LA Mayor Backs Jim McDonnell for Sheriff, PTSD in High-Violence Neighborhoods, and “Paws for Life”

LA MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI TO ENDORSE JIM MCDONNELL FOR SHERIFF

Today, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti will officially endorse Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell for Sheriff of Los Angeles County. He will announce his support at 1:00p.m. on the 1st Street Steps of City Hall.

Here are some clips from the announcement:

Chief McDonnell and Mayor Garcetti have been long-time partners in reducing crime, increasing public safety in the region and advancing smarter approaches to policing, including investing in reducing crime by improving opportunities and protecting the most vulnerable, instituting strong management teams and practices, and focusing on results.

Mayor Garcetti believes Chief Jim McDonnell, based on his 29 years’ experience at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and four years as Chief of Police in Long Beach, has the experience, credibility and judgment to lead the LASD forward.

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Chief McDonnell is an outsider who will bring a fresh perspective to the Sheriff’s Department by rebuilding community trust and enhancing transparency within the Department. He supports the creation of a Citizens’ Oversight Commission and understands the importance of community-based policing, which he helped design and implement within the LAPD, and which Mayor Garcetti strongly supports.

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THE UNDENIABLE COST OF PTSD ON KIDS AND FAMILIES IN INNER CITY NEIGHBORHOODS

Emerging research reveals that people living in high-violence neighborhoods experience rates of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) rivaling that of war veterans. Despite this, not much is being done to combat trauma in inner-city communities, particularly concerning its effects on children.

Lois Beckett’s story for ProPublica explains the real cost of PTSD on families and communities and why it is such an important issue. (The story was co-published with Essence magazine.) Here’s a clip:

Last October, Aireana and her boyfriend were driving through Oakland when a man on the street opened fire on their car. Her two children, ages 6 and 1, were in the backseat. Aireana, who asked to be identified only by her first name, remembers feeling something slam into her jaw and hearing a sound like a firecracker popping in her head. Her boyfriend hit the accelerator and swerved down the street. He and Aireana turned at the same moment to check on the kids. They were safe. Then her boyfriend looked at her and saw blood spurting from her neck. “Oh, my God,” he said, panicking, and crashed into a parked car.

In the shock after the crash, Aireana had only one coherent thought: I cannot die in front of my kids. They cannot see me die. She unbuckled her seat belt and pushed herself out of the car. As she stood, she felt dizzy and closed her eyes. But the thought of her children propelled her forward. They can’t see my body lying here dead. Still dazed, she walked away from the car. She could hear her daughter screaming behind her, “My mom’s dying!”

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A bullet had smashed through her front teeth, grazed her tongue and broken her jaw. In the emergency room, the surgeons repaired her tongue. Later, they wired her jaw shut so that it could heal. Aireana stayed in the hospital for more than a month. When she went home, her face was still puffy and swollen, and she had a hard time talking. Fragments of the bullet were still lodged in the side of her neck.

“You’re so lucky,” her friends kept telling her. “Why are you still so sad? You’re okay—you’re alive.” But Aireana couldn’t stop thinking about the shooting. She felt guilty, as if it were her fault that she had been hit. Why hadn’t she lifted her arm to block the bullet? Why hadn’t she ducked? The shooting played over and over in her dreams. Sometimes, reliving it, she remembered to duck, and then the bullet passed over her and hit one of her children. She’d wake up in a panic, soaked in sweat.

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The burden of post-traumatic stress on low-income communities of color gets very little attention. What public recognition it does receive is often sensationalized: A TV reporter apologized this spring after a segment on young people dealing with trauma in Oakland referred to PTSD as ” hood disease.”

“Someone in the community has to stand up and say, ‘Because of all the gun violence, we have a lot of traumatized people—and it’s not just the people who are being shot and shot at, it’s the people who are witnessing it, the vicarious trauma,'” says Arthur C. Evans, Jr., Ph.D., the commissioner of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services. With the support of Mayor Michael Nutter, Evans has pushed Philadelphia to treat trauma as a major public health issue and to develop a comprehensive approach to PTSD. Over the past eight years, city officials have worked with hospitals, community mental health clinics, pediatricians, schoolteachers and police officers to increase awareness of the disorder and make sure residents are connected with treatment professionals. “We have to stop telling our kids they just have to live with this,” Evans says.

This past July, Aireana helped her kids overcome their terror of the firework noises they thought were gunshots outside their apartment:

As her neighbors set off firecrackers in the street, she kept her kids at a distance. She pointed to the lights: “That one’s cool.” A purple explosion: “Oooh, nice.” Gradually, they walked closer. Later, she gave her kids sparklers and watched them run around making glowing scribbles in the dark. She had always loved fireworks. It was good to see her kids not being afraid and enjoying them, too.

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DOGS AND INMATES RESCUE EACH OTHER

Karma Rescue, a non-profit that saves animals at high kill-shelters, partnered with CA State Prison LA County in Lancaster to launch an inmate-dog training program called “Paws for Life.” Karma saved five dogs at risk of being euthanized, and brought them to the Lancaster prison where 14 inmates spent 12 weeks training the dogs to boost their chance of finding permanent homes.

The program was a huge success for both inmates and the dogs who brought unconditional love and happiness into a place largely devoid of both. Four of the five dogs have been adopted since their graduation on August 9, and the program is set to begin again in September with 10 new dogs in need.

We’ve reported on programs of this kind before in LA County, but this is the first to be performed in a high-security prison with lifer inmates.

The Huffington Post’s Dr. Patricia Fitzgerald has more on the program (and John DuBois and Shaughn Crawford have taken some powerful photos of the dogs and their incarcerated friends). Here are some clips:

Fourteen inmates were then selected to train five shelter dogs who stayed at the prison this summer for a 12-week program. From the very beginning, the program struck a chord with everyone involved. Karma Rescue’s founder Rande Levine wrote, “Men who had not seen an animal in decades were openly emotional at the sight of the beautiful creatures before them. Just petting our dogs brought many to happy tears. It was a day I will never, ever forget.”

Several times a week, professional dog trainer Mark Tipton and several dedicated Karma Rescue volunteers drove out to the prison to instruct the inmates on how to train their assigned dogs for ‘Canine Good Citizen’ certification, a designation that increases the chance that a dog will be successfully adopted.

I attended the graduation of the first class of Paws for Life on August 9th, and what made it so powerful was the pervasive sense that absolutely everybody involved in the program — the volunteers, the prison warden and staff, the inmates, the dogs, and everyone in their vicinity — was transformed by it.

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For Captain Crystal Wood, having the Paws for Life program represents a “lifelong dream” of hers to have a dog program at the prison. She noticed a huge change in the inmates in a relatively short time after the dogs entered the prison.

“A lot of times in this setting it’s so depressing and you don’t show emotion…feelings and when you have a creature that gives you unconditional love and licks you and doesn’t care – you see men who’ve been in prison for 20 and 30 years break down and cry just for the compassion and the humanity. It’s just generally made the yard a calmer place,” Capt. Wood said.

Mark Tipton, the trainer for the inmates, was beaming and proud of his students: “I had high hopes and they met them. When I first came I had one of the officers tell me, ‘I’ve never seen any of these guys smile and I’ve been here 14, 15 years and now they’re coming out smiling like Cheshire cats.’ They have smiles on their faces — happy, happy – and it gives them purpose.”

And here’s what some of the inmate participants had to say about the program:

DeAngelo: “The dogs have taught me how to be patient and how to continue to love no matter what’s going on around you and to you, just continue to learn how to love. No matter what’s going on with the dog, he responds the same way … he loves you, and that’s what I got out of that. Our trainer, Mark, he taught us patience, how to be gentle, how to love. He was very patient with us.”

John M.: “This program has saved my life. It’s pretty simple. I have been in prison for twenty plus years…The Paws for Life program came along with Karma and all of a sudden I can love again. I can feel love. I can experience emotions that I have been holding down for twenty plus years…I sleep better at night, I’m more able to speak with people, I’m a little bit more literate. All of this comes from having a dog.”

Oliver: “It gave me another chance at unconditional love. It’s changed the entire yard, there is a lot of peace with the C.O.s (Correctional Officers) and other inmates. It brought everybody closer.”