UPDATE: 35th SW reopened after police get man in crisis into custody and then into an ambulance

12:21 PM: Thanks to everyone who messaged us about police activity on 35th SW. Because of it, the road is basically closed right now between Roxbury and Barton. Our crew is arriving and we’re working to find out what this is about. Avoid the area. More to come …

(Added, WSB photos: Above, officers talking with the man near 35th/Roxbury)
12:24 PM: This apparently involved a person, apparently in crisis, in the middle of the street, yelling. Police have just taken him into custody and an ambulance is being sent in. Police tell us the road will be reopened shortly.

(Above, the man getting onto a gurney, to be placed in the ambulance)
12:40 PM: According to commenter Bradley and a witness who talked to our crew, among other things the man was shouting, he had been urging/daring police to shoot him. So far as we know, the incident ended without injury.

Cathy September 12, 2015 (12:26 pm)

Thank you…I was on my way to Safeway and had to turn around on a side road as the police were blocking the road. I also saw an ambulance in the 7-11 parking lot on Barton and a Hook & Ladder Fire truck turned from Roxbury South on 35th.

Sue September 12, 2015 (12:27 pm)

There are like half a dozen police cars with lights flashing, a group of people standing in the middle of 35th and another group of police cars on the other side of them. Very curious as to what’s going on.

WSB September 12, 2015 (12:29 pm)

Have updated the story. A man, apparently in crisis (yelling, etc.), was out in the middle of the street. He’s now in custody and an ambulance is going in, so he’ll likely be taken for evaluation, and the road will be open soon.

Bradley September 12, 2015 (12:32 pm)

SPD just took the suspect into custody. I was a couple hundred feet away. The man was shouting for the police to shoot him. Then he sat down in the north-bound lanes. They they talked him into lifting up his shirt. He took his shirt off after that and was still arguing with officers. A few officers were speaking with him just feet away for quite a while. They he started walking south-bound when they gently grabbed him and cuffed him. An ambulance showed up on the scene a minute later.

~Hockeywitch~ September 12, 2015 (12:35 pm)

I’m glad to hear that they were able to take him into custody without anyone getting hurt. Hopefully he can get some help. Its a scary place when your mind takes over the rest of your body like that. Been there (not screaming and yelling in the street, but suicide attempts). Here’s hoping he will be ok.

WSB September 12, 2015 (12:38 pm)

Thanks, Bradley. Our crew reported hearing the man shouting something anti-police, but we got there just in the final minutes; as I type this, our photographer walked in the door and said a witness told him the same thing – that the man was yelling for police to shoot him. This is the kind of thing officers deal with far more than crime, and they do get some crisis training … it’s been said that due to the years of cuts in mental-health services, more people have a first contact like this, than with, say, a counselor, etc. – TR

Amanda September 12, 2015 (12:41 pm)

Police handled the situation so well wish it had been recorded. I live next door it was a domestic situation. They took They took their time explaining polity what they needed to do kudos to the police responding.

Danielle September 12, 2015 (12:56 pm)

I rarely compliment police these days but kudos to SPD for using their skills to de-escalate the situation and keep everyone involved, safe. With 890 people in the US killed this year already, SPD is an example of how to do the tough job of policing, in an honorable way. Hats off.

East Coast Cynic September 12, 2015 (1:40 pm)

I’ve also been rather critical of the SPD due to their accountability issues, but in this case, they did a great job getting this person under control.

Jayjay September 12, 2015 (1:43 pm)

These officers never know what they are going to encounter from one call to the next. The fact that they are able to respond with such empathy and patience while defending themselves and the public is truly extraordinary.

anonyme September 12, 2015 (1:56 pm)

Wow. I was on the #22 that went through that intersection at exactly noon, and there was nothing at all going on. What a difference a few minutes makes! I’m glad police handled this so well. In the past, unarmed people with mental health issues would have just been shot.

WSB September 12, 2015 (2:07 pm)

Anon, that’s untrue, particularly in West Seattle. Almost all our WSBeat roundups, for example, feature at least one summary of officers dealing with someone in crisis, and none were injured, let alone shot. The last officer-involved shooting here that I can find in our archives was the 61st/Admiral case five years ago (and in that case, the person WAS armed) https://westseattleblog.com/2010/09/police-responding-to-assault-with-weapons-call-at-61stadmiral *** Can’t speak for the rest of the city, of course, and as others have mentioned, the department remains under federal monitoring.
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Side note: While searching the archives, I happened onto our coverage of the Force Investigations unit captain speaking to the WS Crime Prevention Council earlier this year. 9 officer-involved shootings citywide last year. Some context for anyone interested (second half of story, which covered at a meeting at which other things were discussed too)
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https://westseattleblog.com/2015/03/west-seattle-crime-prevention-council-whats-up-whats-down-whats-new-force-investigations-team-guest/

Mike September 12, 2015 (2:15 pm)

WSB, than you for pointing out that it’s seldom an officer discharges their firearm, yet they attend to numerous calls where people are violent and potentially a risk to the officer or others. It’s difficult to trust all uniformed officers these days as media has definitely showed the public the evil side of many in uniform (even if it’s a very small percentage of them).
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Glad this particular incident ended without people being shot or critically injured. A job well done by the response team. I feel for the medics, unarmed, underpaid and continually at risk helping people that might attack them. Talk about a job that needs a pay raise.

anonyme September 12, 2015 (2:47 pm)

WSB, what I said is TRUE and FACTUAL. My comment made no reference to time frame or neighborhood. When I lived on Queen Anne, an unarmed, mentally ill black man was shot dead by several officers as he skipped down the street. Officers stated that they thought he had a knife, but none was found. This was a disturbing incident, and I don’t appreciate being called a liar for relating it. While I appreciate that our West Seattle police officers handled this situation well, this has not always been the case in the city of Seattle.

WSB September 12, 2015 (2:56 pm)

Didn’t say it has never happened. You wrote, “In the past, unarmed people with mental health issues would have just been shot.” The true statement would have been “In the past, some unarmed people with mental health issues have been shot.”

cjboffoli September 12, 2015 (4:00 pm)

The Seattle Police Department historically has a very low incidence of uses of force (around 0.12-0.13%) compared to the national average which is higher than 1%. Of the hundreds of thousands of uneventful citizen interactions police have every year (more than 860,000 from 911 calls alone last year) perhaps around 10,000 interactions a year involve mentally ill people in crisis. A comparatively minuscule fraction of police encounters (over decades) involve officers shooting mentally ill citizens.
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According to the SPD, they are currently one of the few departments in the country that actually separately tracks interactions with mentally ill citizens. Since such tracking began in May of this year, just 10 incidents involved “type 2 force” that “causes or is reasonably expected to cause physical injury greater than transitory pain but less than great or substantial bodily harm.” Of 2,464 contacts between May and August of this year only 187 arrests were made (in cases where people were armed or made threats of violence) and 1,594 cases were referred to community mental health providers. To date all 1,250 officers in the SPD have received special crisis-training for these types of interactions.
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So with all due respect to mainstream media-fueled confirmation bias, if one wants to talk about what’s TRUE and FACTUAL mentally ill people in crisis who interact with the SPD are statistically MUCH more likely to be referred to mental health services than to be gunned down or even to be treated violently.

Jon Wright September 12, 2015 (5:00 pm)

No, a true statement would be “I know of one time when an unarmed person with mental health issues was shot.”
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“Person” is not the same as “people” and Anonyme seems awfully defensive for being called out for a sloppy generalization.

Mike September 12, 2015 (9:11 pm)

Glad nobody was hurt and that the situation was handled safe and quickly. We need to have a strong presence of police with all the prowling and incidents in WS.

Delmar September 13, 2015 (12:02 am)

When,who,where was an unarmed mentally ill black man shot skipping down the street???….If it the incident I believe you are writing about you left out a whole lot of truth….If it is not that incident [ video of officers following suspect on foot] then please enlighten some of us of the incident you are referencing.

Seatowndude September 13, 2015 (6:42 am)

SPD is an excellent police force…
The haters will always hate.
Thank you SPD for dealing with ALL the crazies so we civilians don’t have to.

Ben September 14, 2015 (10:15 am)

I was actually there 4 feet from the guy before it started. I don’t know what “in crisis” means here but the guy was very stressed.
I was walking next to Anthony (name that the police were using) while he was going through papers in the back of his trunk. As I took 5 more steps away from the guy I noticed the guns and the police across the street. More police started coming… Anthony started yelling something like why all the guns or something like that. I was in a little bit of shock so I cant remember the exact words. Then the police continue to tell him to close the trunk and walk toward them. Anthony becomes stressed (at this point I’m standing by a telephone poll not sure which direction to move in) and starts making comments about the guns,he sits in the street in frustration and he is in an extremely stressful situation. Thats when he starts yelling shoot me. Mind you the guy is only yelling because he is talking to police…they are both talking loudly back and forth to each other. I could feel the tension then. A cop finally comes next to me to take me to my car and tells me to hurry up and get out of there because he has a knife.
Now my concern at that moment was why so many big guns for just a knife. From just watching him before and during the incident something bad must of happened before and he wasn’t expecting everything to be escalated to this degree. That’s the impression that I got but I could be wrong.
The other issue that I had was if you are pulling that many guns on someone. You may want to make sure that the people are taken out of the street first. I was the only one on that block or next to him so if something happened then God knows what could of happened to me.

Art Critic September 14, 2015 (6:21 pm)

To those who have a loved one in a mental health crisis I recommend you get in touch with NAMI Greater Seattle; the only place we found help. Families helping families.

https://www.facebook.com/NAMI-Greater-Seattle-149190128457356/timeline/

Thanks for the coverage WSB, as always. This issue is of extreme importance. 50% percent of those killed by police in this country have a mental illness. No one keeps accurate accounting of American Citizens killed by police in this country, we should for everyone’s sake. So if you do the math on estimates made that would be one person with a serious mental illness killed in America by police every 36 hours. Which is why we say, Psychotic Lives Matter. By the way, the police are doing a great job with a difficult situation, they have been made first line caregivers in a mental health care system that is horribly broken.

Here is a very good article about SPD vis a vis folks in crisis. Its getting better. It has to.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/spd-report-minimal-force-used-in-contacts-with-mentally-ill/

Wowed September 15, 2015 (3:53 am)

“Why so many big guns for a knife?” Would a sling-shot be less offensive. Well if somebody starting attacking me with “just” a knife I sure hope the police have the biggest gun(s) necessary to stop them.

I’ll sacrifice squeamish to live another day every time!

Sorry, comment time is over.