The Coeur d Alene Police Department released its comprehensive mental health plan on Wednesday. In a statement to the Community, Chief Lee White revealed his 5 point plan to assist Coeur D Alene citizens who might be suffering from mental illness.

Mental illness is a serious issue, and we at the Coeur D Alene Police Department believe it must be treated with what we call “firm compassion.” It’s our job to keep the people of Coeur D Alene safe, and provided the mentally ill listen to our commands and surrender their personal liberties, it’s our job to keep them safe as well. With that in mind, we’ve come up with the following 5 point plan to assist the mentally ill of Coeur D Alene.

• PART 1: STOP: With this part of the plan we stop those with mental illness to inquire about their well being. If they don’t appear well to us, or appear to be exercising their rights in a way that we find unsavory, then we will move on to part 2.
• PART 2: HELP: After we stop a person, we want to get them help. This may mean taking them to jail or taking them to a mental health facility against their will. It also means removing weapons from their home so they can no longer challenge our authority.
• PART 3: INTERFERE: At the interfere stage, our goal is to interfere with the person’s life so they cannot carry out the nefarious plan we know they are about to carry out. Interfering with a person’s life often makes them agitated, in which case we may need to implement part 4.
• PART 4: TASER: If the person who needs help doesn’t allow us to help them in the way that we know is best, we now know that person is a hostile person. If after interfering with their life, their weapons and loved ones they become aggressive, then we will use our taser to make them non-aggressive.
• PART 5: SHOOT: If we are unable to calm the subject down using a taser then we will be forced to calm them down with a gun. This involves the use of a firearm to mangle them or take the living breath from them.

This five part plan, which we refer to as SHITS, has been incredibly effective at getting the mentally ill the help we need. I’d point to the incident on September 4, 2019 in which 29-year-old Fares J. Al-Samno was encountered by Officers at the corner of North Pinegrove Drive and West Canfield Avenue.  At that time we stopped Mr. Al-Samno and asked him to identify himself. When he refused, we knew he needed help. At that point he was disturbing the peacefulness of a suburban neighborhood so we interfered in that plan by pointing a gun at him and telling him to stop. When he refused, we attempted to taser him. Due to our officers’ bad aim and incredible lack of training, they all missed. This was despite there being a baker’s dozen of officers on scene. When taser deployment didn’t work, and the officers realized the amount of paid vacation they could get by shooting someone, they shot Mr. Al-Samno.

As you can see by the progression of events, our SHITS plan worked perfectly. Mr. Al-Samno got the help he needed and we were able to keep the suburban community of North Coeur D Alene safe.

Although we refuse to show you the video of the shooting of Mr. Al-Samno because it may incriminate my officers of murder, allow me to point to a previous time where officer Spencer Mortensen implemented the SHITS program perfectly. Take a look:

Although we are saddened by the death of Mr. Al-Samno, we are glad we can do our part to help the mentally ill of Coeur D Alene while keeping normal people like police officers safe.

When Chief White was asked when we would learn the names of the Officers that shot Mr. Al-Samno, he responded “When we come up with a clear justification for doing it. Just like on the 4th of July, it turns out he was holding a banana and not a weapon.”