BALTIMORE — An officer involved shooting on Christmas Day left one man facing several charges of attempted murder, assault and reckless endangerment.
Now behavioral health service organizers are looking a little closer into how police handled that incident considering the initial call was for a behavioral health crisis.
Baltimore police said just before 5:00 p.m. on Saturday they responded to a man’s home on Crawford avenue in northwest Baltimore.
Police identified him as 59-year old Barron Coe, after he had a yelling match with police he shot at them and they shot back hitting him.
Coe also threatened to have explosives however police later said they were inert and did not contain explosive material. Coe’s now stable but facing many charges including several counts of attempted murder, assault, and reckless endangerment. Adrienne Breidenstine from the Behavioral Health Systems said these type of calls are especially challenging for law enforcement and its why their long standing partnership with training police on these issues is so important
“ The Baltimore police department does use the CIT model in there with the academy CIT is crisis intervention team training. So patrol officers those who are out in the community are CIT trained now the department doesn’t have every patrol officer that is CIT train but that is a goal of theirs as a result of the consent decree. Officers that receive that crisis intervention training know how to recognize the signs of when someone is experiencing a behavioral health crisis they also know how to help de-escalate the situation what to say how to approach someone how to respond so that is the type of training we also partner with the police to do,” Breidenstine said.
Marvin Grinnage is one of the neighbors who watched the incident unfold on Christmas day. Grinnage said although he and his family were displaced from their home that night because of the incident he believes police handled the situation well. He’s also thankful for the special CIT training because he knows the situation for his neighbor could have gone a lot worse, but he believes extending grace may help deescalate things when dealing with people suffering from mental health crisis.
“ Police were trying to get people out of harm’s way as much as possible. Just be mindful, you never know what somebody else is going through. There are people out there who have mental health issues and wish this gentleman has a history of some issues. So you still have to take care of those people as well,” Grinnage said.
Organizers from the behavioral health systems said they are working to expand mobile crisis teams which would go out and respond to these types of calls in the community.
This particular situation was unique because there were weapons involved but for other instances there is a 24-7 here to help hotline. Anyone who needs help in a behavioral health incident before they call police they can call behavioral health service at 410-433-5175.
