Bill may keep mentally ill out of jails

Friday, May 30, 2003 | 9:50 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Some relief could be on the way for emergency rooms and some jails in Clark County that are filled with mentally ill people.

Gov. Kenny Guinn has signed Senate Bill 94 to allow police to divert the mentally ill away from these facilities into treatment centers.

Metro Police Lt. Stan Olsen said Thursday that the Clark County Detention Center has more mentally ill people than any other facility in Nevada.

"They don't belong in jail," Olsen said.

SB94, signed Wednesday by the governor, allows police to divert the mentally ill or those on drugs or drinking alcohol excessively away from the emergency rooms and into treatment centers. It becomes effective immediately.

Olsen said the new law permits police to place a person in treatment centers for 48 hours until his or her condition is stabilized.

Olsen said the county has worked with Carlos Brandenburg, director of the state Division of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities, to remedy the problem.

Local governments in Clark County have worked out an agreement with WestCare, at Martin Luther King Boulevard and Alta Drive, to provide a "crisis triage center" where these patients could be taken.

Olsen said 35 officers have been trained to deal with crisis situations when a mentally ill person gets in trouble. These officers, who work on regular patrol, are part of a crisis intervention team that is summoned in these cases.

The new law is part of a multi-pronged effort to get faster and more appropriate care for people who are picked up by police. Sometimes they sit in hospital emergency rooms filling beds for as long as two days.

The Senate and Assembly Budget committees have agreed to finance a roving unit of mental health specialists in Clark County to visit emergency rooms and send these patients to appropriate treatment centers or back into community-based programs.

The committees also have agreed to a $32 million 150-bed psychiatric hospital at the Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Hospitals. In the interim there will be money for enough staff to expand the number of beds at the present facility from 88 to 103.

Olsen said there were only 10 psychiatric observation beds operated by the state in Las Vegas for these mentally ill people to be placed. He said Washoe County had 40 beds. The psychiatric observation unit in Southern Nevada will go from 10 to 26 beds.