By ELISE KAPLAN, Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE, NM (AP) — Police officers, health care workers and rescue personnel in Albuquerque know Shawnna Boyd well.
The 37-year-old is what they call a “frequent flyer.” She has been calling 911 for years, expressing suicidal thoughts and being taken to the hospital.
Last July, he ran from his group home into the middle of a busy street and caused a three-car accident. Other times, she has been arrested, charged with assault on a health care worker, assault for threatening another resident in a group home, or criminal damage to property, though all the cases against her end up being dismissed when she is found incompetent.
Officers have had more than 150 contacts with her over the years.
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“She knows she needs help and she’s not getting it,” said Shawnna’s mother, Kathy Boyd. “I don’t know what she needs, but I know she needs something that she’s not getting at all. She is going to finish…she is going to kill herself.”
For law enforcement and disability advocates alike, cases like Shawnna Boyd’s highlight the state’s lack of behavioral health services, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
Advocates say that jail is not a treatment center and that putting people with mental health problems in the criminal justice system will not help them. And the officers tasked with responding to the calls say they can take someone to a local hospital, but that’s just a “band-aid solution.”
“It’s really hard when there’s not much we can refer to,” said Matt Dietzel, acting commander of the Albuquerque Police Department’s Crisis Intervention Division. “We don’t need a lot of intensive case management, so your police department is doing it.”
Kathy Boyd said her youngest daughter has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder. She also has a traumatic brain injury.
She lived in a group home until she was kicked out last fall. She now lives with her mother and her sister in her house in Albuquerque. She has a caregiver and takes medication daily, but she keeps acting up, hurting herself and running away from her.
So Shawnna Boyd’s treatment team recommended that she be sent to Nexus Health Systems neurorecovery center outside of Houston for a month.
“Services available within the state of New Mexico they are inadequate at this time to provide ongoing support for Ms. Boyd’s recovery and rehabilitation,” her outpatient psychiatrist wrote in an affidavit provided to the Journal by Shawnna Boyd’s attorney.
Stacey Adams, senior care liaison for the Nexus National Complex, said the facility sits on 26 acres and is a “home-like environment” that can offer one-on-one care if needed, but the goal is to help residents transition to be more independent. Residents participate in group and individual cognitive and “neurorehabilitation” sessions to improve behavioral problems and increase their ability to function.
But Shawnna Boyd’s insurance through Medicaid would not cover the cost.
According to a denial letter, Blue Cross Community Centennial’s medical director determined that Shawnna Boyd is unable to do three hours of therapy per day and does not require skilled nursing care.
Disability Rights New Mexico attorney Max Kauffman disagrees, citing the psychiatrist’s affidavit that Shawnna Boyd is able to participate in three hours of therapy a day and needs ongoing specialized care.
“The reasons for the denial are not supported by the evidence that we see from the people who work with her day to day, they are not supported by the doctors who work with her,” Kauffman said.
He has appealed the decision to an administrative law judge at the New Mexico Department of Human Services. No decision has been made yet.
“We tend to look at the individual and point the finger at them and say, ‘Why can’t you fix your life?’” Kauffman said. “But when they try, they run into a big barrier like this, where nothing in the community is working, so what’s left is to try this one last time == and then they tear it down because the (Managed Care Organization) doesn’t want to to pay for it.”
Blue Cross Blue Shield wrote in a statement that to protect the privacy of its members, it does not disclose personal or benefit information. He added that there is a process to protect the member and listen to her concerns.
“Our members are at the center of everything we do and we are committed to providing them with access to the right care, in the right place, at the right time,” the company said. “Our care management tools and processes are designed with this in mind, considering, among other factors, state and federal regulations and medical necessity criteria set forth in our medical policies and supported by evidence-based medicine.”
When Dietzel joined APD’s Crisis Intervention Division several years ago, he began reviewing reports to determine who were the “highest users” in terms of contacts with officers.
No matter how you look at it, Shawnna Boyd is always number 1.
“His case is really difficult because he calls the police constantly,” Dietzel said. “How this plays out is, in my opinion, the care that he gets is not at a high enough level for the need that he has, so he has ways to get out of the system.”
He said that in one scenario, Shawnna Boyd calls 911, the officers respond and she tells them she wants to hurt herself and they take her to the hospital.
“This happens very frequently, to the point where officers in that area know her by name,” Dietzel said. “The other scenario is that she will get angry at the other people she lives with and sometimes it gets physical and there are occasional arrests as a result.”
Dietzel said there are at least 155 cases involving Shawnna Boyd, though he hopes there will be more with the wrong spelling of her name or the wrong date of birth. Of those, 15 resulted in an arrest, but the vast majority were behavioral or mental health reports, several of which were hospital transfers.
He hopes first responders at Albuquerque Community Safety, the city’s newest department responding to behavioral health calls, will soon know him by name, too.
Ultimately, Dietzel agreed that what is happening now is not working.
He said the July incident where Shawnna Boyd ran into traffic and caused a crash scares him because there are so many people his unit has tried to help who ended up getting hit by a car and killed.
He said he is concerned about what will happen if, in the future, Shawnna Boyd can no longer stay with her mother.
“What’s the plan here?” Dietzel said. “She lives in a safe place for now, but my long-term fear is that that’s not going to work either and maybe this time there’s no plan and I’ll end up completely homeless.”
Sitting in the living room of the house she shares with her mother and older sister, Shawnna Boyd is outgoing and eager to contribute to the conversation. She shows off her nephew’s puppy and a remote control WALL-E toy that wobbles around the room, skirting the Christmas tree set up for a belated family celebration.
Shawnna Boyd said she wants to go to Texas and she hopes the center will help her feel better.
“I think it will help me,” he said. “I’ll be better and then I’ll be able to live at home permanently with my family and not in the fucking group home.”
Kauffman and Dietzel are also optimistic that it could work, with Dietzel noting that if their calls to police and emergency transport are cut in half “it would be a huge win for everyone.”
“If you want to look at this in terms of a violent crime, that responding officer standing there with her, he’s not responding to the person who was just involved in a shooting,” Dietzel said.
As for Kathy Boyd, she remembers a time when spending time with her daughter was fun: they went to the park or the zoo, or rode horses training for Special Olympics. She now has a lot of fights and stress and she is always worried that her daughter will get hurt.
“I would just like to have a quiet and peaceful life,” said Kathy Boyd. I would like to know that you have been treated. That’s the main”.
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