Paul E. Schenck had a lot of guns. He also had a history of mental health issues and alcohol abuse. The mix of these factors contributed to the July 31 shootout at his home on High Street that involved 63 police officers and several SWAT teams. The incident ended with Schenck’s death.

But this wasn’t the first time that guns, alcohol and depression combined to bring Schenck to the attention of local police. In 2009, following a neighborhood disturbance, Schenck pulled a gun on a police officer while inebriated, ending up in the Greene County Jail with a charge of carrying a concealed weapon while intoxicated. At that point, local police removed many guns from Schenck’s house and stored them at the department. (The guns included five handguns, two shotguns, 10 rifles and 25 boxes of ammuniton and magazines, according to police records.)

However, a year later the guns were returned to the Schenck family. After this summer’s shootout, many villagers asked, why were the guns returned? Why was a man with several known risk factors allowed to have an arsenal in his home?

The answers to these questions became more clear last Friday when sealed records of the 2009 case were made public. Sealed in 2010, the records were opened at the request of the Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, or BCI, which is conducting an investigation of the July 31 shootout.

Judge Timothy Campbell of the Greene County Court of Common Pleas ordered the guns returned to the Schenck family in October 2010, about a year and a half after the initial incident because there was no legal reason to hold them, according to a local attorney who asked to remain anonymous. The charges against Schenck had been dismissed, the guns were not evidence of a crime and there is no law in Ohio that prevents someone, even someone with a history of mental health issues and alcohol abuse, from having a stockpile of guns.

“The Court finds the defendant has successfully completed Intervention in Lieu of Conviction and has received the maximum benefit from the program as administered by TCN and the treatment has served the purpose intended,” according to the court order to dismiss the case, dated Oct. 1, 2010, and signed by Campbell, along with Melissa Litteral, director of the Greene County Adult Probation office and Matt Johnson, Schenck’s probation officer. There was no specific information included regarding the intervention program itself, or why it had been deemed successful.

This week Probation Officer Johnson declined to comment, citing privacy concerns.

On Oct. 13, 2010, a second court order signed by Campbell ordered the Yellow Springs Police Department to return Schenck’s property ­— the guns — to his father, Paul D. Schenck. During the court case, Schenck’s attorney, Mark Babb, had repeatedly said that the guns “mostly belonged” to the father, according to Greene County Assistant Prosecutor Suzanne Schmidt this week.

Several people who cared about Paul E. Schenck, as well as those whose job it was to protect the community, were very distressed that the guns were being returned. One of the most distressed was Yellow Springs Police Chief John Grote, now retired, whose job it was to return the guns.

“I basically ignored it (the court order) and dragged my feet as much as I could,” Grote said in an interview this week. “I tried to kick the can down the road.”

Grote had been concerned about Schenck and his guns for years, he said, partly due to his awareness of Schenck’s mental health issues and drinking.

“The fact that someone in the village has such a quantity of guns and ammunition, including high-capacity magazines — for what purpose?” Grote said. “There was no reason to have high capacity magazines. These are not for shooting animals.”

Grote liked Schenck personally, he said, and made time when Schenck showed up unannounced at the police department to talk to him. Schenck was a proud father who loved talking about his kids, and Grote was pleased when the conversation stayed positive, although sometimes Schenck wanted to talk about guns, and his fears of apocalyptic scenarios. Mainly, Grote said, he wanted to just stay in touch with Schenck.

“When I was dealing with folks with mental health issues, for me, I was trying to keep the lines of communication open,” he said,

However, after the guns had not been returned to the Schenck family several months after the Oct. 13 court order, Grote began receiving calls from Attorney Babb, and from a court official asking him why the guns had not been returned. Grote knew he was in danger of being cited for contempt of court.

“At that point, I didn’t think there was any point in fighting it,” he said, and the guns were returned to Schenck’s father.

Perhaps the person most distressed about the return of the guns was Uta, Schenck’s mother. The guns had originally been taken from the house at her request following the initial 2009 incident, after she went to the police department and asked Chief Grote to remove them.

“She was a concerned mom,” Grote said this week. “I think she had a handle on Paul and his mental health issues, better than anyone.”

In an interview last week, Uta said she had been relieved when the guns were removed from Schenk’s home. She never stopped worrying about her son after he made a suicide attempt at age 16, and knew he struggled with bipolar disorder along with depression brought on by a combination of factors, including his difficulty making a living and thus paying child support, and his constant pain due to gout and back problems. While she didn’t believe he would ever hurt others, especially his children, she believed he was a danger to himself.

When Schenck did not have the money to live in his own place, he lived in what was once Uta’s studio at the rear of the High Street property where she and her husband lived. When Judge Campbell ordered the guns returned in 2010, she told her husband and son that she would not allow the guns to return to Schenck’s home, she said recently. So Paul D. and Paul E. found a mutual friend, who lived out of Greene County, who would sell them for Schenck to repay his father for legal fees and child support.

But the guns apparently began drifting back to Schenck, his mother believes now, although she didn’t know it at the time. He also accumulated a new one, perhaps while working at gun shows in the area. Uta Schenck says she had no idea how many guns her son had in his home because he didn’t let her inside, and kept the door locked when he was away.

“He was an adult,” she said recently. “We couldn’t stop him, even if we knew.”

But she still tried to keep monitoring her son’s health and behavior in whatever way she could, she said.

“I did keep trying,” she said. “I never gave up.”

But knowing she kept trying doesn’t keep Uta from continually thinking about what she could have done differently, and from blaming herself.

“I wonder what I could have done differently,” she said recently. “ He was an adult.”

Previous incident

The February 2009 incident that ended with Schenck in jail began when he appeared highly inebriated and acting aggressively on the porch of neighbors he didn’t know, according to the report recently made public. The neighbors were frightened and called the police.

Officer Tim Knoth went to the High Street house, where Schenck was standing outside. According to the police report, Schenck was so intoxicated he could barely walk, and reached behind him to pull out something Officer Knoth realized was a gun. Knoth wrestled the gun away from Schenck and took him to the local department, where Schenck was very upset and combative. He was then driven to the Greene County Jail.

The next day, after Uta went to Chief Grote, Officer Tom Jones was in charge of removing the weapons from Schenck’s home. The police had received a search warrant and a key to the house from Schenck, still in jail. However, Uta was distressed at how the weapons were removed: a SWAT team showed up, the Schencks were not allowed on their property, and the event was covered by area media, who showed up with their cameras and trucks.

“I felt blindsided,” she said. “I’m furious at how it was done.”

In an interview with Yellow Springs Officer Jones a week later at the jail, Schenck reported that he had a problem with alcohol and had recently suffered three blackouts, according to the police report. He also said he was thinking of killing himself, so was put in isolation, on a suicide watch.

In February 2009 Schenck was indicted by the court for carrying a concealed weapon, a fourth-degree felony, and having weapons while under a disability (inebriated) a third-degree felony under the Ohio Revised Code.

The family allowed Schenck to stay in jail for a month to get a sense of the consequences of his actions, Uta said. However, they were later distressed when they believed he was treated badly while there. He was in great pain for his leg problems, and initially wasn’t allowed medication. He was terrified of police and jails partly due to the potential of sexual abuse, possibly linked to a childhood incident of sexual abuse from a neighbor, according to Uta.

After posting a bond for $7,500, Schenck was released in March.

In April, Attorney Babb requested Intervention in Lieu of Conviction. The request stated that Schenck had not previously been convicted of a felony and “believes his use of alcohol was a factor leading to the criminal offense.” The request was granted in July 2009, and Schenck was ordered to report to the probation department as well as undergo an evaluation at TCN. He also was ordered to pay $50 per month for his probation services.

It is not entirely clear what sort of treatment Schenck received at TCN. Babb, Schenck’s attorney, said he could not speak to the case.

According to Janice Sherman, director of TCN’s director of alcohol and drug services this week, the center cannot speak to Schenck’s individual case. However, in general, he would have first had a two-hour evaluation, then been put in one of four levels of treatment. The first three levels, which are outpatient, range from attending a two-hour session once weekly for eight weeks to attending three three-hour sessions weekly for 12 weeks, with the sessions a mix of therapy and education. Schenck was not assisgned to the center’s most intense rehab program, which is 12-week residential at Christopher House in Dayton.

While Uta said she did not remember the specifics of her son’s treatment, she did remember his appointments with the center as very sporadic. He felt a connection with one therapist, she said, but often had to wait weeks or months for an appointment.

“Success” in the treatment program essentially means that the individual attended every group meeting, according to Sherman. However, TCN also strongly recommends that its program attendees follow up treatment with some support system, such as AA. According to Uta, Schenck was ordered by the court to attend AA and did attend meetings regularly.

She said he did not drink for several years following the TCN program.

In October 2010, Judge Campbell dismissed Schenck’s case as he had “successfully completed Intervention in Lieu of Conviction” and several weeks later the court ordered the weapons to be returned to Schenck’s father.

However, he gradually began drinking again, and became more distressed over pain caused by gout, which appeared to be heightened by alcohol use. But he still sometimes had binge drinking episodes to relieve the pain, according to his mother. In the last year he had more and more difficulty with walking.

During the past year Schenck’s pain and infections sent him to several hospitals, and he had increasing anxiety and difficulty sleeping. One of the hospitals referred Schenck back to TCN for an evaluatiion only a few months before the shoot-out. According to Uta, it was not clear what medications he received at the time.

More on the Paul E. Schenck incident, including the forthcoming BCI report, will appear in future issues of the News.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine will hold a press conference at the Bryan Center on Tuesday, Nov. 12, to report on some of the findings of the investigation of the shooting incident that led to Paul E. Schenck’s death on July 31. The event will take place at 9 a.m. in rooms A and B on the second floor of the Village building.

The state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation has been working on an independent report of everything that occurred at 280 North High Street, where local police were first called in response to an assault the night of July 30. When police arrived, the resident, Paul E. Schenck is reported to have fired gunshots. Local police immediately called the Greene County SWAT team, who engaged in an all-night standoff that ended in Schenck’s death.

The final report from the BCI investigation is not yet complete, according to BCI spokesperson Jill DeGreco, who did not know when the final report will be submitted to the Greene County prosecutor.

Click here to read Attorney General Mike Dewine’s press release on the conclusion of the investigation of the shooting death of Paul E. Schenck and statements regarding Ohio’s mental health system. A link to DeWine’s complete statement is at the bottom of that post.

An overflow crowd of about 75 press and community members crowded into Rooms A and B of the Bryan Community Center today at 9 a.m. to hear Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine deliver the finished Bureau of Criminal Investigation, or BCI, report on the July 31 shootout that ended with the death of villager Paul Schenck.

After delivering a detailed rundown of events leading up to the shootout and Schenck’s death, DeWine emphasized the event as indicative of society’s failure to help those with mental illness.

“This tragic shooting makes it vividly clear that  that this is about much more than law enforcement,” DeWine said, citing mental illness, alcohol abuse and the access to weapons as contributors to the event.

The report on the night’s event was drawn from more than 80 interviews with law enforcement, neighbors and family members, and about 135 reports on various aspects of the incident,  DeWine said.

According to the report, the incident began with a 911 call from Schenck’s home, which came either from Schenck or his son, who were having a domestic disturbance. Both suffered injuries. Officer Patrick Roegner was the first to respond and gathered information from family members who lived next door to Schenck, while Officer Joshua Knapp was the first to approach Schenck’s door. Knapp repeatedly requested that Schenck open his door and Schenck refused, according to the report, stating that Schenck stated repeatedly that he didn’t want to get hurt or to hurt anyone. However, the interaction between Schenck and the officer escalated and Officer Roegner joined Officer Knapp, with both attempting to push in Schenck’s door. The officers heard several gunshots from inside the home and called for police backup, the report stated. Seventy-one officers and nine state troopers responded to the call, and over the next few hours Schenck fired 191 shots, according to the investigation.

The police fired six rounds, and five came from the weapon of a Greene County Sheriff’s Department sniper who was lying on the ground about 45 yards from Schenck’s house. When, several hours into the shootout, shots coming from Schenck’s house began coming closer, the officer believed his life was in danger, and aimed five shots at the silhouette he could see inside the house. The officer believed he saw the man inside falling, and later Schenck was found dead.

After DeWine spoke on the need for improved services for those with mental health issues, several questions were raised regarding the police attempts at negotiations with Schenck.

For a detailed story on the BCI report, see the Nov. 14 Yellow Springs News.

Click here to read about Attorney General Mike Dewine’s press conference this morning on the investigation of the shooting death of Paul E. Schenck.

DeWine Calls for Review of Ohio’s Mental Health System

(YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio) — Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced today that the Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) has completed its investigation into the July officer-involved shooting death of a Village resident.

Special agents with the Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation were requested to investigate the incident at the request of Greene County Sheriff Gene Fischer and Yellow Springs Police Chief Tony Pettiford.

BCI special agent investigators found that Paul E. Schenck, 42, was shot and killed by a member of the Greene County Regional SWAT Team several hours after two Yellow Springs Police officers responded to his 280 North High Street home to investigate the call of a domestic dispute on July 30, 2013.   Schenck was found to have fired at least 191 shots out of the home, several of which hit neighboring houses and law enforcement vehicles. The investigation also found that Schenck was suffering from a mental illness.

Prosecutors with Attorney General DeWine’s Special Prosecutions Section will now present the investigation’s findings to a Greene County Grand Jury at the request of Greene County Prosecutor Steve Haller.

“BCI special agents handed the results of the investigation into the death of Paul E. Schenck over to Prosecutor Haller late last week, and at that time he requested that my office handle the grand jury proceedings in addition to the investigation,” said DeWine.  ”It will now be up to members of the grand jury to decide if the evidence shows criminal misconduct or a justifiable shooting.”

“This case, while tragic, is not unusual in the fact that there are many Ohioans who are suffering from mental illness, and in need of more treatment options,” said Attorney General DeWine. “To quote Terry Russell of NAMI Ohio, ‘the system is broken for the sickest of the sick.’”

“There is not enough money and the current law makes it difficult for parents of adult children with mental illness to force hospitalizations and treatments,” DeWine added.

DeWine noted that earlier this year, Ohio State Senators Burke and Tavares introduced legislation — SB 43 — that would clarify that a county probate court may order someone who is a threat to themselves or others to receive mandatory outpatient treatment.  As it is now, judges typically either don’t order the person to the hospital for lack of adequate space, or when they do, the person stays an average of only 11 days.  This legislation would also eliminate the ambiguity in existing law with regard to the conditions under which a person is considered a mentally ill person subject to court ordered treatment.  Currently the bill is in the Senate Civil Justice Committee.

In addition, it has been 25 years since the Ohio General Assembly enacted sweeping reforms by passing the Mental Health Act of Ohio. Today Attorney General DeWine posed the following, “Perhaps it is time to call for a comprehensive, independent study of Ohio’s mental health system to see what is working, what isn’t working and how can we do better?”

Attorney General DeWine’s full statement regarding BCI’s findings (PDF) is available on the Ohio Attorney General’s website.

On Tuesday, Nov. 12, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine came to the Bryan Center to present the findings of his office’s investigation of the shooting incident on July 31 that ended in the death of local resident Paul E. Schenck. The presentation neither confirmed nor denied any wrongdoing, but was intended as a dissemination of the facts as they occurred the night of July 30 and 31.

While normally Bureau of Criminal Investigation findings are submitted directly to the prosecutor, who would present the case before a grand jury, in this instance because the Yellow Springs community had so many questions about the incident, DeWine chose to report on the findings in person before submitting to the court. But according to a statement he made later in the presentation, the responding law enforcement agencies could not have prevented Paul E.’s death.

“There are lessons we can take from this, but there is absolutely no evidence that the outcome would have been different,” he said, referring to any procedural or decision making changes law enforcement could have made on the scene.

“The Schenck family has lost a beloved son, brother, father … to the family I extend my deepest sympathy.”

DeWine’s presentation included a summary of the events, including a description of the way a Greene County SWAT team officer shot Paul E. while he was shooting a gun out of a window of his home. The statement also included facts as given by interviews with 80 law enforcement officers and neighbors, about the negotiations process and the fact that when officers found Paul E. in his home, he was wearing earplugs and a Kevlar bullet-proof vest. DeWine spoke about issues related to law enforcement communication, the weapons Paul E. had, and the mental health issues he was dealing with at the time. Some of the information had been released previously, while the report provided smaller details such as timing of events and identity of the officers involved.

At the end of the one-and-a-half-hour conference, Uta Schenck, Paul E.’s mother, still had questions about the negotiating process and why she was not allowed to speak to her son, who had asked for her during the standoff.

“As a family,” she said, this “question troubles us terribly — I’m aggrieved … and I would have appreciated a chance to talk to him, our son,” Uta said.

Major Kirk Keller of the Greene County Sheriff’s office answered that it was not typical protocol to involve family members in negotiations, and that it was dangerous to bring anyone near the scene.

Assistant Prosecutor Suzanne Schmidt attended the presentation and confirmed that the full BCI report would be sent to a Greene County Grand Jury this month to determine whether any crimes had been committed.

The findings

At 10:48 p.m. on Tuesday, July 30, Greene County Central Dispatch received a 911 call from 280 North High St. where a distressed male (presumably Paul E.) said that his son tried to assault him. Yellow Springs Police senior officer Pat Roegner and newer officers Josh Knapp and Luciana Lieff responded to the assault, arriving first at 310 North High, the home of Uta and Paul D. Schenck who live on the front half of the same property as their son.

There the officers found Paul E.’s son Max Schenck, and Uta and Paul D., who said that Max’s shoulder had been injured after a fight with Paul E. While Roegner and Lieff interviewed the parents, Knapp went to the door of Paul E., who resided in a small apartment behind his parents’ home. According to Knapp, who could see through the door, Paul E. appeared “distraught,” his face bloody and his right hand appearing injured. The officer asked Paul E. to open the door and he refused, saying things such as “I don’t want to be hurt,” “I don’t want to get in trouble,” “I don’t want my son to get in trouble,” and “F–ck you, I will kill myself.”

Meanwhile during their interview with the family, Roegner and Lieff learned that Paul E. had been diagnosed as bipolar at the age of 16 and was currently taking Prozac. Paul E. had also been distressed because earlier in the day a car had hit and killed his favorite cat. And he had been drinking. While he and Max were watching television that evening, Paul E. took a gun and put it to his head. When Max told him to stop, they got into a physical fight, and Max ran to his grandparents’ home across the yard.

As Knapp continued to try to gain entry into Paul E.’s home, Roegner came over to help him. Sometime between 10:50 and 10:55 p.m., the officers said they heard two to five shots go off from inside Paul E.’s house. Because neither officer saw muzzle flash or the trajectory of the bullets, they ran for cover behind their cruisers. Officer Roegner said he felt his life was threatened, and believed by the changing sounds of the gunfire, that Paul E. may have switched from a handgun to a rifle. He also thought he heard Paul E. say, “I’m going to kill you.” Roegner then radioed a signal 99 call for assistance from nearby districts, saying “shots fired.”

While Miami Township Fire-Rescue and the local officers attempted to position themselves, the family and the public in a safe place away from the house, Paul E. continued with another barrage of 10–15 shots at both Knapp’s and Roegner’s cruisers, saying “don’t shoot my cat, mother f–kers.”

When Greene County Sheriff deputy Major Eric Spicer arrived with the SWAT units, he assumed command of the team, as well as the Dayton and Fairborn armored vehicles, and the Ohio State Patrol’s aviation unit, brought in to light the crime scene from above.

When the overhead light came on, officers said that Paul E. immediately shot at police vehicles that were gathering in front of his house. Roegner and Spicer both reported that they continued to hear bullets fly near their heads, at which point Spicer decided to fire one round in return at Paul E., whose fire then stopped temporarily.

Meanwhile, a command post led by special operations commander Major Kirk Keller of the Greene County Sheriff’s department was setting up at Union and High streets, while Greene County Sheriff Gene Fisher oversaw the entire scene. At that time, Roegner turned his YSPD command over to Knapp and suited up as a SWAT team member, providing information to the team about Paul E.’s criminal and mental health history, his medications and the cache of weapons and ammunition he was believed to possess as a “survivalist.”

While several SWAT teams positioned themselves around 280 North High, Major Spicer believed that Paul E. had positioned himself in a house three doors down from there. When Spicer’s team tried to enter that house, the homeowner called 911 to report an intruder, causing responders to think that Paul E. was mobile and could be shooting randomly in the neighborhood.

Between 11 p.m. and midnight, a team of four negotiators from Greene County, including spokesperson Sergeant Walters and Detective Meadows gathered intelligence about Paul E.’s background and asked his father to draw diagrams of both homes, as well as provide phone numbers for both homes. Then at 12:15 a.m. Deputy Dempsey attempted to call Paul E. by phone at both homes. She called a total of 56 times, leaving messages at 310 North High and hearing no answer at 280 North High. Between 12:45 and 1 a.m., Sergeant Walters moved an armored vehicle called the “Peacekeeper” about 40 yards from Paul E.’s house and used the PA system to give him a number to call. Hearing nothing, Walters told Paul E. to “wave a flag” or “throw a pillow” out the door to indicate he had heard them.

“You need to talk to us,” Walters told him. “Come out…I can help you.”

Officers said they heard Paul E. say in a loud, angry voice, “I don’t have a phone,” “F-ck off,” “You want to kill me” and “I’m going to f-cking kill you guys.” According to the negotiators, they began taking fire again, directly at the Peacekeeper this time, which scared Detective Meadows for his life. Due to the active shooting, police said they could not give Paul E. a phone.

The next attempt to make contact with Paul E. was through Dayton’s armored vehicle, the Bear. But when the helicopter aimed the spotlight on Paul E.’s house, he began shooting again, hitting the Bear twice.

Police say they contemplated how to get Paul E. to cease his fire. They considered using gas, but figured he had a gas mask and feared that a spark from the gunfire could possibly cause a fire or explosion. They also considered driving over the home. They knew their time was limited because once the sun came up, many of the officers under cover of only darkness and tall grass would be exposed.

As Paul E. continued to shoot at the Bear, Sheriff Deputy Hughes saw Paul E.’s silhouette firing what he believed was an AR 15 out of one of the windows toward him and so near to him that he could feel debris from the gun. Fearing for his life, Hughes aimed his rifle and fired three shots (investigators found that Hughes actually fired five shots.) He radioed to command that he believed he saw the silhouette fall.

After moving both armored vehicles adjacent to the house, police waited for a search warrant and then rammed the wall open in order to deploy a robot to determine that Paul E. was not moving. Police found that he was wearing a military style Kevlar vest and earplugs.

Communications

According to DeWine, a signal 99 is an indiscriminate call for assistance from nearby agencies which most law enforcement teams at this time have little control over. In this case, when the call went out with the statement “shots fired,” both YSPD dispatch and Miami Township Fire-Rescue squad heard it and called Greene County and Central dispatches, who radioed Clark County Sheriff and Xenia PD and continued a cascade of calls that brought a total of 80 law enforcement officers from 17 agencies to the scene that night.

“The reality is when people hear ‘shots fired,’ law enforcement respond,” DeWine said. However, the challenge once they were all assembled was “the difficulty the officers had communicating with each other.”

Though some of the agencies tried to coordinate their communication systems, most of the officers were using radio systems that would not work between agencies, DeWine said, including Yellow Springs. Many of the officers were forced to use their cell phones to communicate. And due to the rapidly escalating and changing scene, there was no time to establish an integrated communication system.

DeWine used the moment to push the MARCS radio system that many agencies statewide are adopting, including police departments and the sheriff in Greene County, who planned to adopt it before the shooting.

Negotiations and ballistics

According to DeWine, many of the responding police officers felt they never had a real opportunity to negotiate with Paul E. because once he began shooting he never stopped long enough to talk. And investigators using ballistic forensics found that Paul E.’s phone had been shot from inside the house, “disabling an important means of communication,” DeWine said.

Police also said they never felt it was safe to bring the family members close enough to talk to Paul E., as he was firing an almost 360 range around his home (sparing the area around his parents’ home) and hit four North High Street homes (including 301, 302, 305 and 236 North High, one of which is a block from Paul E.’s house), a fence and two police cruisers in the area. And based on Paul E.’s height, the types of weapons he was using, the barometric pressure that night and other circumstances, some of the bullets had the potential to travel a one mile radius around Paul E.’s home and still be lethal, DeWine said.

In the end, police found that Paul E. shot a total of 191 rounds from his home. They also found that he owned a blood clot kit and a gas mask with an oxygen canister.

Of the 20 neighbors the BCI spoke to, many heard Detective Meadows ask Paul E. to come out of his house. Among the other things they heard Paul E. say were, “I don’t have a phone,” “I have a grenade,” “You will kill me,” “You aren’t coming in here,” “Don’t shoot my cat,” “I love you, I’ve always loved you … Mom … I’m sorry,” “You assholes, you don’t understand,” “You shot the phone.”

Weapons and mental health

Paul E. had a history of carrying weapons, according to a court file that was unsealed to aid in the BCI’s investigation. Paul E. was arrested in 2009 for carrying a firearm while intoxicated and being belligerent. Soon after, Uta Schenck went to police concerned about the store of weapons he was holding, and a Greene County judge allowed police to confiscate from his home a bulletproof vest, five handguns, two shotguns, 10 rifles and 25 boxes of ammunition. Paul E. served time in Greene County Jail for disorderly conduct and obstructing official business and was ordered to engage in a substance abuse rehabilitation program not to exceed three years.

About a year and a half later in October 2010 a Greene County judge found that Paul E. had successfully completed intervention in lieu of conviction. The charges were dismissed and the guns were returned to Paul E.’s father.

DeWine spoke at length about the high number of Americans, 7.3 million, who suffer from mental health disorders, including half a million with major illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disease, some of whom will come into negative contact with law enforcement. His office has helped to allocate state money to train local law enforcement to better respond to mental health patients. DeWine also advocated for more support for mandated treatment for the mentally ill, without which judges have few options beyond keeping the mentally ill in jail or committing them to a mental health hospital.

Investigation process, questions

Some questions from reporters included whether the initial responding officers had escalated the event by attempting to force their way in to Paul E.’s house. DeWine responded by saying it was unfair to judge the actions of responders with the benefit of hindsight.

“It’s easy to sit back, know the outcome and find where officers made mistakes,” he said.

Another question addressed whether DeWine himself would do anything to make it more difficult for people with a mental illness to obtain weapons. He responded by saying that the public needed to get involved and voice their opinions on the issue.

The investigation itself, led by BCI lead investigator Karen Rebori, put a total of 16 personnel on the case and gave a total of 10,000 hours to complete the report. Personnel included crime scene special agents, special agent investigators, criminal intelligence analysts and firearms and forensic lab experts. Agents studied about 1,500 crime scene photographs and measured distances and angles to create scaled diagrams of the scene. They also interviewed 50 law enforcement personnel and 30 civilians as part of the investigation.

With just about a year under his belt as Yellow Springs police chief, Anthony Pettiford has made some strides and suffered a few setbacks. And with the decision of who to name as the first two sergeants the department has had in several years now on the front burner, Pettiford is about to set in motion his own tone for local law enforcement, which he articulated when he was hired.

“Community policing is a work in progress, especially with the new officers… but it’s important that people see you at all hours of the day so that you get to know villagers, and that residents get to know who you are,” he said in an interview last week. “We knew what the tone was and the direction we wanted to go.”

This year’s accomplishments include hiring two new officers with plans to hire an additional officer in the coming months. The move will bring the department’s total police officer count from seven to 10 (including the chief), moving it closer to Pettiford’s original goal to assign at least two officers to every shift for full, round-the-clock police coverage in the village.

“That’s always been important to me for safety purposes,” he said.

Yellow Springs Police Chief Anthony Pettiford is nearing the completion of his first year in office. (News file photo)

Chief Pettiford’s first year has also been a challenge. He was injured on the job in February and spent about eight weeks out of the office nursing an injured shoulder. Then in late July came the shooting incident involving 80 officers from other departments and the death of local resident Paul Schenck. And the following month, Village Manager Laura Curliss, who hired Pettiford last November, vacated her position with the Village.

And yet the difficulties of this year have not been confined to outside incidents. According to some inside the Village employ and others in the community who wished to remain unnamed, leadership within the department has not gone as hoped. Some regret that communications and directives from the chief have not been robust and have not come often enough to keep the department operating smoothly. Some are also concerned that authority within the department has been misapplied. And some community members feel that officers are sometimes being unnecessarily aggressive and that there is a lack of leadership to demonstrate what community policing is really about — especially since the chief no longer lives in the village.

In response to these concerns, Chief Pettiford said he is doing his best in a new position.

“All I can say is I’ve tried to do the best job that I can here,” he said. “Life happens, and life happened and I choose not to put my life out there.”

According to Village Interim Manager Kent Bristol this week, the chief recently asked him for some help dealing with the factionalization within the small department. He and Pettiford are currently “working on some projects together,” Bristol said, adding, “I’m convinced that we can improve the situation.”

Reached at home last week, Curliss said that Pettiford had been an excellent police chief and that the Village of Yellow Springs was “lucky to have him.”

Visibility and communication

When Pettiford applied for the chief position he repeatedly said that he was living in town and that he would have a visible presence in the village. When asked earlier this month, Pettiford said he lives outside the village and declined to specify where or when he left, saying he didn’t want to talk about his personal life.

But according to several villagers who did not wish to be named, having a chief who lives in town was a big reason they favored Pettiford. They wanted a chief who was close by, easily accessible and visibly engaged in the goings on of the community. When one villager who intitially supported the chief learned he had moved, she felt “deceived,” she said, asking to not be named in order to maintain civility with the community.

But “visibility does not equate accessibility” according to local business owner Bob Swaney. “Anyone who expects the streets to be the chief’s office is wrong.” He feels confident that the chief and his department are available and responsive when they are needed.

Mills Lawn Principal Matt Housh has also found Pettiford and the police department to be extremely supportive of the school’s youth safety patrol program, maintaining a presence every morning in front of the school and providing safety training and mentorship for the students.

But those with concerns about the chief’s accessibility aren’t confined to the public. A group of Village employees who wished to remain anonymous due to concerns about their jobs also said that they felt discouraged about a lack of approachability and leadership from their chief. The department staff has met about once per quarter, which is not enough to share information and keep everyone on the same page, many said (though Pettiford said that since September the meetings have been more frequent). Written directives about the schedule of events and the protocols for how to respond to particular inquiries and incidents with the public have also been sparse.

The lack of communication between the chief and the staff, several employees said, affects everything from departmental policy to culture and morale, which for some is very low. Encouragement and positive feedback have also been lacking, which caps the general disunity and lack of “team” spirit among the local police, they said. The door between the chief’s office and the department is always closed now, several said, which is tantamount to a “do not disturb” sign to the officers and dispatchers.

“We suffer when we don’t get information, and that breeds suspicion and rumors,” one employee said.

According to Bristol, the Yellow Springs police department has always tended to factionalize between those who favor strict law enforcement and those who prefer a problem solving, community-oriented policing style. According to Bristol, who was Village manager in the 1980s, formerly those who couldn’t adopt the less aggressive tone left for jobs outside the village. And when they couldn’t leave on their own, Bristol didn’t have a problem encouraging them, including Police Chief Wylie Sampson, who was let go because his style wasn’t “a good fit” with the village.

But what Bristol sees now is Pettiford carrying on the same approach that former Chief John Grote took as a “middle of the road” tack to issues. He cited drug use as one example. The department won’t necessarily go looking for it, but if officers find citizens using drugs in the village, they will issue citations.

“It’s not a crusade, but when drugs fall into your lap, you’re not going to ignore it either,” he said. “I would never endorse deliberately taking it easy on drug enforcement.”

Villagers question local policing

None of the village residents who spoke to the News anonymously about their experiences with police spoke about drug use, but several in the past year have encountered officers both new and experienced who seemed to be unnecessarily suspicious and aggressive. During such incidents — one was a traffic stop, one occurred while a villager was walking in the village at night, and another was an encounter with police during the day on public property — villagers said police were “condescending,” “intimidating,” and “harrassing.” Villagers asked that the incidents not be described in detail because they said they felt distrustful of police and concerned for their safety.

One resident, Kate Hamilton, feels that perhaps the shooting standoff in July exacerbated the negative perceptions between police and the citizens, creating an “us versus them” mentality on both sides. And she feels concerned that no one within the police department is addressing the issues the public has voiced. Several people who spoke off the record said that they had formally complained to the chief, and one said that the outcome was never made clear. Hamilton wondered whether the officers were acting according to departmental policy, and if not, who is training them to act in a more appropriate manner? Hamilton asked. Trust between some local residents and the chief, in other words, is wearing thin.

“I wish there was a way to have the lines of communication more open,” Hamilton said. “We need to heal together … or we’re going to lose the good officers because of a negative work environment and there being no agreement on how to handle community incidents.”

According to Pettiford, the department has received no official complaints from citizens about aggressive officers. If he did, he “would take care of it and talk to the officer about it, taking corrective action if needed,” he said. What he has heard are rumors through Facebook that may be creating a false “perception” about police. Those kinds of issues are “hard to follow up on because there’s no direct contact” with the complainant, he said.

Regarding his accessibility, Pettiford said he has always made himself available to meet with the public and that though “a lot of things keep me in the office,” villagers should not hesitate to contact him.

High quality law enforcement

According to the Village code, the police department should include as officers a chief, a captain and two sergeants. Yet in the recent past, Village police have operated under the stress of both a lack of personnel as well as having neither sergeants nor captains. Since his arrival, Pettiford has taken up the charge that Interim Chief Arthur Scott started last year to reverse that trend by increasing officer training, adding personnel to the ranks and agreeing to create additional leadership positions on the squad.

“I had to build some things first, starting with getting supervisors in place,” he said.

The process for selecting sergeants began in late summer. Five officers applied, but two have since dropped out of the running, leaving three applicants for two positions. Pettiford and Curliss decided to use a review panel of three police captains from surrounding agencies to interview each candidate, focusing especially on leadership skills and knowledge of supervision. The review panel made recommendations to the chief and the Village manager, who will conduct more interviews with the candidates to decide which are the best fit.

“What I’m looking for are supervisors that can be my right and my left hand,” Pettiford said. “Leaders who can run the department when I’m not here, make sure the shifts are following policies and procedures and help make key decisions.”

The decision will be up to both Pettiford and Bristol, and Pettiford said he hoped to name the sergeants sometime in the next few weeks.

Leadership questions

Still, some Village employees have concerns that the department won’t choose the most qualified candidates for the positions. Often in the past, in the absence of upper level officers, the department has relied on seniority to define the chain of command below the chief. But when Chief Pettiford was out due to injury beginning in February, he and Curliss named as acting chief the second most senior officer who had for several years been the department’s representative to the Greene County ACE Task Force in Xenia. Several employees questioned the wisdom of that decision, given the acting chief’s limited experience and training in staff supervision, as well as a recent lack of experience on road duty in the village. The move was further questioned after the handling of a police incident that occurred in the spring under the acting chief.

On April 4 an employee from the downtown business Jennifer’s Touch called police to report a robbery. According to the clerk, a woman in a coat and sunglasses had just entered the store, threatened the clerk verbally and walked out with a case of metal rings, escaping in a vehicle waiting for her on the street outside. The dispatcher radioed for the only officer on duty to respond, but he was busy on a warrant service. The officer arrived about 15 minutes after the initial call and took statements, including the suspects’ license plate number, to begin an investigation.

According to Village employees, Chief Pettiford had sent a department-wide memo in early spring telling all personnel to immediately inform the chief officer of any serious incidents that could endanger the public or an officer. In the case of the robbery, according to a memo from the acting chief, the dispatcher did not inform the acting chief, who later reported to Pettiford that the dispatcher was guilty of dereliction of duty and insubordination (for asking the acting chief why authority had not been given to the most senior officer.)

There is no record of the disciplinary action that was taken against the dispatcher, but three weeks later, after seven years as a Village employee, the dispatcher resigned her position with the Village. She had no other negative evaluation in her personnel file.

Several Village employees classified a “robbery” as a “routine” incident (different from a burglary, in which the offender forces entry) that occurs almost weekly in the village and is not the kind of call a dispatcher would necessarily inform the chief about right away. Furthermore, several said, the dispatcher was a reliable employee and that if she had to be disciplined, a verbal reprimand or even a written reprimand should have sufficed. And since the incident was questionable, the chief should have completed an internal investigation to determine if the facts were correct. According to those involved, the chief never investigated the report.

When asked about the April incident and any disciplinary action against the dispatcher, Pettiford said he did not recall the event and could not comment. According to Bristol, if the dispatcher felt unfairly treated, the Village has an appeals process that she could have engaged in order to dispute her treatment.

And regarding his leadership decisions, he and Curliss made the decisions together, Pettiford said, stating that he has always chosen to distribute authority among several of the senior officers.

A year in review

Asked recently what he is most proud of accomplishing this year, Pettiford referred to his staff.

“The men and women of this department and the people who do this job on a day-to-day basis — I’m proud to be a part of that,” he said. “I have a good crew here, and I hope I can lead them to make this department one of the best departments in this area.”

The chief’s position is traditionally an at-will employee of the Village who starts with a one-year probationary period. According to Bristol, Pettiford’s probation ends this week, but it could conceivably be extended, given the fact that Bristol, who oversees the chief, is neither the permanent manager nor the one most familiar with the chief’s first year on the job. He said that he intended to leave an appraisal of the situation for the next manager to review.

In the meantime, Bristol and the chief will be working together to address the strife currently brewing within the department. Pettiford came to him to ask for help, and so far, Bristol said, “we’re making some progress.”

On Monday, Dec. 30, a Greene County Grand Jury found no indictments against the law enforcement officer who was identified as having shot and killed villager Paul E. Schenck in July. The jury reviewed a comprehensive report of the incident from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and examined six witnesses, ultimately finding that the “use of force was appropriate in this case,” according to the jury’s report.

The officer in question is Greene County Sheriff Deputy James Hughes, one of two precision riflemen of the Greene County Regional SWAT team.

While the BCI only investigates criminal cases, the Montgomery County Sheriff is still investigating potential procedural wrongdoing during the incident, according to BCI spokesperson Jill DelGreco.

On the night of July 30 several Yellow Springs police officers responded to a domestic dispute at Schenck’s home. When they arrived, Schenck became agitated and began shooting out of his home, firing a total of 191 rounds throughout the night. After a four-hour standoff that included 80 officers from 17 law enforcement agencies around Greene County, police shot and killed Schenck in his home.

A more detailed story about the jury’s finding and mental health issues will follow in next week’s News.

After nearly 45 years of service to the village — first as a police officer, then as part of the public works department and finally as an emergency dispatcher — Larry Campbell has retired. His last day was Dec. 31.

His first day, in March 1969, remains just about as fresh in his mind.
“A guy pulled a knife on me,” Campbell recalled last week over coffee at Peach’s Grill. “Henry Austin … right in front of Morgan House … he had an old hickory butcher knife.”

The suspect was wanted for “cutting up a college student with a broken beer bottle,” Campbell said. The rookie officer wasn’t without backup, however. Former Yellow Springs officers Richard Turner and Hugh Livingston were also on the scene, as was former Chief James McKee, who took the suspect by surprise by coming up and grabbing him from behind.

“He almost got shot,” Campbell said of the suspect. The chief, too, he added, because of his location. But no shots were fired, and the altercation ended without additional injuries. It was a typical resolution of a tense situation under McKee, Campbell said.

“I didn’t always agree with him, but Jim McKee had a good philosophy about law enforcement as service to the community,” Campbell said. “There’s a difference between law enforcement, and enforcing the law. McKee thought if you could pick up a drunk and take him home, it was better than making an arrest. With a lot of officers, they define their worth by the number of arrests they make. That makes me sad.”

Campbell, who grew up across the Clark County line and attended Greenon district schools while both parents worked at Antioch College, came to work in Yellow Springs after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1964–1968, tenure that included active duty combat in Vietnam from 1965–1966. A tattoo on his left arm and decals on his blue pickup truck commemorate his service. He spent his first seven months after the military employed at Morris Bean, before McKee hired him into the police department.

He quickly found he had a lot to learn.

“I had never had to deal with the general public like that,” he said. “In the military, there’s a clear black and white” about what to do; but with police work, “there’s a lot of gray area.”

A highlight of his years on the beat wasn’t gray. “I solved a robbery at Erbaugh and Johnson’s,” he said. The pharmacy clerk reported that the thief had fled in a Volkswagen with out-of-state license plates. The car sounded familiar to Campbell. “Didn’t we put a ticket on that VW last week?,” he asked a colleague. He found the ticket report, looked up the registration information for the plates, and sent out an alert to neighboring jurisdictions. The car was found, an arrest was made, and the pharmacy clerk identified the suspect as the robber.

“That felt really good,” Campbell said.

In January 1984, he put his uniform away and joined the Village’s public works department, where he worked as part of the electric crew before returning to the police department in August 1992 as a dispatcher.

All of his prior experiences came into play in his new job.

“I can’t help but credit my years as an officer and my combat experience when I was getting shot at” in preparing for the pressures on the dispatch desk, Campbell said. And his eight years with public works gave him additional background knowledge to support village residents and work crews with all kinds of problems.

Campbell indeed brought a special depth to the dispatch desk, said Interim Village Manager Kent Bristol.

“Larry had a variety of jobs and did well in all of them,” Bristol said.

Nevertheless, the dispatch job remained a “continual learning experience,” Campbell said.

You never know what’s going to be the situation on the other end of the phone, Campbell said. Callers are often upset and even confused.
“You have to do your best to calm people down so you can get the information you need.”

That information may be distressing for the dispatcher as well, but one’s personal feelings can’t get in the way.

“You can cry about it later,” he said, “but when a call comes in, you’ve got to handle it.”

As a dispatcher, “I’m the first contact,” he said. “If I don’t know what to do, then I won’t be able to help. That’s why everyone up there is special.”

But Campbell didn’t just wait for the phone to ring, either. He took a more proactive approach to his job. “I didn’t have a cruiser, but I had a phone. I called village seniors, just to check on them. I would keep an ear out for recently widowed in town.”

It’s the personal relationships and local knowledge that make keeping the dispatch center a Village service so vital, said Campbell, who was a vocal opponent to a recent push to have the county handle Yellow Springs police calls. “Thank goodness we had a council that listened to the people.”

After so many years witnessing some of the worst that people can do, Campbell maintains an enduring affection for the village and its residents.

“I love this town,” he said. “The areas of town that have more problems are where people are new to Yellow Springs. They bring their problems with them — or their problems follow them.” He also noted that while Antioch College students have shouldered blame over the years for a variety of misbehaviors, most issues were “not what they did, but what they attracted.” People come to town dressed as hippies, and then others come to town and say, “Look at the hippies.” They’re not Yellow Springs, he said.

His love for Yellow Springs, and the deep regard he has for his colleagues, made taking retirement a difficult decision, he said. “When you hang your hat in the same place for nearly 45 years, you don’t let go that easily.”

So, after nearly 45 years, what was the most satisfying aspect of his village service? “Helping people. That by far was the most satisfying.”
Campbell’s bent for service hasn’t stopped with his retirement. “I’m busier now than I ever was as a dispatcher,” he said. He holds leadership roles in a number of area veterans groups, and he’s also a member of the Masons. What’s more, he and his wife, Sandra, have 14 grandchildren.

“I’ve got plenty to do.”

Reception for Retirees
A public reception honoring Larry Campbell, who recently retired after 45 years, and Kelley Fox, who is retiring from Village employment after 30 years, will take place Friday, Jan. 31, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Bryan Community Center.

YSPD Police Chief Anthony Pettiford alerted the News this morning that the village has experienced a rash of vehicle break-ins in recent days, amounting to 15 break-ins. Two vehicles were also stolen last night. According to Pettiford, these burglaries are occurring in the evening hours, in vehicles that have been left unsecured. The YS Police Department urges all villagers to remove valuables from their vehicles and to lock and secure doors.

Any information about the recent break-ins may be directed to the YS Police Department at 767-7206.

Two vehicles were stolen last week from residences in the northeast quandrant of the village, and about 10 more were entered or burglarized in the same general area. Yellow Springs police received the dozen reports from villagers over a two-day period on Feb. 13 and 14. Officers are investigating some leads and did not say if they had any suspects yet.

“It’s still under investigation, and we’re trying to look into some of the leads that we have,” Police Chief Anthony Pettiford said this week. “Hopefully it will result in something.”

According to police records, on Thursday morning, Feb. 13, a Kingsfield Court resident awoke to find that her car, along with the purse and car keys she kept inside of it, was missing from her locked garage. The vehicle was a 2011 blue GMC Terrain. There was no sign of forced entry into the garage.

Sometime the same night, a Chevrolet pickup truck parked in the driveway of an Omar Circle residence was also taken. Police believe the vehicle was unlocked, and that both vehicles were driven away by a suspect or suspects.

Police continued to receive calls throughout the following two days from residents whose vehicles were either unlawfully entered or ransacked and burglarized. A West Center College Street resident, for instance, reported that her unlocked vehicle had been vandalized. The glove box was damaged, and the stereo faceplate was missing. A West Whiteman Street resident reported that both vehicles parked in front of his house had been vandalized as well.

Police took 10 reports from residents in the same general area of the village whose vehicles were entered, though they could not yet determine whether the incidents occurred the same night or over two nights, Pettiford said.

Police issued a notice to villagers last week urging villagers to remove valuables from their vehicles and lock and secure car doors. Any information about the recent break-ins may be directed to the Yellow Springs Police Department at 767-7206.

SIDEBAR: Focus on mental health in the community

 
In recent years, area police officers have noticed a change in their work, as their calls more frequently involve people with mental health issues. Whether because of funding cuts to mental health agencies, the troubled economy or the closing of institutions that once provided care, the result is the same: Police are often the frontline in terms of addressing the problems of the mentally ill.

“We’re seeing more people in crisis,” Capt. Scott Anger, of the Xenia Police Department, said recently. “We’re seeing more with mental health problems, drug addictions and dementia.”

The increase in calls involving those who are mentally ill adds a new dimension to an already stressful job, according to Yellow Springs Police Chief Anthony Pettiford.

“When we send people out, they have to decide, do you have someone who is mentally ill, or is the person hopped up on drugs?” he said in a recent interview. “You have to make these judgments quickly.”

And adding to the difficulty is that police are trained to present themselves in a way that subdues most people, but may have the opposite effect on the mentally ill.

“Look at the uniform and think about why it looks the way it does,” said Michael Woody, a retired officer from Akron who is the president of CIT International, in an interview last week. “It’s designed to intimidate most people. But for the mentally ill person, the presence of the police officer in that uniform right away amps them up. It doesn’t calm them down.”

Woody is credited with bringing to Ohio Crisis Intervention Training, or CIT, a 40-hour training sponsored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, that provides training to help police deal more effectively with people struggling with mental illness. Since Woody brought the program to Akron in 2000, more than 3,400 law enforcement officers have been trained across the state. The program involves both education on mental illness and practice with role-playing that trains police to use both words and body language to establish empathy, understanding and communication in a way that de-escalates potentially explosive situations.

The issue of how local police interact with those with mental health issues came into focus after last summer’s shootout that ended with the death of villager Paul E. Schenck, who was known to have both mental health and alcohol addiction problems. At 10:48 p.m. on July 30 an initial 911 call from Schenck brought local police to his North High Street home. However, after a several-minutes-long encounter with local police, Schenck fired shots that sparked a distress call from the Yellow Springs officers, which ultimately brought 80 law enforcement officers and three SWAT teams to the scene. The shootout ended with Schenck’s death from a bullet from a Greene County Sheriff’s sharpshooter.

The incident sparked concerns among villagers for a variety of reasons, according to Linda Rudawski, of the Human Relations Commission, or HRC, including questions regarding how local police respond to calls that involve the mentally ill.

“We heard real concerns about the police and whether or not they had the CIT training,” Rudawski said. “There were questions about their initial approach” with Schenck.

Training for crisis

Those familiar with CIT training say it can help officers learn to defuse potentially violent situations.

“It’s absolutely helpful,” said retired Yellow Springs Police Chief John Grote, who was one of the area law officers and mental health professionals who brought CIT to Greene County. “The training gets officers to think of different dynamics. Everyone who took it said very positive things.”

Rudawski, who took the CIT training as a Champaign County housing specialist who works with severely mentally ill people, agrees that the program seems effective.

“You could see the change in their approach,” she said of the police officers with whom she trained. “It’s an intense learning about mental illness, including how to engage and assess situations, how to use body language. It was good to see how much the officers learned. They talked to each other about it.”

Statistics also show that CIT makes a difference. In Memphis, where the training was first developed, CIT trained officers call in SWAT teams about 60 percent less often than those not trained, according to Woody, the CIT International president. And Kent State reserchers, analyzing records of the Akron police department before and after officers had CIT training, concluded that CIT-trained officers tend to make more referrals to hospitals and fewer arrests. Research also showed that the public developed greater trust with the police after the CIT training, and police consequently received more calls regarding mental-health related problems.

But CIT training doesn’t mean police will always be able to defuse tense situations, those involved emphasize.

“Sometimes you can use the de-escalation techniques and sometimes you don’t get the opportunity,” said Chris Pinkelman, TCN Behavioral Health Services assistant director of clinical services, who is also a Greene County CIT instructor. “CIT is not a fix-all, an end-all.”

Local shooting

Although both the BCI report and Chief Pettiford initially stated that both local officers who first interacted with Schenck had the CIT training, only one did. Joshua Knapp, the officer who made initial contact with Schenck on July 30, had not had the 40-hour CIT training, according to NAMI, which keeps records on those who have completed the program. However, Knapp had completed a condensed (16-hour) training sponsored by Fairborn police, where he previously worked.

According to the BCI report on the incident from the Ohio Attorney General’s office, after the 911 call was received from Schenck’s residence July 30, Officer Pat Roegner was the first to arrive on the scene, followed shortly by Officer Knapp and Officer-in-training Luciana Lieff. However, Officers Roegner, who had CIT training, and Lieff were gathering information from Schenck’s parents in their house on the same property while Officer Knapp made the initial contact with Schenck. While it was not known if Schenck was armed, his father had confirmed that guns previously confiscated had been returned to him.

According to the BCI report, while Officers Roegner and Lieff spoke with Schenck’s parents, Officer Knapp spoke with Schenck, who he could see through Schenck’s front door window, and who appeared “obviously distraught and highly emotional” after a domestic dispute with a family member. Because Schenck appeared bloody and seemed to be injured, Officer Knapp repeatedly asked him to open the door and Schenck refused, saying “he didn’t want to get hurt,” according to the report. Officer Knapp repeated his request that Schenck open his door and Schenck grew more belligerent, stating that he was not going to open “the (expletive) door.”

At some point, the report states that Officer Roegner “noticed the exchange between Officer Knapp and Paulie had escalated” and moved to assist Officer Knapp. At that point both officers asked Schenck, who appeared intoxicated, to open his door, but Schenck said he was going to kill himself. At that point, the officers attempted to enter the residence in order to prevent Schenck from harming himself, struggling with the latch and pushing in the screen. The officers tried to break down the door, at which point they heard the first shots fired from inside, along with Schenck yelling threats, according to the report. They quickly retreated to take cover behind cars in the driveway, then made a distress call that ultimately brought 80 officers and three SWAT vehicles to the scene. Over the next several hours Schenck fired about 191 shots, according to the BCI report, and the police responded with six. However, one of those shots, fired sometime after 1 a.m. from the gun of a Greene County Sheriff’s sharpshooter, killed Schenck.

Aside from the BCI report, the details of what happened during the initial interaction between Schenck and local officers are not known. According to Village Solicitor Chris Conard and Chief Pettiford, the officers involved in the Schenck incident are not available for interviews. Officer Knapp had been on the local force less than a year and it’s not clear if he had previous encounters with Schenck, although he would likely be aware of him as someone who in the past had a large number of guns removed from his home, according to interim Village Manager Kent Bristol. Chief Pettiford was out of town on the night of the shootout, and was debriefed on what happened when he returned. According to Pettiford, he left the investigation of the incident up to the BCI rather than doing an in-house investigation because the BCI could provide an objective report. He said he did not ask the officers who initially responded to Schenck to analyze their actions, including what caused the escalation of tension during the initial encounter, because such an analysis was unlikely to be helpful.

“I don’t think there’s any way to identify what made it escalate or not escalate,” Pettiford said recently. “Things escalate. Everything is different. How it escalated is hard to determine.”

Overall, according to the chief, “I think these guys handled it the best way they could.”

More training needed?

Capt. Anger, of Xenia, who has been instrumental in bringing CIT to the area, also emphasized that the training is not a cure-all for stressful incidents.

“In that situation, you can’t say the CIT training would have made any difference,” he said, referring to the Schenck incident. “This training won’t fix every situation.”

But regardless of whether or not CIT would have made a difference in the July 30 incident, Chief Pettiford said he is a strong advocate of providing training for his officers, and hopes to give all officers the CIT training as quickly as possible.

But it will take time to train all local officers, because the Greene County training is only offered once a year, and such a small department is only able to spare one person off at a time. Currently only Officers Roegner and Lieff have the CIT training.

“Any additional training we can give our officers will benefit us,” Pettiford said. “CIT training is an additional tool we can use to handle calls effectively.”

Asked if he had had the CIT training, Pettiford said he “took a course” in the past, but so long ago he can’t remember when or where. He said he hopes to update his training after all local officers have gone through the CIT training.

Rudawski said she is encouraged that Chief Pettiford, who has attended recent HRC meetings, is an advocate for CIT training. The group has recently sent a letter to Village Council encouraging more funding for the police to receive the training.

In the meantime, the HRC will launch a series of community events aimed at increasing awareness around mental health issues, and seeking community solutions (See sidebar on front page).

“Anything we can do to positively affect the community, we will do,” Rudawski said.