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Jason Sturgill

As Portland police officers refuse to relinquish their guns when entering Portland's new mental health hospital, advocates are asking Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese to take a different position.

Disability Rights Oregon this week sent Reese a letter, asking that the MCSO comply with the Unity Center's policy asking law enforcement officers to relinquish their guns before entering its secure clinical area. The request, sent Wednesday, came as the Mercury reported that the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) has steadfastly refused to abide by that request, despite officers' willingness to stow guns when entering mental health wards in the past.

"Given the fact that other hospitals closed inpatient units to create Unity, Unity is now one of only a few settings in Portland that provides inpatient psychiatric care," DRO attorney Sarah Radcliffe wrote to Reese. "To keep staff and patients at Unity safe, we ask the Sheriff to abide by Unity’s no-gun policy."

The sheriff's office has a different role than police when it comes to Unity. Portland police respond to calls for service from the center (at least 51 so far this year) or in the course of investigating crimes. But because the MCSO also manages the county's jails, it's possible corrections deputies will enter the Unity Center when an inmate's mental health devolves.

"As you know, psychiatric decompensation is a medical emergency that requires hospital level care, which cannot be provided in the jail," Radcliffe wrote in her letter. " If it’s feasible to release the person from custody and facilitate transfer to a hospital, that’s the best outcome. But, sometimes it’s not possible to release the person from custody. If a person requires medical care that the jail cannot provide and cannot be released from custody, the Sheriff’s office must work collaboratively with hospitals to facilitate accessing necessary medical care while remaining in custody."

Radcliffe is in an excellent position to speak on this stuff. DRO is a federally designated "protection and advocacy" agency, meaning it can access records that would otherwise be private. Two months ago, Radcliffe leveraged that access into an excellent and troubling report about how people in severe crisis too frequently languish in a Multnomah County jail system not remotely equipped to help them.

The request to Reese is another way DRO is seeking to improve the situation. As Radcliffe—and virtually any other mental health advocate or provider you ask—states: "Guns have no place in a clinical environment."

DRO is suggesting two options Reese might consider—either that deputies stow their guns in the lockboxes provided at the Unity Center, or, if they refuse, posting deputies outside of secure clinical areas rather than entering armed.

"Failing to compromise would leave individuals in your care and custody with very limited chances of accessing critically needed medical care," Radcliffe writes.

DRO spokesperson Elizabeth Seaberry says Reese hasn't yet responded to the letter. We're waiting on a response from the MCSO, too.

Update, 3:15 pm: Lt. Chad Gaidos, a spokesperson for the sheriff's office, has responded to our questions. He suggests that DRO's concerns are unfounded, though not for a reason likely to please the advocacy group.

"With regard to the concern of our Corrections Deputies entering the facility with a weapon, this would not happen," Gaidos says. "The Unity Center is not equipped to house adults who are in our custody. The connection to services would only come when someone was released from our custody and was being directed to the Unity Center by Corrections Health."