I perform high level data science in a statistical domain.
My focus area is qualitative data and how to read and interpret it. I am wonderful at expressing how to use it properly and demonstrate what it means to researchers.
I can read quantitative data just fine, and often I am a pro at interpreting it and analyzing it. It just isn’t my preferential area of functional expertise. I have technical knowledge and expertise within this side of data, though.
Qualitative data is way more exciting to me.
Why?
Numbers often begin and end with a distinct collection period.
Qualitative responses often are based on analytical/structural context to assess relvance, scope, applicability, and meaning. The best part is that it can take a few tries to figure out what the context really is and why things created a unique result pattern.
Numbers you can run tests for this.
Qualitative you have to know logical reasoning and/or theoretical proofs. (That’s my theory on why I’m such a good clinical diagnostician as compared to many.)
When your numbers give an improper significance value, that’s the logical test.
Qualitative is about what makes reasonable sense, all else being equal.
Sometimes, when all else being equal, something doesn’t add up, we must re-evaluate what we’re looking at, and what we have forgotten to put in our dataset.
I wanted to re-visit the issue of my court case.
Not to open wounds, as they are long closed.
But to offer a newer story, a different telling for the blog.
A Story of the Court Being Rude
As the DOJ heard, and confirmed was a disability civil rights violation:
“11 AM, Mesa PD arrived while I was in an active [dissociative and] psychotic state, verbally/physically/psychologically harassed me into answering questions after stating I didn’t know what was going on. Then they intentionally led me to answer their questions based on preconcieved notions of mental health. They misconstrued and falsely reported evidence on me. (At the time, R had a bloody nose from his own doing and was not harrassed by the cops for having bruised me up or violently chased me around while in psychosis.) The police denied me the right to medication while in custody. [They in fact weaponied their incompetence at me, claiming it was on me to have known it was my job to demand I bring it.] They falsely accused me of DV for a mental health crisis from their aformentioned misconduct towards me in forcefully obtaining an answer out of me. When they determined I was not a danger to anyone and sounded very confident this was a routine procedure for mental health, they informed me very directly in the back of a cop car that they could not take me to the hospital. They informed me that due to my previous answers (which they coerced me into giving – as no one in a mental ealth crisis is legally allowed to be given the right to have a validated confession), policy forced them to charge me as a criminal. I informed the court that this was misconduct and an abuse of power. The Mesa County Court informed me that they could not dismiss the case as “police don’t do that; they understand mental health very well”. In fact, I do know that they get only a 4-hour training that is focused on officer protection. The court is presenting a gross mischaracterization of police crisis intervention skills. As well, I know 42 CFR part 51 and SAMHSA guidelines on this. These were not followed. 42 CFR explains how the court utilizing COT to demean my claims that I recognized their misconduct on me and forcibly using it as weaponry to characterize psychosis as violence to perpetuate false narratives encompass unethical treatment and misconduct throughout multiple levels of the system. Thrrough extraneous knowledge of DV and mental health (I am a survivor of DV), I can attest to the fact that police are terrifying to people who have survived DV. Police often torment victims, and this story alone demonstrates why we don’t trust them as survivors. The COT program through Prodigy healthcare has been a pain, stating up and down that the court requires fake certifications, fake case law needs, and fake requirements to bolster fake patient rights. The police are abusing their power to discriminate against mentally ill women who they know the prosectors will happily support them in doing.”
As the AZ Attorney General got “anonymously”:
“With the help of Argenta Apartments guidance, Connie made numerous false reports to Mesa PD alleging that R was the victim of DV. This was because I have dissociative PTSD with psychotic features. Connie kept on running in her red pickup truck from across the apartment complex every time I had a psychotic break to claim I was abusing my boyfriend. And when she would call the police, they would hear me say I have PTSD, take one look at me and decided I was a perpetrator of DV and demanded my license be taken for a report. Then [later], I had a horrific and excruciating PTSD trauma response that can only be classified as the rememberance of my postpartum psychosis. Connie threw a fit at the police that I must have been abusing my boyfriend. Even when I explained up and down to the police, utilizing clinical language and trying really hard not to scream at them to not hurt me like I figured they wanted to, that I have dissociative PTSD, providing amazing diagnostic criteria straight from the DSM and explaining more information than they deserved, the police threw a fit at me that because Connie had harrassed them so much about my illness, that proved I was a DV perpetrator. They made up a charge. They arrested me. They relegated a trained clinical counselor who is a certified trauma professional into their bogus COT program claiming they care about victims. Really, the police think I was making it up. They let all their prosecutors throw a fit in court that psychosis is DV and I was the attacker for being in a mental health crisis. The COT program has communicated this multiple times to me. Because the court believes that mental health crises are DV perpetration I have had to endure emotional torment at the hands of the court system because of the harassment of the neighbor deciding that the Mesa PD knows more about mental health than someone who has lived with the illness for 8 years. 4 hours of training is not ok. I know you don’t care and will throw this away, but please at least give me the curtosey of a formal response when you deny me my rights to a formal resolution.”
As Mesa PD denied was valid, calling it “unfounded”:
“I was experiencing a mental health crisis, and because of this misconduct, have perpetually been in one for about a year (math to follow) and when the officers arrived to express their discomfort at me, I explained to them my confusion that they were there. I provided adequate clinical explanation of a dx history and rationale for why they were scaring me. Anyone who is trained with DV would know a survivor of DV with PTSD-SP is terrified and triggered into severe trauma by police. (Look at how you handle this.) I expressed my confusion. I had just woken up. I was in pajamas. Clearly confused. And you all were yelling at me that R (my fiance) had a bloody nose? How was I to give any logical or organized answer when any competent, rational human could tell you that every person experiencing psychosis cannot provide an organized pattern of speech. Y’all forced me to answer your damn question, when the fact is (should you have not badgered me and cocered me into giving an answer out of fear and terror) – I woke up in a psychotic attack and was panicking, he chased me around, I freaked out when he grabbed me from behind to make sure I would be okay, he pursued me, I uncontrollably cried, he bashed his head against a glass picture frame, I grabbbed him, held him down so he stopped hurting himself, he kicked and punched me repeatedly, I reflexively flailed, he asked me to let go, I said “sure,” and then he ran out the door, and I passed the hell out – and you all had the NERVE to charge ME with assault?!
MY mistake was being in psychosis and having a guy who panics by self-harming.
YOUR POLICE heard “my mistake” and INTENTIONALLLY MISCONSTRUED IT as “I punched him” because YOUR POLICE would not let me tell my damn story. They were crossing their arms and rolling their eyes and looking annoyed and bothered as fuck with me, when I was the one in active crisis. Wow, love the 4 hours of crisis training. Who was the provider? Can I tell them they failed, too?
As SAMHSA puts it, “IT is an ABUSE of power to arrest, detain, use handcuffs, or otherwise hold someone to criminal charges when they are in a mental health crisis. Proper reporting measures and assessment tools must be used to ensure that the reports have been made ETHICALLY and ACCURATELY.”
MESA PD is abusive and violent toward mental health crises, and so why would I pretend to like you?
As well, your little “compassionate” thing got me relegated to COT – wherein there is no oversight, [and there is instead rampant] unethical behavior, mistreatment of clients, abuses of power, and vindictive behavior – as well as a general misunderstanding of clinical competencies with mental health case law (which I, a clinical counselor, am VERY WELL VERSED in).
As for how we got to around a year of trauma?
Well, you began this charade back in 2023. Took me until now to prove to COT that I actually have the knowledge to showcase your abuse, your incompetencies, and your misconduct spanning over he course of reporting, court procedures, diversions, and efforts to carry out justice.
Must be nice to get to act as perpetrators and take advantage of mental health with your overblown job purview.”
Where this leaves me:
The complaint to Mesa PD above is probably the third one I’ve sent. I sent the first one maybe two weeks before pre-trial – the fancy court term for “let’s see if we can work this out before we need a jury”. The DA clearly got wind of this complaint.
I was right that the police are taking on roles they have no training in, though.
It is a stated right all over the police website and the jail that you are entitled the right to complain through their portal. To use this against someone in a court setting is, to a data scientist, a clear violation of ethics. It is also, qualitatively, a clear continuation of misconduct demonstrating the complaint was not only accurate but depended on the DA.
My lawyer – who I struggle often to feel is really ok – was not dishonest in law.
His presence as a lawyer, my dad told me, was very typical of a good lawyer. What befuddled me was, if you take on DV victims who were blamed by police, shouldn’t you have a better understanding of behaviors that scare victims and survivors of DV?
Maybe that was me being too niche and understanding of people.
But I admit I didn’t trust him because he didn’t reach out to me. I did not get more than one status update on the case and was in the dark through most of the process. That is terrifying as a DV survivor and recent victim of police violence and brutality.
When I lodged the complaint, I do not know if there was anything said about what I would or would not do. Nor do I know if the DA was banking on me shutting up about how the police were lacking proper ethics and training. But I qualitatively knew that the moment I saw her lock eyes with me, she was ready to pick a fight with me.
I look cute and spunky and delicate.
I don’t look like I can throw down big words and verbose high level arguments.
She wanted to attack my credibility in being able to know diagnostics and misconduct. I earnestly suspect this was in retailation to my complaint lodged against the police. It seemed odd to me how my lawyer went from being highly confident to being highly scared in one 15-minute session with a DA, who was looking to attack my disability.
When the response to a good argument is to slander the person, that qualitatively means that the argument presented is both sound and irrefutable.
I didn’t talk to her like she demanded.
I often think back to it. I consider sometimes if I should have.
Then, I remember something my supervisor once told me. (Not verbatim.) “You have to respect yourself, too. You don’t have to take disrespect from anyone, no matter what.”
Maybe my ethics as a clinician got the better of me.
Or maybe they saved me a lot of trouble.
I like to think my ethics saved me.
I am firm that talking to a DA whose argument was to attack me and not my actual statements on the evidence as presented, was not someone I wanted to speak to. I don’t deal well with people who choose to attack me when my debating and data science are better than theirs, and they know it. I will be kind to people. But I do not take disrespect.
The DA wanted to see if disrespecting me would prove her point.
I knew better than to play the game of an abuser and the system enabling it. I stand firm that it was a better choice to scream relentlessly at the COT forced upon me by a DA futher infuriated with my choice to not engage with bullying. At least by not engaging with the head bully to back the police who bullied me, I saved a headache.
She should thank me, as she saved herself the embarassment of being eviserated by a young woman who is scared to her wit’s end when someone sneaks up behind her. The DA is lucky I was wise enough to hold my tongue and not call her out on her abuse.
I am done with the stupid court nonsense.
My policy class already proved it made them feel “unsafe” to ask about my passion in relation to my experience and then get responses from me telling them about it. I ask then why we’re engaging with my story if it makes you feel unsafe. How is my lived experience mine to be at fault for having lived through? I wrote my victory post that the school called bullshit on the students saying that I harmed them. (Bullies…)
It lives in my mind as one thing I want to change about America.
The court system does not exist to find justice.
People don’t want to hear the challenging parts of the stories research denies us access to. It’s my newest research stance in analytics and developing ethical data methods.
Where Do We Go?
Discrimination based on profiling people as DV perpetrators because of stated SMI disability status is a highly nuanced subset within DV policy issues.
Faulty crisis and mental health training intersects with egregious falsified charges and presentation of evidence to support misconstrued and coerced confessions. This is a subset of ethical qualitative data collection analysis and people forget that it is a valid point to make when assessing why police are not a great response to DV.
DV policy that promotes mutual abuse arrests also factors into these, and that’s part of the argument for why COT being “perpetrator-focused” not only misses the point of the policy but also why designating if someone is just needing services should be documented differently than a criminal charge falsification process.
We go from here in promoting behaviors that stop police from being DV responders.
I don’t care that we don’t like that.
Referential evidence of my experience and the experiences of many survivors shows how police and court intervention demeaned them rather than helped them. Police exist to promote police work, not to help the victims of abuse get proper help and care.
We need people whose role is more vicitm-focused responding to DV, and that’s not police, court workers, or state-affilated workers with childcare. It just isn’t. Their role isn’t that, and even if they want it to be, organizational structure doesn’t allow for it.
As my complaint called out, 4 hours of crisis intervention training is inadequate. It also is highly focused on police protection against people in crisis, not on how actually to help or assist those in crisis ethically and respectfully. Just how to not die.
My complaint calls out bogus COT certifications. They insisted that a normal person would think a “certified domestic violence counselor” was a thing. I tried explaining at least a dozen times without a certification list, that only exists in courts, and is not a clinical certification recognized in non-court settings. It’s a 15-hour train-the-trainer training. It is psychoeducation to deliver to the client. I had to produce a reference list.
As referenced, misconduct is not clear-cut.
The DOJ didn’t even know what to say about this.
I could tell from them holding onto it for about 1.5 weeks before responding that they really wanted to investigate it with me. They didn’t seem to lightly say “We regret not being able to take it on, but we are not saying your report lacks merit,” and seemed pretty quick about getting it back to me with other associations who could help.
Qualitatively, what this functionally told me –
Was that not only did my report have adequate and complete merit as a disability civil rights violation, but also that they think I deserve someone who has more expertise and ability to get me a resolution I really and truly deserve on this matter. It was not them saying they did not care. It was them acknowledging this was going to set precedents.
I am smart enough to read between the lines to know the DOJ cannot be the ones to set their own body of precedents on police proceedings in disability rights.
I just needed them to confirm it was a genuine complaint I could find someone to act on.
I am smart enough to know the issue with my case was not that I was wrong.
The issue was that I was so right that I was willing to document everywhere that I knew it was a violation of my rights and clear misconduct. I wanted it very clearly stated throughout every system I could that not only was this not a DV case, but that I was profiled based on improper training and assumptions given by falsified reporting.
I wanted it known that this was my view, my stance, and no one was cocercing me into saying it was misconduct. I was taking a stand for myself being bullied by police whose job seemed to be listening to anything but ethical intuition and logical reasoning.
Hell, they even communicated to me they thought I did nothing wrong.
Not many survivors and people are willing to take a stand on the bogus nature of police behaviors in lying, devaluing, and then acting like that’s kind treatment.
It was super difficult in that I took a stand. Made my case almost impossible.
I can tell that it made my battle uphill both ways, in the snow, with black ice patches underneath my trodden footsteps. The DA hated me for knowing the law.
And I would do it again.
And maybe this time, in heels.
Maybe this time, with a little more gusto and a little more pizazz.
XOXO,
Dorothy B
Just Ask 