Advocates for mentally ill question Phila. police shooting

By Jennifer Lin

Inquirer Staff Writer

Advocates for the mentally ill are questioning why Philadelphia police used lethal force against a homeless man Friday instead of calling in a special crisis-intervention team trained to deal with people with mental illness.

Police yesterday identified the victim, shot to death by two officers near the Municipal Services Building in Center City, as 59-year-old Morgan Mumford. His last known address was the city-run Ridge Avenue Shelter, said Lt. Frank Vanore, a department spokesman.

Police and the Medical Examiner's Office were still trying to track down Mumford's family.

People who work with the homeless said Mumford was a regular around Broad and Arch Streets and was thought to suffer from mental illness. He was not, however, a client of the city's Department of Behavioral Health, said Gary Brown, a department spokesman.

Mumford placed repeated emergency calls to police Friday morning. From 6 to 8:25, he made more than 40 calls from an emergency call box in the below-ground concourse near the municipal building. Each time, he immediately hung up.

When two officers arrived, Mumford raised a utility knife to them. They fired on him after multiple warnings to put the weapon down.

"Where were the crisis intervention teams?" said Debbie Plotnick, an advocate for the mentally ill who works for the nonprofit Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania. "These are officers who are specially trained to interact with the public when you suspect behavioral health issues."

The crisis teams, she said, are made up of officers "specially trained to interact with the public when you suspect behavioral-health issues." If they are unable to defuse confrontation, they are equipped with Taser guns that stun, not kill.

Mental health experts have been working with police for two years to develop the crisis teams. To date, 400 officers from a force of about 9,000 have received the training.

Officers spend a week working with psychiatrists, social workers, retired officers, and advocates for the homeless and mentally ill to adopt techniques for managing tense situations.

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey has embraced the idea. Last May, he won an award from the Mental Health Association for moving rapidly to place teams in all police districts, Plotnick said.

Mental illness is a particular problem among the city's homeless street population. An estimated 85 percent have mental illness, addictions, or both.

Police have killed 12 people so far this year in the line of duty, two of whom were homeless individuals suspected of mental illness, according to advocates for the homeless.

After Mumford made more than 40 false calls to police, "they had to know that clearly there were behavioral health issues," Plotnick said.

Vanore said a crisis team will respond to an incident if police at the scene can verify that someone has a behavioral problem.

Otherwise, he said, "we wouldn't have enough teams. Just making multiple calls to 911 wouldn't trigger that."

Mumford had no identification on him at the time of his death, and had to be identified through fingerprints. In 2006, he was arrested for burglary and criminal trespassing, but never showed up for hearings. The court issued a bench warrant for his arrest.

Contact staff writer Jennifer Lin at 215-854-5659 or jlin@phillynews.com.

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