Host Karen James speaks with Dave Boyer, managing attorney with Disability Rights Oregon, who filed a lawsuit against Washington County, Oregon’s 2nd largest county. The federal lawsuit was filed after a year-long investigation alleging that when someone in the County experiencing a mental health crisis calls for help, the County routinely treats their health emergency like a crime, dispatching tactically-trained, armed law enforcement officers instead of trained mental health professionals. As a result, people with mental health disabilities in the County have been discriminated against, deprived of immediate medical care and are being unnecessarily exposed to citation, arrest, involuntary hospitalization, and police uses of force. The lawsuit seeks to improve how Washington County responds to people with mental health disabilities in crisis by sufficiently funding, staffing, and integrating the County’s non-police response teams into the dispatch system. Disability Rights Oregon is the Protection and Advocacy System (P&A) mandated under federal law to ensure that rights of individuals with mental illness are protected.
Lawsuit: https://www.droregon.org/litigation-resources/dro-v-washington-county
Disability Rights Oregon https://www.droregon.org/
- KBOO