Recently passed Senate Bill 1164 will now allow officers to detain anyone experiencing mental health episode

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — A new Texas law now allows police to detain people during a mental health crisis, even if they don’t pose an immediate threat.

Senate Bill 1164, which recently went into effect, changes the threshold for when law enforcement can intervene. Under the previous law, police needed to see an imminent danger to act.

Now, officers can detain individuals they believe are suffering from severe mental illness that they are not able to see for themselves.

It’s called anosognosia, and Eric Smith is very familiar with it.

“I was driving down the highway at 90 miles an hour, thinking spies from another country were chasing me,” he said.

SEE ALSO: Texas suicide-prevention hotlines buckle as mental health crisis increases

Smith, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, told ABC13 that he was very ill but could not recognize it. It took getting arrested years ago, he said, for him to get meaningful help.

“There was this crack, this gap we fell through. We are too sick to recognize the need for treatment,” Smith said. “The most forceful and coercive thing I have ever experienced is my own unmanaged psychosis, and it took forced and coercive treatment to get me to a point where I no longer needed that forced and coerced treatment.”

Smith, now a mental health advocate and state commissioner with the Texas Judicial Commission on Mental Health, supports the new law. “I don’t think it can save lives. I think it will save lives.”

Ted Isensee also supports SB 1164, though his family’s experience was different. In 2013, his son Sean, who had struggled with bipolar and anxiety disorders, experienced a violent mental health episode. Armed with a gun at his parents’ home, Sean was shot and killed by police after threatening his father.

“I thought the police would come, and he’d end up being disarmed,” Ted recalled. “We heard the two shots fired. The second one was the one that killed our son.”

In the aftermath, Isensee created the Isensee Foundation for Safe Police Response to train law enforcement on de-escalating mental health crises.

Isensee, who is also a board member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Greater Houston, says the new law provides police with clearer guidance.

“This is a good step forward,” he said. “It helps ease some of the burdens on them (officers) and makes it clear what the rules are, what they can do and what they can’t do.”

SEE HERE: Relative of man suspected of gunning down SW Houston grandparents says he battled mental illness

Not everyone sees the law as progress. Houston City Council Member Tiffany Thomas feared the law could be utilized to remove unhoused people from public spaces unjustly.

“There can always be abuses to any law. It cannot be enforced or poorly enforced,” Isensee acknowledged. “But I don’t think that means we should not pass a law that offers a better path forward.”

Smith agrees the law must come with safeguards. “I’m terrified of the prospect of people’s freedoms being infringed upon,” he said.

The Houston Police Department says it has already begun briefing officers on the new policy, both through memos and at roll call, and the department is incorporating it into required annual training. However, questions remain about how the law will be implemented, particularly in a state that ranks near the bottom for mental health bed availability.

Advocates say that continued oversight, proper training, and the involvement of medical professionals and judges will be essential to ensuring the law works as intended, without violating civil rights.

For more on this story, follow Jessica Willey on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.