Remembering Joel’s Law after another Capitol Hill death of a person in crisis

Friends consoling each other after Joel Reuter was shot and killed in a standoff with police in 2013 at Bellevue and Denny. His death would inspire Joel’s Law, a key reform to the state’s involuntary commitment statute (Image: CHS)

The death of a man in crisis who fell from a Capitol Hill apartment building Sunday despite hours of contact and attempted interventions with Seattle Police echoes with another death in the neighborhood that led to new laws around involuntary commitment more than a decade ago.

CHS reported here on the Sunday incident as the man fell from the Ben Lomond Apartments after police earlier in the day, despite his suffering reported “severe delusions and paranoia” and possible access to weapons, determined the man had not yet committed a crime, had not injured anyone else, and was not injured which can trigger SPD protocols that allow officers to enter private property to render medical aid.

The man would return to the building early Sunday evening, busting through lobby glass swinging a scooter. This time, the break-in and the trail of blood he left behind, SPD would later tell CHS, justified police intervention. Officers formed a team outside the unit the man had entered and tried to make contact but it was too late. The man was found dead four stories below in the greenbelt above I-5. A firearm was found and recovered untouched where it had been hidden by a resident inside the apartment, SPD said.

The King County Medical Examiner says the man died of blunt force injuries in the fall. The examiner has released the man’s identity but CHS is not identifying him here. He was 41, a Seattle resident and a business owner.

A CHS commenter on our story noted the parallels with a 2013 incident in which a Seattle Police sniper shot and killed an armed man suffering a crisis after a day-long standoff inside his Denny Way apartment:

This occurred about eight blocks from where Joel Reuter’s incident and interaction with SPD caused his death by cop and prompted his parents to lobby the state legislature for our current “Involuntary Treatment Act”. Joel was my roommate a few years prior to his living in the apartments at Denny and Bellevue. There’s a beautiful article here on CHS with kind words from friends of his at the time.

CHS reported here that year on the shocking loss for Joel Reuter’s loved ones.

Reuter’s family would help organize the effort to create Joel’s Law, passed in 2013 to strengthen involuntarily commitment guidelines and help prevent future tragedies like the day on Capitol Hill Reuter’s crisis led to his death.

During a hearing on the bill, Joel’s father said he and others had tried for months to have a designated mental health professional recommend to a judge that Joel should be involuntarily held at a hospital for treatment. During that time, Reuter had a string of run-ins with police and crisis intervention specialists and threatened to kill himself and his parents. “I was told if he had a loaded gun on his hand with his finger on the trigger, then we could get him help. That’s exactly what Joel had on the morning of July 5th, and the help they gave him was to kill him,” his father said.

Joel’s Law made it possible for families in Washington to have a loved one involuntarily committed even if a “Designated Crisis Responder” decides not to detain them. This Sunday’s death shows how many cracks remain in the system.

The CHS commenter was blunt in their assessment, calling SPD’s response “not much more that professional fingerpointing and another serious failure of protocol.”

“We’ve done the work to get here,” the commenter wrote, “the legislation is our directive, just fucking handle it.”

A department spokesperson said earlier this week that SPD’s response Sunday afternoon was the right one under the circumstances, saying officers had no legal framework to take the man into custody earlier in the day.

“It is not a crime to be in crisis,” the spokesperson said.

Across the country, there have been increased efforts to broaden circumstances for intervention. In New York, protocols must now include a “basic living needs” standard as the state has made it easier to commit people with severe mental illnesses. An ongoing debate in Washington’s state legislature has focused on lowering the “likelihood of serious harm” threshold to better help those suffering long-term declines but who are not yet in an immediate crisis.

Meanwhile, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed in July included substantial cuts to Medicaid. States may shape broader legal powers to commit people but they have less federal aid to fund their care.

$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE

Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month — or choose your level of support