Cleveland Council Proposes ‘Tanisha’s Law’ To Reform Police Response To Mental Health Crises After 2014 Death In Custody

Tanisha Anderson, a 37-year-old woman who struggled with mental illness, died while in police custody.

Three of Cleveland’s city council members recently made an argument in a city council meeting that instead of having armed police officers conduct wellness checks, as they are not trained mental health specialists, unarmed behavioral health clinicians should go on those checks instead.

According to Cleveland.com, the council members proposed the measure on Nov. 4, called Tanisha’s Law, after 37-year-old Tanisha Anderson, a Cleveland woman who struggled with mental illness and died while in police custody in 2014.

The measure was largely due to the efforts of Anderson’s uncle, Michael Anderson, who collaborated with Case Western University Law students to create the proposal that was put forth during the meeting by Stephanie Howse-Jones, Rebecca Maurer, and Charles Silfe.

Tanisha’s nephew, Jacob Johnson, said at a press conference on the university’s campus on Nov. 7, that the law has the potential to keep others from what he and his family have dealt with since his aunt died.

Johnson was present with Anderson on the night she died in the custody of the Cleveland Police Department.

“This will mean that no other family will have to endure what we’ve endured, not just based on what happened that night, but having to go through life without her — having to go through life without that beautiful mother, that beautiful aunt, that beautiful daughter, that beautiful sister. We just don’t want for any other family to endure what we’ve had to,” Johnson remarked.

Although the law still has to be passed by the Cleveland City Council and signed by Mayor Justin Bibb, the law has the potential to fundamentally change how law enforcement approaches mentally ill or disturbed individuals.

The law advocates for police to use two kinds of limited or non-police responses: one model, the co-responder model, allows for police to initially respond to the call before calling in a behavioral health specialist, somewhat similar to an officer calling for backup.

The other model, a care-response model, completely removes police from the equation, instead directly sending in teams of clinicians, with the caveat that these would be situations in which no harm to the individual or the larger public is presented.

The latter model has Bibb’s tacit support, but Howse-Jones indicated that these options need to become a formal part of the city’s laws to be effective.

“When you have it in the law, we can ensure that it gets funded,” Howse-Jones told the outlet. “If it’s not on paper, it is not real.”

The Cleveland Police Department is currently subject to a consent decree, which was imposed on it by the Department of Justice in the wake of Tanisha Anderson’s death in 2015. Part of the agreement required them to improve their response to reported mental health crises.

Their agreement will end at some point, at which point the department will have to police itself, which is one reason the councilors aren’t rushing to get the law passed.

They indicated to Cleveland.com that they want to ensure the law, if approved, will be implemented in the best interests of Cleveland’s most vulnerable citizens.

Yannina Sharpley-Travis, one of the law students who helped write the proposal, succinctly summarized the necessity of a carefully implemented law at the press conference: “The city’s commitment to adopting these measures would go a long way in reducing and preventing the harm that our community members in crisis face when intervention is needed.”