Swirling Down 12th Avenue

TRIGGER WARNING:

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This piece includes a discussion on responses to allegations of rape in the context of a mental health crisis.  

Back in the early days of working at the world’s healthiest grocery store, I was asked by the shift leader to be a witness. He was on the phone with 911 while a woman nearby was screaming at him.  She had come in within the last thirty minutes and had made her way to the “Chill Lounge”, a part of the store set aside for customers to just “sit and chill”. Sitting near a window, she proceeded to fall asleep which in a grocery store is a no-no because such sleep is usually accompanied by other problematic behavior requiring a call to the police.   

When she first walked in I could see that she was clean, but was ruffled enough for me to guess that she was homeless or at least struggling in some way. Her manner suggested there was a mental illness at play, but it was subtle enough that, from afar, you might not have initially noticed it.  I remember thinking that she was pretty and was probably much younger than she appeared.  She looked both skittish and sad and negatively affected by life. 

When she started screaming I wasn’t near her, but as I got closer I could see that she was screaming at the shifty, accusing him of raping her while she slept — in a room with four glass walls in front of dozens of people.  As he dialed 911, he told me she was known at a nearby sister store and that this outburst wasn’t the first of its kind.  

Her fear and hysteria reminded me of a civil commitment case I had handled as an assistant attorney general for the state years earlier.  I was a new attorney back then assigned to represent one of the largest state psychiatric facilities in the country.  The respondent was a woman in her fifties, well dressed in a blouse and skirt.  Hair neatly coiffed.  She seemed old fashioned like she had been transported from the 1950s.  She screamed, too.

She screamed to everyone in the court room that she had been raped that morning. She screamed that we needed to go after her assailant.  She screamed in agony that no one was listening to her.  The hearing was conducted around her screams.

She hadn’t been raped that morning. But her mind told her she had been.

Every morning this patient woke up and experienced a rape we all truly believed had occurred at some point, somewhere in her past. But not that morning, nor the countless other mornings she screamed.  It wasn’t a different rape every day, but the same rape repeating itself every morning.  

Every night her memory refreshed itself leaving a clean slate only to have it imprint with a rape the next day.  I have no idea how long she had been in this loop prior to her hearing.  I suspected years upon years.  But the hearing wasn’t about her assault or finding her justice.  It was about managing her mental illness and providing her treatment in the least restrictive way possible.   Even her own attorney agreed that the least restrictive way was to have her stay on the ward surrounded by a clinical team.  She was unlikely to ever go home.

After the hearing I asked her psychiatrist to help me understand why and how this was happening.  He took my question for what it probably was: an impatience with someone being broken and wanting them to be fixed.  He sternly looked me in the eye and basically told me to put myself in her shoes.  Imagine what it was like to wake up and believe in my heart and soul that I had just been raped.  And the horror of that feeling. And then to wake up the next day and go through that same horror again.  And then the next day.  And the next.  And that no one believes me.  And that I couldn’t find peace because my brain wouldn’t let me find it.  And that all anyone could do for me was to keep me safe and to make sure I was taken care of.

By the time I left that job, I met many more patients haunted by something in their past that was trapped in their mind like a fresh wound.  I also met clinicians who proved to me that empathy should be a requirement for all people in the field of healing other people.

As I stood there next to the shifty as he talked to 911, I kept telling him to tell them “they need to get her to a CDMHP” which in my old world was a “county designated mental health professional”, usually a mental health social worker who is a crisis responder.  In my mind I pictured a police officer showing up to do an initial investigation then calling for transport to a hospital.  I was wrong.

As the woman continued to scream and cry with me standing nearby, a fire truck pulled up to the store with the lights flashing and a team of ten or so firemen who filed inside.   They worked a few blocks away and shopped at the store.  These were people who weren’t particularly friendly to me and weren’t keen on eye contact or friendly conversation.  

I was completely baffled by why they were assigned to address a mental health crisis — slash — alleged assault case.  As a woman I felt protective of another woman who was claiming to have been raped by a man and was now surrounded by men asking her about her rape.  As a former mental health attorney I felt protective about a person having a mental health crisis (in addition to believing she was raped), being surrounded by men in uniform who didn’t appear to me to have the right training or demeanor for the task at hand.

While one of the firefighters peeled off to talk to the woman, the others stood about fifteen feet away.  From the very beginning it was clear that none of the ones “observing” took her seriously. They were laughing and gesturing in a way that made clear that they were making light of it all.  I suspect they were aware of her previous episodes.  They were close enough to her that she had to see what I saw.  I stepped closer to ask why they were there, to which they responded that they were observing.  Again no eye contact and a manner suggesting I wasn’t entitled to a fuller range of respect.  

I never saw how things ended. At the time I was just a cashier and was probably told to jump on a register. I do know that what I saw that day was an example of a poor response to human suffering.  

Fast forward to last week.  

I almost didn’t notice what was happening because the city was being loud and they were being so quiet.  Only when I turned to cross the street did I notice her, a woman in her mid-20s, completely naked and twirling in circles down 12th Avenue.  She was about ten feet away from me, babbling and giggling to someone not there.   I couldn’t tell if it was a drug issue, a mental health issue or a combo of the two.  But there she was twirling barefoot in traffic.

And right alongside her were the CHAZ (now re-named the CHOP) volunteer medics.  For those of you not from Seattle, I ask that you please look it up. I recognized them from when I first entered the zone.  They had driven by me in a truck with homemade signs letting people know who they were, but asking that people respectfully not photograph them. People are learning quickly these days that retaliation for exercising your rights and expressing your opinions is very real.  Their faces were covered and they were dressed in jeans and t-shirts and hoodies and leather jackets.  It struck me how much they looked like bartenders from some industrial neighborhood hangout.

They were next to her in the street trying to cover her with wool blankets. Just as one would get one around her shoulders, she would twirl away.  While one held back traffic, the others took turns trying to blocking her from the view of people on the street.  It was all such a swirly dance.

What struck me was how loving and gentle they were with her.  How much they were trying to protect her and guide her to a safe space.  Their postures were non-judgmental.  Their gestures were respectful.  They didn’t appear to find her tedious or a pain in the ass or taking them away from more interesting duties.  They weren’t trying to control her body or force their will upon her.  They were fully present to where she was even if that place was very far away.  The heart energy in that intersection was palpable.

I thought about what the scene would look like if the police were the crisis responders to the woman who twirled down the street.  Officers tasked with dealing with traffic enforcement, law enforcement, people enforcement.  Officers trained to contain and control.  Tasked with trying to solve the problem of a naked twirling woman in the middle of an intersection equipped with guns, pepper spray, tasers, and commanding voices. Wearing uniforms that scream “I am authority”. 

The same would be true of firefighters despite their medical training.  

That night the volunteer medics demonstrated what could happen if we re-thought the current model for first responders.  Pairing the right people with the right jobs.  Ending the policy of “tacking on” mental health and chemical dependency care to jobs that are by their very nature not designed to be about wellness.  In a more perfect world the job wouldn’t be a job. It would be a vocation backed by a community expectation that care is delivered with empathy, respect and non-judgment regardless of who needs help or what condition you find them in. And while we are at it, cut the bullshit about uniforms designed to intimidate and create distance.

I wouldn’t have said this four weeks ago. But it’s time to say it. The world has changed so much in such a short period of time. I have changed so much in such a short period of time. It is time to Defund the Police. And while we are at it, rethink the role of the fire department.