Posted on June 30, 2007 at 06:55:33 PM by D1
Good Cop, Sad Cop
Meet former King County Sheriff's Deputy Angela Holland. She was a great street cop with numerous commendations and a spotless record. But she was mildly bipolar, so they fired her.
By Philip Dawdy
Former King County Sheriff's Deputy Angela Holland.
Judith Eve Lipton
Perps must have done a double take when Deputy Angela Holland popped out of her patrol car. It was the usual white Crown Victoria with "Sheriff" in big green letters on the side, and perps know how hot the hood of a King County Sheriff's patrol car feels. But a 5-foot-6 cop with blue eyes and blond hair pulled back in a ponytail? That was different. So, too, was Holland's manner, as bright and perky as a corporate publicist. Of course, she could go from Deputy Friendly to Deputy Hard-Ass on a dime. She was a cop, after all.
Holland, 30, shape-shifted like that all the time while on patrol just south of the Seattle city line in the unincorporated parts of South Park and White Center, known to some as "Rat City," as well as in a healthy slice of the unhealthy sides of Burien and SeaTac. There were a lot of rats in those parts. Gangsters of every ethnic stripe, crack dealers, meth heads, murderers, rapists, and folks gone crazy from drink and drugs, putting fists and guns to whoever was handy. Holland's job was to help keep all of that from getting out of control.
She had a way of doing it.
One night in 2002, she went with several deputies to collar a man in SeaTac. The man was a 6-foot-4 Samoan and had a good 200 pounds on Holland. Samoans are known for their ability to throw down harder than any other humans. This man had recently gotten out of the psych unit at Harborview Medical Center. One of the deputies wanted to use a Taser on the man, who was verbally combative. He was off his meds, out of control. Even his family feared him when he got this way. Holland stepped up to the man, with whom she'd dealt before, and said, "I give you respect. You owe me some."
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Also remaining on the KCSO payroll is Deputy John Vanderwalker, who, during the WTO protests in 1999, pepper-sprayed two women, temporarily blinding them, and kicked a protester, an incident famously captured on video. Reichert fired him, but Vanderwalker was reinstated by a federal arbitrator.
"If you have extreme behaviors, we'll give you a second chance," says Jack Kitaeff, a police psychologist and assistant professor of forensic psychology at Marymount University in Virginia. "But if you seek out psychiatric assistance, look what that gets you."
The discrepancy mystifies cops. "I could understand firing her if she'd done something questionable," says a veteran KCSO deputy, who requested anonymity. "But her job performance wasn't affected. Everything was under control. I would've never guessed she was bipolar unless she'd told me." Says another deputy: "She had no acting out, nothing to make you think she was a risk. I think they treated her like shit."
One deputy, however, says that Holland did have a problem. She used the word "dude" too much early in her career.
Experts in police psychology have concerns about the process, as well.
"If her performance is up to snuff so far and colleagues never noticed anything strange, I would not recommend a suspension or firing," says Stephen Rubin, a police psychologist and professor of psychology at Whitman College in Walla Walla. "To make a very quick call on only one professional opinion in contradiction of other professionals and in contradiction of other colleagues seems to me a bit radical, a bit too quick. I hate to see a career end based on this."
Says John Nicoletti, a police psychologist in Denver and chair of the International Association of Chiefs of Police psychology section: "You have to look at what were the behaviors that were occurring" on the job.
It is unclear on what basis Decker found Holland unfit for duty. She did not return repeated requests for comment.
Sheriff Rahr, appointed to office last November after Reichert was elected to Congress, declined to discuss the specifics of Holland's firing. "We will rely on the judgment of the psychiatrist," Rahr says.
She says it is "very rare" for a deputy to be found unfit for duty. Most terminations at KCSO are for deputies fresh from the police academy who fail their field training.
In the instance of cops with medical issues, both psychological and physical, if a doctor finds that the deputy cannot expect to make a full recovery within six months, Rahr says, "We then move to medical termination."
I asked Holland why she could do well on the job, while having issues with bipolar after hours. "It's because of my training," she says. "When you are on the job, you are so focused on an incident that your training takes over. It's easy after that."
As bipolar disorder goes, Holland barely tips the scale. The disorder operates on a continuum. At one end are the mildest cases, where the sleep disturbances and racing thoughts reign—hypomania, in other words. People on this end of the scale almost never experience true manic episodes, although they are subject to bouts of depression. Cases like these often fall into two subcategories of the disorder called bipolar 2 and cyclothymia, which is to say these people are bipolar but are tapped for a lesser form of the illness, "bipolar lite," as some have dubbed it.
On the other end of the scale is bipolar 1, classic manic-depression. At its worst, it is an unholy trinity of psychotic and suicidal episodes and hospitalization. Holland isn't even close to that. She's never experienced psychosis or been suicidal, nor has she been hospitalized, according to her and Kent, her psychiatrist.
The typical story with bipolars who do something tragic, or suffer a tragedy, is that they were not getting treatment or were off their meds. Or they were adding hard drugs and binge drinking to the mix. Either way, they are not taking responsibility for their illness. Much of the American mind-set encourages such behavior. Mental illness is a weakness. Mental illness makes you suspect. If you admit that you are mentally ill, then you are weak and suspect. So bipolars, depressives, and schizophrenics often reject, or barely embrace, the very treatment that will keep them from being the problems we fear they can become.
There is a lot of evidence that dealing with bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses in an open and intelligent fashion makes sense. In 1977, Randy Revelle was a Seattle City Council member. He testified about City Light before a congressional subcommittee in Washington, D.C., then walked outside and experienced a psychotic episode. It was not a pretty sight for his family and friends, as he had other episodes over the next few weeks. Revelle worried that his political career and life were over. But he sought treatment, was diagnosed as bipolar, and began taking lithium.
He was re-elected to Seattle City Council and, four years later, was elected King County executive. At the time, it was even more difficult than it is today for someone to openly admit they have a mental illness. But Revelle talked about it. At times, he did so very publicly.
In 28 years, he has not experienced any other psychotic episodes and continues to lead an active life in regional politics as a lobbyist for the Washington State Hospital Association. He was instrumental in getting a bill through the Legislature this year which bans the long-standing practice of health-insurance companies offering lesser benefits for mental-health treatment than they do for physical ailments. Gov. Christine Gregoire signed the bill into law on March 9.
Of Holland's firing, Revelle says, "That would've never happened if I were county exec."
Despite examples such as Revelle and Weaver, the Rochester, N.Y., cop diagnosed with depression, and the millions of other Americans who have mental illness but lead perfectly normal and productive lives, many Americans continue to think that we are freak jobs. In fact, 25 percent of Americans think that people with bipolar disorder are automatically dangerous, according to a 2002 poll by the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, a national advocacy group.
If such poisonous thinking continues, cops will continue to lose their jobs, even if they've done everything right.
One evening in March 2003, Holland and four other deputies pursued a man on International Boulevard in SeaTac. He'd just knocked over a bank branch in Normandy Park and had a string of warrants on his head for other bank jobs. It was 5 p.m. and the road was clogged with traffic. The robber, presumed armed, was driving a motorcycle, and when he got into the clear, he jumped on the throttle, deputies in hot pursuit and a sheriff's helicopter calling the chase from overhead.
At 188th Street South, traffic stopped the fleeing robber. A deputy ran his patrol car into the motorcycle, and the man ran east into techniques to keep encounters with mentally ill people from going badly, for the subject or the cop.
Last year, an SPD sergeant used CIT concepts to talk a suicidal man off of the Space Needle's halo.
It has doubtlessly also saved the lives of officers facing down mentally ill people with weapons. The training could prove useful, too, the next time a King County deputy encounters a psychotic, crack-smoking, bipolar man or woman running naked in the streets.
And it might just make good cop sense to have a deputy or two who know exactly what's going on with the bipolar subject, know what the monkey on that person's back feels like.
good cop ruined for using the word "dude"
