SHORELINE — Almost 15 percent of police calls for service in Shoreline are to homes housing the developmentally disabled or sex offenders, said Police Chief Denise Pentony.
In some cases, the calls are to state licensed group homes. However, often times the calls are to private apartments or homes rented by several developmentally disabled residents, some of whom are also sex offenders, who receive state support and living assistance from private agencies providing such services.
To the police, the impact is the same: More than 1,300 calls a year to more than 66 homes in Shoreline for disturbances such as someone out of control, domestic violence and assault, Pentony said.
“And we have a large number of officers assaulted at these group homes,” Pentony said. “Different clients have different issues and some of them are afraid of the police or fire departments, and it can expand into an issue of officer or fire department safety.”
Pentony is advocating a business license or other regulatory procedure for the homes so that police could know ahead of time who is living where and what their backgrounds may be, so that they know how to respond appropriately.
“There are numerous homes coming in and out of Shoreline, and if there is a problem with one client, they will move them around and they don’t tell us, so we have repeat calls to the same clients but to different homes,” Pentony said. “We need to hold group homes accountable.
“Their tenants are assaulting care givers, other tenants, and the police.”
Detective Diana Magan is working on a plan for how the department can address the growing issue.
“We want to know who is living where, and what their medical history is and how many are living there,” Magan said. “With licensing and regulations in place, we could know ahead of time if a person has a violent tendency, what their medical history is and we would know how to respond to them in a safer manner.”
Magan will attend a class in June on how to respond to developmentally disabled or mental health crises and then train others in the department.
The Shoreline City Council discussed the idea of a business license at its annual retreat in April. City staff will look into licensing homes and services for the developmentally disabled and find out how other cities are dealing with the issue through ordinances, zoning, licensing and regulations.
Tim Stewart, the city’s planning director, said the city development code defines a group of up to eight people who live together and are receiving supporting living assistance under the definition of family. Such arrangements are permitted in most residential zones in the city, he said.
More than eight residents living together are categorized as a community residential facility and require a conditional-use permit to locate in a residential-zoned area.
Walsh and Associates is one of 40 agencies in King County that contract with the state to provide supported living assistance to the developmentally disabled and sex offenders.
The company provides 24-hour supervision and living assistance with shifts of care givers for clients that rent homes or apartments in Shoreline, said Karen Ritter, the company’s regional administrator. Her clients are all developmentally disabled, but many are also sex offenders or exhibit other criminal behavior.
Ritter said licensing would not work because most of the clients she serves are not in state-defined “group homes” that could be licensed. Her company provides a service, she says, not a group home.
“Our clients sign leases, we just provide the service,” Ritter said. “It’s just like your grandmother, who’s fallen and broken her hip and needs help bathing. You call in home health care. What we do is exactly the same thing.
“The house your grandmother lives in isn’t owned by a home health agency, and neither is the house or apartment our clients live in.”
Ritter said court rulings over the past 20 years on where people with disabilities should be served have changed the situation.
“From 1970 to 1990, that meant that really, those that never should have gone into institutions like Fircrest, came out of the institutions and into community living, and don’t have heavy care needs, so the first 15 years of exodus went smoothly.
“In the last 10 years, people with more challenging behaviors have been coming out. There’s a boatload of reasons why their behaviors might be more challenging, but now they are coming out into the community and they are people with disabilities with difficult behavior.”
For those developmentally disabled clients who have committed sexual offenses or have other criminal backgrounds, Ritter said, “(The state Division for Developmental Disabilities) doesn’t want them near schools or day cares or parks, so, to a greater or lesser extent, we meet those needs. Generally, we don’t want other participants to be harmed, so if someone is looking for a house or a roommate, we try to steer them clear of each other.”
Ritter said her staff is trained for crisis prevention and intervention. “They can put some individuals in a therapeutic hold to calm them. They also always have the option of calling 911,” she said.
“Usually, if the care-giver cannot resolve the issue, and considerable harm is being done to a client or the property, the police are called,” Ritter said. “But a lot of times, the roommates, who are also disabled, will call the police, sometimes prematurely, and we have no control over they fact that they call the police. We have people who just like calling the police.”
Pentony said the problem is a safety issue for police and the residents.
“When an officer is called and tries to break it up, they don’t know what the disability is, and if the person is afraid of officers, are suicidal or unstable — it’s hard on our officers,” Pentony said.
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