Decriminalizing mental illness is emerging as one of the most important and challenging aspects of police reform. Our dispatch from a liberal Michigan town struggling to move past “defund the police”:
Cynthia Harrison hugs her son, Anthony Hamilton, in June at Washtenaw County Jail in Michigan. She hasn't seen him in person since he went to jail in January. | Photos by Nick Hagen for POLITICOLynette Clemetson is director of Wallace House, the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists and the Livingston Awards at the University of Michigan. She is a contributing editor at Politico.The first arrest was over trash.
When I ask Washtenaw Sheriff Jerry Clayton what he thinks about Anthony’s cycle of incarceration, he shakes his head slowly in frustration and says, almost inaudibly, “Shouldn’t be here.” When I ask him to elaborate, he returns to his full and commanding voice: “It’s not only a criminal justice failure, it’s a societal failure. The criminal legal system is the tool that society uses to carry out its policies.
“Right now, we’re asking police to do a whole bunch of things that they’re not well equipped to do,” says Michigan State Senator Jeff Irwin, a Democrat whose district includes Washtenaw County. He introduced a bill this spring requiring the state to develop requirements for training police in de-escalation, implicit bias and behavioral health. “When they try to solve those problems that they shouldn’t be solving, a lot of times they make the problem worse,” Irwin says.
Clayton is engaging in that conversation with various residents across the county. Among the people he increasingly finds himself in the same meeting rooms and public spaces with is Anthony’s mother, Cynthia Harrison. The two met for the first time this spring over Zoom after Cynthia raised concerns with community mental health providers that services they were proudly touting were not reaching her son in the jail. Clayton has since recommended Cynthia for committees charged with reform.
Top: The view of Cynthia Harrison’s street from her home office in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Bottom: The behavioral psychiatric section of a binder where Cynthia keeps documents relating to her son Anthony Hamilton’s mental health history. Substance abuse is a common dual diagnosis for people with mental illness caught in the criminal system, and it became a problem for Anthony late in high school when Cynthia loosened her strict watch over his medications and his comings and goings.
“He wouldn’t be a felon if the system were addressing his mental health issues appropriately,” says Cynthia. “With the right support he could be a productive tax-paying citizen. Instead taxpayers are paying for him to be in jail.” Many of the programs are too new to have strong data on efficacy. But the program in Oregon, which started in 1989, is widely viewed as a national model. The program, called CAHOOTS , is funded from the police budget and supports two-person teams of medics and crisis intervention specialists who respond to calls indicating mental health distress. The program expanded to 24-hour service in 2016.
The dominant prosperity can fuel tone-deaf dismissiveness by those in power. The city administrator tasked with studying and making recommendations on the unarmed crisis response program was fired this month after numerous complaints by city employees of offensive comments regarding race and inclusion.
But it wasn’t until the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that pressure on local officials became sufficiently intense to force bold changes. Ann Arbor City Council this spring identified a $234,000 surplus in its $470 million proposed budget to launch the unarmed crisis response program. Top: Sheriff Clayton and CMH Executive Director Cortes examine a spreadsheet detailing the county's police services and mental health millage in June. Bottom: Cortes photographed in Clayton's office.
“To change culture we need real interaction,” says Cortes. “We do better by the community of we do this together.” They found kinship at the Community Church of God in neighboring Ypsilanti, which has a larger Black population, and they sent their three children to Ann Arbor public schools. Mazie became the first Black nurse to work in the Ann Arbor school system in 1984. Years later, after Anthony’s learning challenges appeared, it was his Grandma Mazie who helped his mother navigate the school counseling system to get accommodations, special learning classes and counseling support.
In November 2015, Anthony was taking a shower at his mother and step-father’s house when police banged on the door. Anthony’s name had come up in someone else’s arrest, and police demanded to do a search. Police confiscated a small amount of marijuana; a white powder that turned out to be flour; $902 in cash and a small box of 9mm ammunition. Anthony told police the bullets belonged to his grandfather.
Anthony received a furlough to attend the funeral on January 2, 2016. He spoke at the service and received a customary American flag because his grandfather had served in the military. After the service and burial he was required to return to the jail by 4 p.m. His mother drove him into the jail complex and let him out of the car. But Anthony walked away from the entrance and ran toward the main road.
In May, she was also sworn in as one of four community members on the Criminal Justice Collaborative Council, a 20-member group of elected and appointed members focused, among other things, on reducing jail overcrowding and maximizing fairness and efficiency in the criminal justice system. Cynthia was recently chosen as co-chair of the deflection and diversion subcommittee.
As the training played on her laptop on one side of the desk in her home office, she was anxiously watching her iPad on the other side of the desk. On that screen, Anthony sat shifting uneasily in a Zoom square, appearing for a virtual bond hearing related to his current drug charges. “It’s not politically correct to be racist in Ann Arbor. So I guess I lived most of my life with rose-colored glasses,” says Cynthia. “I feel hurt every day that the city that I was born and raised in, that my son cannot live and breathe and feel safe in my town.”
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