First came the voices.
Kevin Cataneo Salazar heard them, his mother told the Los Angeles Times, before he allegedly gunned down a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy Sept. 16 in Palmdale.
Leonard Patton heard them, urging him to fly from his home in Minnesota to Orange County, where he bludgeoned a mother of two to death in 1994.
Both their families have said in published reports they tried to get them help. But then catastrophe hit.
Time and again, psychosis precedes violence. Red flags abound. Yet experts in law enforcement, mental health and gun laws point to cracks in the system designed to keep society safe from those whose mental illness drives them to attack.
To be sure, the vast majority of the severely mentally ill do not commit violent crimes. Mental illness contributes to only about 4% of all violence, and even less to gun violence, according to researchers.
But when it does happen, the outcome is devastating and the outcry loud.
‘Mistakes happen’
“There’s no silver bullet,” said Steve Lindley, senior program manager at the gun-reform group Brady United and former chief of California’s Bureau of Firearms. “None of us are walking on water, mistakes happen.”
Police are usually the first stop for many dealing with a relative or friend displaying violent or troubling behavior from mental illness. Officers can detain the person under section 5150 of the state Welfare and Institutions Code if he or she is a danger to themselves or others.
But determining which of the mentally ill qualify for detainment is a Herculean task, police say.
“We have no way to see the future, you can’t see inside somebody’s head,” said Jim Bueermann, former Redlands police chief and a founding member of the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing. “You can talk to somebody on the streets who appears to be calm … and then 30 minutes later, we’re right back there, at the same place, and he’s flipped out.”
Added Bueermann: “The whole thing is a balancing act … protecting their dignity, their rights and the public safety.”
Not enough beds
Police often are dispatched with a crisis assessment team made up of clinicians to help assess the person’s danger level. Many times, the responders are hobbled from the beginning, experts say. Police and social workers know there are not enough beds to house those brought in for 72-hour evaluation under the 5150 code.
“It’s a damnable position to be in,” said Steve Pitman, president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Orange County. “Generally, in Orange County, there are no beds.”
Experts trace the lack of statewide psychiatric beds to the 1960s and the move to shutter some state-run mental hospitals in favor of community-based treatment, which wasn’t provided at an adequate level.
Statistics kept by the California Hospital Association show there were 6,072 psychiatric beds statewide in 2018, a drop from 9,353 in 1995. California is below the national average for hospital beds available for in-patient psychiatric care.
So bad is the shortage, according to experts, that in many cases, people needing to be detained are not taken in at all. And most of those who do get detained are not kept for the full 72-hour evaluation period.
Commitments brief
Bueermann, who worked for Redlands from 1978 to 2011, remembers that in San Bernardino County hardly anyone brought in was actually committed.
“More often than not, they were released within the same eight hours that we took them over there,” he said.
And few of those committed are kept longer than three days.
According to the state Department of Health Care Services, 120,402 adults were kept for the three-day period in fiscal 2020-21. The numbers show 48,292 were kept for 14 days, while only 3,299 were kept for 30 days.
“I’ve seen a lot of people who don’t know if it’s day or night outside getting released,” said Chuck Michel, an attorney and president of the California Rifle and Pistol Association.
Michel’s, an expert in gun laws, said anyone committed for 72 hours on a psychiatric hold in California is banned from buying or possessing a firearm for five years. If someone is committed twice in the same 12-month period, the firearm ban is for life, Michel said.
Flaws in background checks
In the death of Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer, Salazar’s mother, Marle, said her son was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia about five years ago, had been hospitalized twice, including at least once involuntarily, for mental illness, and devised a plan to kill himself.
So how did he legally purchase a gun, as alleged by authorities?
Investigators are trying to determine the accuracy of Marle Salazar’s statement and whether the gun he purchased was the same one used in the fatal shooting.
Meanwhile, gun experts said the system for checking backgrounds to purchase firearms is not always precise.
First, there is the form filled out by the buyer at the point of sale. Was the provided information correct?
“When someone is having a mental health crisis, the information they provide is not always accurate,” Lindley said. “If they check that box, the gun sale stops. But as you know, people lie — a lot.”
The background check is based on the identification provided. The state system cross references other government databases to determine whether the buyer is eligible for the gun purchase. But the success of the system depends on the data.
Did the psychiatric hospital properly report the 5150 hold to the state Department of Justice as required? Was the identification accurate? Or, as asserted by Michel, are the DOJ databases flawed with bad information?
“The record system, the databases, the government is not doing a good job of maintaining these databases,” Michel said.
Lindley conceded that mistakes do happen with the database, but rarely.
“When I was chief, did (mistakes) happen a couple of times? Yes. What we found more often was that the gun dealer, even though the person was prohibited, they released the firearm to the person,” Lindley said. “Sometimes humans make mistakes. There’s other (times) where they just want to make money.”
The state also operates the Armed and Prohibited Persons System, which monitors gun owners and cross-references databases to determine if someone who currently possesses a firearm has since become ineligible, such as through a mental illness hold. These incidents are called “triggering events.”
According to the state Department of Justice, 4,837 people were prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm due to a mental health triggering event as of Jan. 1, 2023. The system took effect in 2006.
Gun restraining orders underutilized
Another way to keep guns out of the hands of the potentially dangerous is through the use of gun violence restraining orders, which are allowed through California’s red flag law.
Under this law, individuals can seek a court order restraining someone from possessing a gun if he or she is at high risk of abusing it but hasn’t committed a crime or doesn’t qualify for a mental health hold.
Experts say this red flag system is quite effective, but underutilized by police and the public.
A 2020 study by the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis Health found that two-thirds of the 2,870 people surveyed had never heard of the gun violence restraining order process.
Emergency and temporary restraining orders can last up to three weeks. But a judge, after conducting a hearing and a review of the evidence, can extend the order for up to five years.
More than 80% of the respondents to the UC Davis survey said they would utilize the process if a family member threatened to harm themselves or others.
Lack of due process?
Michel said anti-gun groups have weaponized the red flag process.
“The problem with the red flag law is there’s not due process,” he said. “They’re rubber-stamped.”
It is unclear what Salazar’s family did to get him treatment or to keep him from guns. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The same defense was used by Leonard Patton, who was found not guilty in 1997 by reason of insanity and sent to a state mental hospital.
An Orange County judge is now considering releasing Patton to an outpatient facility for continued treatment.
