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Senate committee advances amendment to crisis-hold bill for people with neurocognitive disorders
Summary
The Senate Health and Welfare Committee voted to send Senate Bill 11 20 forward after the sponsor proposed changing the legal standard police would use to place a crisis hold for people with neurocognitive disorders, replacing “likely to injure” language with an “imminent danger” standard familiar to law enforcement.
Senator Melissa Wintrow, sponsor of Senate Bill 11 20, told the Senate Health and Welfare Committee that the bill would extend a crisis-hold procedure to people with neurocognitive disorders who are in crisis and pose a danger to themselves or others.
Wintrow said the bill builds on a measure passed last year and was prompted by an incident at a homeless shelter where a person with Huntington’s disease was “throwing hot coffee pots at folks” and police had no crisis-hold option. She said the earlier statute created a crisis hold as a last resort so police could take a person to a hospital to evaluate for an underlying medical condition rather than arresting them.
Wintrow proposed a targeted change to the bill’s wording after policing agencies raised concerns about liability. “They said, would you be willing to amend the bill to add the language of cross out, person is likely to injure, … and replace it with when a person's continued liberty poses an imminent danger,” she said. She told the committee that “the language imminent danger among police … is a much more recognizable legal standard.”
Wintrow said the bill keeps a separate standard in section 5 that allows a physician to place a crisis hold using the phrase “likely to injure themselves or others” when a person presents at a hospital and no guardian is available; she said that medical standard is more familiar to clinicians.
A committee member asked for a concrete example of the “continued liberty poses an imminent danger” phrasing. Wintrow repeated the earlier shelter example, saying an officer who arrives and is unable to transport or persuade the person to seek care could reasonably conclude that “their continued liberty … is gonna continue to pose a threat.”
After brief discussion, Senator Bierke moved and Senator Keiser seconded that the committee give Senate Bill 11 20 a do-pass recommendation. The committee approved the motion by voice vote with no recorded opposition.
The committee did not adopt further substantive changes on the record; the bill was forwarded to the next chamber with the sponsor’s proposed language adjustment.
