Gazdik: [01:16:22] They got beds for the husband to sleep in and they got rooms that are cushiony and nice TVs and comforting spaces. I get the willies. When I walk into a hospital, I don’t like the way they smell. I don’t like the way they look.
It makes me very uncomfortable. I’m not big on needles. I don’t really like going to doctors anyway, when I go to a maternity. Yeah, I got no problems, Craig. I’m comfortable. I’m actually at ease. I am de escalated. How about that for a metaphor when we’re looking at policing and reequipping and going through a process, maybe where we have these types of discussions and get this thing totally rearranged so that we can operate in a much different way than what we, than what we had before.
Does that make sense? We got you back. You just missed the Hills. That’s okay. You just missed a whole segment, Craig, let’s finish that up and finish up with care. What do you, what are you hearing with that? Because I think that is an awesome metaphor and exactly what is meant by defund the police
Craig Graves: [01:17:20] talking about redo and how hospitals look to accommodate.
And I agree a hundred percent, you know, hospitals have no windows, no light people to come and coming and going.
Chris Gazdik: [01:17:31] It’s scary.
Craig Graves: [01:17:33] They all really are. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [01:17:36] So are jails, so are police badges.
Craig Graves: [01:17:40] So we’re police cost. I heard a lot there and I almost think that there needs to be more money allocated. I think that these officers need, do need some crisis center training of their own potentially, And then what you said about the young man going to prison, maybe he’s got a mental health issue.
Perhaps he should have gone to a hospital and gotten treatment as opposed to
Carole Shrader: [01:18:01] prison. And, and it was a complicated situation specifically because he had this charge against him. And then in the interim, they, before they finally got a public prosecutor who was gonna, who said, this is ridiculous. We need to fight this charge because he was having a mental illness episode.
When the meantime, he got in trouble with a different charge that he got convicted of. And so he couldn’t go fight the charge of getting that, like against, assault on a government official because he’d lost any, any bearing because he had another charge against him. He lost credibility. And so he, he lost the opportunity to fight that charge, which he could have possibly gone to court.
But I will say. When my sister was advocating once again for this family member, she spoke to the officer who, was the one that was the young man, went at him with the knife. And that officer felt totally justified about that charge being brought against him. He had no sympathy whatsoever for the fact that he, you know, had a mental illness cause this young man is not just he’s bipolar as well as, Having an addiction issue and I’m probably PTSD and things.
I mean, he’s had other trauma as well.
Chris Gazdik: [01:19:18] Sounds like a complicated picture.
Carole Shrader: [01:19:20] Yeah. And so then in this case, it wasn’t officer who didn’t show any sympathy, for, you know, didn’t seem to have an understanding for this young man. And I want to real quick go back to what Chris said. I am very strong believer of there are consequences to your action actions and holding people accountable and, and, and walking that line with somebody.
because when you are dealing with somebody who’s mentally ill or someone with an addiction, it’s a constant balance of, can you not really help yourself or are you just taking advantage or making an excuse? and so I agree that it’s important to hold that person accountable for their actions. in situations, but we also have to and try it.
When are they not able to.
Chris Gazdik: [01:20:07] And accountability slash compassion balance. And that is one hell of a balance to try to make in life and death instances, not even seconds, right? Millisecond. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [01:20:18] It’s a tough, tough situation. I know a guy that I grew up with who has dealt, dealt with addiction for 30 years now, it seems like he’s been in and out of prison.
And, and, you know, in the beginning he kind of played the game rehab relapse rehab relapse rehab. And, you know, after a while I’m a compassionate person too, but after a while you, it wears on you, it does. And you begin to give up on the person and, you know, 30 years have gone by. And if the guy came to me and said, Hey man, I’m, I’m trying to get clean.
Will you help me out? Literally, I would. But right now it’s just like, you know, he’s still out there and there’s no regioning so it’s like,
Chris Gazdik: [01:20:55] Yeah.
Craig Graves: [01:20:55] And you can’t do anything to help the guy anymore.
Chris Gazdik: [01:20:57] And you can imagine if you see that in one person and then another person and then another person and then another person, and then another one in another one and another one and another one and another one in, Oh, maybe one gets well,
Carole Shrader: [01:21:09] yeah, that’s
Chris Gazdik: [01:21:10] pretty debilitating.
And that’s what our guys and gals are dealing with.
Craig Graves: [01:21:13] That compound trauma you’re dealing with. Those multiple kinds of people like my friend for, for, for long periods of time, you do get probably numb too.
Chris Gazdik: [01:21:25] It comes back on you. It comes back on your hard as a, as an officer.
Carole Shrader: [01:21:30] Yeah.
Craig Graves: [01:21:31] I actually had a girlfriend who, her ex husband was a police officer in another state.
And we know this guy, he’s a younger guy who was going to go to the police Academy and she said, Oh, it’ll change. And I’m like, what are you talking about? And she said that over time, it’ll change his it’ll change. It’ll change him. And I always scratch my head, but I mean, I guess if you’re saying that constantly dealing with those situations makes you numb.
And so through those situations, then that’s probably, what should I was talking about?
Chris Gazdik: [01:22:00] You almost have to, are you going to crack. I mean, I can’t tell you. I’ve had the distinct honor and privilege of working with people in our first responders systems, not just police officers, but military as well. And I can’t tell you how much of an honor it is to work with, those folks out there.
And I mean that, when I say that to anybody that might hear me, that I’ve worked. With you is it’s been just an absolutely humbling honor because it’s such a dynamic emotional issue that goes on in their hearts and heads. And honestly, you know, going back to Carol what you said, I mean, you, you, you asked do they want, you know, do they want help?
And, and do they understand that I can tell you that yes, they do emotionally as well as financially and resource wise, but there’s also this weird thing of, I’m not going to admit that, not going to let anybody else know that. Right. And so you, cause you, it, cause no one wants to talk about that. You know, nobody wants to talk about that or recognize, you know, my difficulty or my challenger.
I mean, therapists don’t go to therapy. Right? And hell no, I don’t mean no therapy. I do. In reality police officers do. Doctors do military professionals. You talk about seals all the time seals. Do they tell you that we’re reading a book right now that exemplifies that together? Write
Carole Shrader: [01:23:21] that stuff down.
Stigma of asking for help or mental health. And it’s kind of a, you know what I mentioned when I sent you a kind of a, my bio or breakdown me, I raised my daughters. I come from a family with a history history of mental illness. So I raised my daughters with an appreciation of you need what mental health refers to everybody has mental health, and we want to have healthy mental health.
And so we need to de-stigmatize the fact that sometimes you need to get help with your mental health, just like you get help with your physical health. Yeah. And it’s like, I raised my daughter to take care of themselves and do the healthy things and get your sleep and don’t take drugs. But there also might come a point where you need to speak to a therapist.
And kind of process what if you’re having anxiety or you’re, you know, things that are stressed,
Chris Gazdik: [01:24:15] Carol, I happen to believe that we’re going to go towards a model in not too distant future, where we have a therapist per mental health professional. That is just like your family doctor check in with them every quarter or every year or every half year or something like that.
I absolutely believe that we’re going to be going to that model. Listen. We went longer today and that’s fine. I still have a super whole lot of thoughts about this. So I think that we want to hit it again. we had a place that we can start texting and guys, anything else that you want to say? And I want to talk with you a little bit about that
Carole Shrader: [01:24:44] girl.
Craig Graves: [01:24:45] I think, I think I want to just make the point that when you say defunding reframed, you mean allocating funds to different places. Within the police system. Is
Chris Gazdik: [01:25:00] that, is that what you’re asking me personally,
Craig Graves: [01:25:02] both of you, but yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [01:25:04] I am. I’m talking about equipping. I I’m talking about taking advantage of a national conversation to get a situation where it can help so many people in crisis situations and talk about reequipping the conversation needs to be had in a productive way so that we go down that list.
And figure out what is going to be a part of what’s helpful. We need it, we can make progress. And I think that we have a unique opportunity, a very unique opportunity that we haven’t had a very, very long time so that the shootings can stop happening. And so that the suicidal behavior can be treated so that the mental health that’s right in the middle of this can get, can get relief.
Both from policemen and women need relief from their mental health problems. A society. We need relief from our citizens, mental health problems. It’s on all sides, man. And I think that we are on a unique opportunity to deal with a lot of that.
Carole Shrader: [01:25:59] I think at a, at a minimum, I think every city town is unique and, and I think budgets need to be analyzed and see where money can be.
reallocated, just like, I think. People might be more willing to accept the fact that money needs to be reallocated to programs that could help will not end up in a situation where they’re having a mental episode and having an altercation with police. And if some of that money can come from the police department, then that’s good.
But if some of that money comes from some other program, I think you just so. I know that some of what I’ve read about different police plays police departments who have home these and have all the, you know, big equipments and like, I don’t know, specifics, I’m not an expert. So it would seem to me as a layman and stories that I’ve read that some of those police departments could, instead of being equipped with all this militarized type equipment.
That that money could be used because it, you know, is that something that we need to have, you know, militarized type equipment? Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [01:27:08] Those are, those are the discussions
Carole Shrader: [01:27:10] that need to happen.
Chris Gazdik: [01:27:12] you know, I’m not, I’m not all necessarily going to agree that we need to get rid of the SWAT teams. Cause those guys listen, there’s some situations they come across.
No doubt about it, but, let’s, let’s begin to taxi out here. And, and, and I think that the discussion that we have had a hope has, has put a little bit of a face on a little bit of a story on which was my main point with our followup conversations that, Craig, you and I are going to have these personal conversations.
Anyway. Would you agree? Yeah. Oh yeah. And, and I want to, and I want to have some of our little analization if, if your, agreement with that, Craig, we’ll talk about it off the air and see what we want to do. But I want to talk about this more and I want our nation to talk about it more because I do think we have a unique opportunity to change hospitals.
Like we did with maternity to turn to my attorney towards the way that we are. And then we could do something like that and begin to change police precinct. And in some ways, similar, Carol, I know you didn’t. I understand that, but you missed that segment, but that’s
Carole Shrader: [01:28:09] okay. I think I’m kind of on board with saying catching the tail lines.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [01:28:13] So Caroline, we need to get out of here, but I want to thank you. Absolutely. For the courage to, to share, we do a, high five on, on, through a therapist. We can’t do it cause we’re not in person. So we’re going to give a clap. Here in a little bit, I’ll count us down to three and the clap signifies a high five, because this is a big deal when you, when you share.
And I just really appreciate your openness and frankness and forthrightness and honesty and genuine caring for the issue that we’ve talked about tonight, because that’s not easy to do. So I really want to recognize you for taking those steps. Like that’s a big freaking deal, right?
Carole Shrader: [01:28:49] Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.
Chris Gazdik: [01:28:51] Absolutely. So we’re going to do a high five. We’re going to clap here when I count down from three, right. Three, two, one. Awesome.
Carole Shrader: [01:29:01] I appreciate it, Carol. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Great program and I for one totally agree and recommend that there be a mental health task force, especially to go out with every 911 call that involves suicide potential or any other kind of mental health problem. I say this not only for the safety of the mentally ill but also for the safety of our police officers.
I believe this could keep most calls from escalating from a hospital stay to a prison stay.