Khiel fatal shooting case reignites issue of cops vs. mentally ill

BY JOHN MARZULLI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER    Tuesday, November 27th 2007, 4:00 AM

The fatal police shooting of an unarmed, mentally ill Brooklyn teen two weeks ago has reignited a debate over whether the NYPD's tactics for responding to emotionally disturbed suspects are adequate or even constitutional.

An answer to the heated dispute may emerge from a battle between the city and lawyers for the mother of Kevin Cerbelli, a knife-wielding schizophrenic who was shot to death by police inside a Queens stationhouse, that has been winding its way through federal courts for the last eight years.

While there are thousands of 911 calls to police related to emotionally disturbed persons - or EDPs - that don't end with tragic results, advocates for Cerbelli's mother say the Police Department policy of encircling a suspect before multiple cops shout commands at him makes the situation worse.

"Allowing and encouraging police officers to surround an EDP in crisis, with weapons drawn, while shouting commands at the EDP, is a recipe for disaster," former First Deputy Police Commissioner John Pritchard wrote in a report on the Cerbelli shooting used by the deceased's legal team.

"The city [apparently] would rather fight for years than reconsider their policy," said the lawyer for Cerbelli's mother, Amanda Masters, of New York Lawyers for Public Interest.

Dr. Katherine Falk, a psychiatrist who analyzed the case for the Cerbelli family, opined that it was pointless for police to bark commands at the 30 year old - who was clearly psychotic and delusional when he stormed into the 110th Precinct in 1998 waving a kitchen knife and screwdriver.

"It would be difficult for him to understand why police were pointing guns at him and yelling and shooting him," Falk stated in court papers. "The policy of the NYPD to deal with EDPs is very lacking in any basic understanding of the nature of mental illness."

In her considerable experience dealing with mentally ill homeless people, Falk said she would never stand between a patient and the door or yell orders because it makes the EDP feel more agitated and threatened.

City cops must often wait for sergeants and the elite Emergency Service Unit to bring non-lethal restraining equipment to a scene involving a mentally ill person. But Falk argued police departments in Memphis and Houston provide superior crisis intervention training to their rank-and-file cops.

"The officers who have [that] training do not seem to be afraid of the EDP and interact with the EDP in a way that calms the EDP and the situation," Falk wrote in a report.