A panicked Douglas Eagar called police on June 9 from his mother's Boise home, asking for help because people from his dreams were coming to get him.

He said he had a gun to protect himself.

Dispatchers heard four shots, followed by moaning and screaming - and then silence. The Boise Police Special Operations Unit responded, but they couldn't make contact with Eagar over the telephone and heard nothing inside. Officers broke the home's windows and fired in tear gas - but waited outside because they knew Eagar had a weapon.

Four hours later, they entered and found him, police reports say. He had bled to death.

In 2004, Boise police shot and killed a 16-year-old brandishing an unloaded antique gun, and in 2006, the city launched an initiative to address cases where an understanding of mental illness is critical to defusing tense situations and keeping people alive. But two years after that effort began, Boise police are just beginning the training they need to assemble the planned Crisis Intervention Team. Experts say the community needs to do much more to provide the depth and breadth of services needed to keep people like Eagar alive and out of jail.

Ada County Coroner Erwin Sonnenberg said Eagar's gunshot wound was accidentally inflicted but unavoidably fatal. Nothing would have saved him, Sonnenberg said.

But Eagar's mother, Connie Eagar, contends that a better understanding of people with mental health issues could have saved her son's life. Officers might have entered the home sooner, she said.

"I do believe if there was someone with a little sensitivity, they could talk someone down," she said. "It was not their fault that he died. I believe they could have saved him, but they did not cause his death. I don't think they are trained to handle it. The only thing they do is react when someone is threatened."

Mental health care advocates lament the dearth of affordable, accessible services in the Treasure Valley, the stigma mental illness still brings and the lack of adequate training to help law enforcement officers deal with people in a mental health crisis.

EXTRA TRAINING WON'T RESOLVE EVERY CRISIS

Many communities around the country, from Salt Lake City to Portland to Memphis, have created special teams to erase the stigma, coordinate community mental health resources and train officers to avoid ugly confrontations and violent deaths.

The Boise Police Department has been working to create a Crisis Intervention Team - CIT in the agency's shorthand - to train frontline officers and offer more community resources. The move was sparked by the high-profile episode in 2004, when an officer shot and killed a 16-year-old Boise teenager who had threatened his father and the officer with an antique bayoneted rifle. But staffing changes have delayed the process, said Lt. Ron Winegar, who is in charge of the department's CIT effort.

"It has been two years since I made that recommendation," said Pierce Murphy, community ombudsman for the Boise Police Department.

A month ago, Boise police wrapped up training to introduce all officers to the CIT process, Winegar said. Some specific officers will get an additional 30 to 40 hours of training later this fall.

"CIT isn't a magic bullet that will teach an officer how to deal with people and everything will be better," Winegar said.

Police tactics won't change if officers or the public are threatened, he said.

"If someone is in a meth paranoia or mentally ill, we don't change our tactics," Winegar said. "People are still a danger to police officers. If someone is shooting at you, you can't stop the bullets easier with CIT."

But the department hopes the efforts will make a difference in the community.

"It's a larger picture of how we deal with the mental health system," Winegar said.

JAILS FILL WITH THE MENTALLY ILL

Peggy McMahon is a Boise member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness - often called NAMI - and the family member of a person under mental health care. She's been working with Boise police to get the CIT up and running and is frustrated by the delays.

"Half our jails are filled with people who have mental illness and are in for some minor offense," McMahon said. "It does involve working with health care providers and families and consumers. It fits in perfectly with the community collaboration model."

Just days before Douglas Eagar's death, Dorian Willes led police on an hours-long standoff that ended when he was shot multiple times after breaking through walls and ceilings and allegedly brandishing a soldering iron. Willes was in the midst of a drug-fueled paranoia. He is still recovering in a Boise hospital, racking up more than $1 million in medical bills that taxpayers likely will have to cover.

The vast majority of mentally ill people aren't violent. But with a lack of affordable, community-based treatment, some with mental illness deteriorate to a point that law enforcement gets involved. People with mental disorders are often arrested and sent to jail or prison because officers have few other options.

Since the 1970s, states have moved away from using institutions to treat the mentally ill. In Idaho, state mental hospitals in Blackfoot and Orofino have less than 150 beds.

But of the 6,520 men and 778 women in Idaho Department of Corrections facilities this week, officials estimate that 30 percent of men and 60 percent of women are mentally ill, said spokesman Jeff Ray.

The numbers are high in the Treasure Valley, too. The Ada County Sheriff's Office reports that 20 percent to 25 percent of the Ada County Jail population are on some type of psychotropic medication to treat brain chemical imbalances. In fact, 40 percent of all the medications prescribed in the jail are psychotropic, said spokeswoman Andrea Dearden.

The jail now houses 57 inmates identified by the county's mental health staff as having a "severe, chronic mental illness," Dearden said.

HOW IT WORKED IN MEMPHIS

Mental health experts say that creating a Crisis Intervention Team shouldn't just be about training police. Rather, they say, it should be a community-wide commitment to get mentally ill people the help they need, protect both the public and law enforcement officers and save the lives of people in crisis. It should be about recognizing mental illness and de-escalating crisis situations before they end violently.

If done right, crisis intervention can cut costs by keeping people with mental illness out of jails and prisons, which are expensive to operate.

Experts say one key to a successful CIT is having available mental health services, including a crisis center.

"To some, CIT is really a training program. To some degree that's right," said Sam Cochran, who led the Crisis Intervention Team with the Memphis Police Department for 20 years. "When you are addressing the training issue, in many ways you are only addressing the cosmetic issues. It really needs to come together as a community approach."

Memphis created the country's first CIT in the 1980s after a mentally ill man was shot and killed by police officers.

"It was such a tragic shooting," Cochran said. "As a result of that, the community got involved."

Officers were trained to recognize mental illness and understand the use of psychotropic drugs and their effects. They made partnerships with mental health professionals and the families of the mentally ill. Officers and other first responders learned how to de-escalate standoffs. Then the state got involved and created more affordable, community-based resources to help the mentally ill.

"It can be challenging, but that's what we have community leaders for," Cochran said. "But the people have to take some sense of the responsibility."

As a result of the program, Memphis saw a "significant" six-fold decrease in the rate of officer injuries, Cochran said.

"The other thing that is hard to measure is community confidence," Cochran said. "I think we can do better. It's not just a pointed law enforcement training program. Nobody wants tragedies within their communities."

STEPS ARE BEING TAKEN HERE, BUT SLOWLY

Idaho and the Treasure Valley are starting to make progress.

In 2008, the Idaho Legislature approved $70 million for a mental health prison that will also have a unit for patients committed outside the legal system. A site for the facility hasn't yet been finalized. Ada County and the city of Boise are leading an effort to build a detoxification and mental health crisis center near the Ada County Jail.

State lawmakers also are reviewing a new report advocating that the state create a regional mental health care system similar to the public health system. Legislators are just beginning to review the information, said Senate Assistant Majority Leader Joe Stegner, R-Lewiston.

"It will result in keeping people out of jail. That will result in significant cost savings in the state, and those monies can be redirected to prevention and early intervention programs," he said. "This has the best potential for increasing mental health and substance abuse systems that are the foundation for so many government problems - not just state, but local."

And in 2005, Judge Michael McLaughlin set up a mental health court in Ada County to give mentally ill offenders an alternative to long stays in jail.

But state and local resources for the mentally ill are still sparse. Earlier this year, a national advocacy group gave Idaho an "F" for the quality of its care, especially those with schizophrenia other serious illnesses.

"Mental health care is underfunded on a state level," said Roseanne Hardin, NAMI board president in Boise.

That contributes to the widespread belief that mentally ill people are dangerous, she said.

"Is it not consistent with stigma that we don't provide those treatment options for people involved with the law?" she asked. "Why are those treatment options only connected with (prisons)?"

NAMI Boise is working with the city on crisis intervention, and Hardin admits the process is taking longer than planned.

CIT can provide for a "safer, more clinically informed intervention" when a person is in crisis, Hardin said. That can allow that person to perhaps avoid jail and get the help they need.

Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney said his department is also implementing a CIT program. Raney said he has a group doing research and working to implement the changes. He hopes to have his deputies trained by year's end.

It makes sense to create a CIT, Raney said, because law enforcement will only have more contact with people with mental health issues as the population grows.

"This still has to be built one brick at a time," Raney said. "Health and Welfare and law enforcement and non-profit and profit providers are the first bricks. It needs to be a multidisciplinary team. ... I think it will save lives, lives of those people who most often are going to commit suicide or do some act with a police officer."

Kathleen Kreller: 377-6418