Assault in the wounds? Hospital trip ends in arrests

CYNTHIA MORRISON knows the stresses of having a loved one with a serious mental illness.

She also knows the routine. Her son Brian Thomas has struggled enough with schizophrenia over the years that she knows exactly how to coax him into the curative custody of medical and psychiatric professionals.

So when a Philadelphia police officer intervened, uninvited, last October as Morrison tried to sweet-talk her reluctant son out of the car and into West Philly's Mercy Philadelphia Hospital, Morrison eyeballed the officer with doubt. Her doubt turned to deep distress when she saw the officer's extraction strategy.

"The officer shoved me out of the way and started beating on my son," said Morrison, 67, of University City.

Within minutes, Thomas had been taken, forcibly, into the hospital. But his family's heartache was far from over: Police charged Morrison, her brother and her younger son with aggravated assault and related offenses, claiming they hit and punched Officer Maurice Sutherland as he tried to control Thomas.

Six months later, Morrison still has physical and mental scars from that day - but not the criminal charges. A judge acquitted her in February, unconvinced that an elderly, diabetic, disabled woman who needs a cane to walk could assault the young, fit officer.

The cases against her brother and her son remain unresolved.

As Morrison and her relatives plan civil-rights lawsuits, they say their experience highlights problems with how police handle mentally ill citizens and further erodes the public's trust in police.

"I'm a mother who was going to put her sick son in the hospital, and I wind up in jail? Oh, no, no, no. I never seen anything like that in my life. If this is the way the system is, what chance do we have?" Morrison asked. "I know not all police [are] bad. But they treated me like I was a piece of garbage. It makes you not trust them."

Civil-rights lawyer Gregg Zeff, who represents Morrison's son Orion Sistrunk, added: "The real underlying issue in this kind of case is how we treat mentally ill people. Unfortunately, what the politicians have decided is that we'd rather throw them all in jail, where they will just sit and rot, rather than spend money to get them help from medical professionals. So police are put in this position where somebody is acting up and their job is to go in and provide muscle rather than kindness - and we get these situations."

A police spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment on the case.

Morrison guesses that she has committed Thomas, 48, for professional psychiatric care a dozen or more times since he was 16.

"Sometimes he goes off his meds," she said. "He gets agitated, paranoid. He yells, rambles, screams."

On Oct. 25, Thomas' cousin took him to Mercy Philadelphia Hospital, at 54th Street and Cedar Avenue, for psychiatric help. Thomas wouldn't get out of the car, and the cousin didn't have the required paperwork. So he called Morrison, who lives nearby, to come. Other relatives headed to Mercy, too, to help out.

As Morrison talked with her son, Sutherland - at Mercy with a partner, Officer Dionne Madison, for an unrelated matter - strode over.

This is where the stories diverge, depending on who's retelling.

Police say hospital-security staffers and Thomas' family requested police help. They say Thomas "struggled" with Sutherland and was "flailing wildly," while his family crowded around the Jeep and shouted and cursed at the officer, according to an affidavit. Sutherland said that Morrison's brother Frederick Thomas, 52, yelled, "Oh, hell no!" and tried to pull Sutherland's legs from under him as he struggled to control Thomas, and that someone else kicked him in the back, according to court records.

But Morrison and Sistrunk said they never asked for help. They said Sutherland escalated tensions by shoving Morrison out of the way and beating Thomas. When Morrison cried and asked why officers wouldn't let her handle things, she said, Sutherland emerged from the car, punched her in the chest and put her in a choke hold.

Although Sistrunk admitted that he and others in the family yelled and cursed at the officer to stop, he insisted that no one touched the cop.

"When he moved my mom out of the way, we thought he was going to say, 'OK, sir, come on and get out of the car.' But he didn't. He just started punching away. No words, no 'sir.' Just punching," Sistrunk told the Daily News.

"When you're seeing your loved one get beat, all sorts of things run through your mind. But I respect authority," added Sistrunk, a retired pro boxer who worked as a correctional officer at Delaware County Prison for two years and as an Allied Barton guard for eight.

"If he had kicked the cop at all, that cop would have got hurt," Morrison said of her stocky son, who stands 6 feet tall and weighs 255 pounds.

Instead, Sutherland testified in court that he wasn't injured and was unsure who'd kicked him, according to Morrison's attorney, Irina Ehrlich, and Sistrunk's attorney, Ronald Allan Smith.

A judge dismissed an aggravated-assault charge against Sistrunk at his December preliminary hearing. He now faces a May 11 trial on simple assault, reckless-endangerment and conspiracy charges.

But although Sutherland suffered no injuries that day, Morrison did.

After her son disappeared into the hospital, Morrison said, she walked toward a relative to retrieve her purse - but as she did, she said, Madison knocked her cane out of her hand and sent her sprawling to the ground. Officers then dragged her to the back of a police cruiser for arrest, leaving her with cuts and bruises on her arms, legs, shoulder and hand, she said.

Surveillance video might dispel disputes over the details, but Ehrlich said prosecutors told the court in Morrison's trial that hospital surveillance cameras didn't catch the incident.

Cameron Kline, a spokesman for the District Attorney's Office, said that several witnesses backed up the officers' version of events, prompting prosecutors to proceed with their case.

It wasn't the first brutality claim against Sutherland and Madison.

The pair were among 25 officers sued in 2012 by a woman who used her cellphone to photograph police beating a man in September 2010 in West Philly. Kimla Robinson said police grabbed her by her ponytail, threw her against a police cruiser, took her to West Philly's 18th Police District without explanation and smashed her cellphone.

Police didn't charge Robinson for anything she did on the street. Instead, Sutherland claimed that Robinson fumbled with her handcuffs as she sat on a police-station bench. When he approached to ensure that she wasn't freeing herself, he said, she kicked him in the groin, according to court records.

Robinson denied that, but agreed to a diversionary program that would allow her to have her record expunged, records show.

Robinson later sued, alleging civil-rights violations, assault and battery, false arrest and false imprisonment. She won a $185,000 settlement from the city, according to Craig Straw, chief deputy of the city Law Department's civil-rights unit.

Capt. Francis Healy doesn't know the Sistrunk family nor the family's troubles. But he knows cops and the challenges they face in dealing with citizens in crisis.

"These incidents very often play out like that, unfortunately," said Healy, special adviser to Commissioner Charles Ramsey. "Even when the family calls for assistance, oftentimes it can get ugly. When someone doesn't want to be taken somewhere, it's not pretty. The misperception is that we're going to sit there and hold hands with them. Sometimes force is required, and very often the family gets upset about that."

Healy oversees training in the department's Crisis Intervention Team, a national model created in Memphis, Tenn., in 1988 in which law-enforcement agencies team with mental-health professionals to help officers respond better to citizens in crisis.

About 2,100 of Philly's 6,400 officers are CIT-trained, as are some officers from the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, SEPTA and the probation office, Healy said.

The weeklong training requires role-playing and de-escalation exercises, as well as talks by citizens who had bad police interactions while in crisis, Healy said.

"Oftentimes, the tactics we use when we're in crime-fighting mode get us in trouble when we have to shift gears into social-worker mode," Healy said. "This training helps our officers make that shift faster."

Laura Usher, CIT program manager for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, agreed: "Traditional police tactics - like demanding compliance with shouted commands - can inadvertently escalate a situation and make it more likely for the officer to resort to use of force. Officers might perceive someone as angry or combative, when really they're just upset or having symptoms [of a psychiatric disorder]. This is a huge challenge for police departments around the country."

Such encounters can be deadly. More than half the people fatally shot by police every year have a mental-health disorder, according to a 2013 report by the National Sheriffs' Association and the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit that works to secure treatment for the mentally ill.

A few weeks after the fracas at Mercy, Morrison found herself again committing her troubled son for professional care. This time, she encountered no police, and no drama.

But the day they were arrested continues to haunt members of the family.

Morrison, disabled and retired, is on a fixed income; paying Sistrunk's bail and other costs associated with the court cases upset her fragile finances, she said.

Sistrunk, who was out of work last fall, has gotten five job offers since his arrest - but all have been retracted.

"They do the background check, and they don't want me," he said.

They hope sharing details of their misfortune will help others avoid their fate.

"It was a hot mess, a bunch of lies, and I'm still trying to register because I can't believe it happened," Morrison said. "It was unnecessary and definitely out of order."