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Grieving family pushes for better mental health training after deadly shooting

Following a deadly officer-involved shooting on March 16, the Langfitt family wants to see change following the death of their son, Billy.
Bill Langfitt III, Billy's father, addresses media during a press conference on Friday.

The Langfitt family wants the Pierce County Sheriff's department to receive better training around mental health emergencies. At a press conference Friday, they said the way a deputy responded to their son, Billy Langfitt's mental breakdown, proves the county has a problem.

Sheriff Paul Pastor also spoke Friday about the deputy-involved shooting at a separate press conference.

"We see the timeline here as not having a whole lot of time to engage with de-escalation," said Pastor.

It happened on March 16, around 9:30 p.m. at 252nd Street East and Mountain Highway East in the Elk Plain area.

Naomi Powers called 911 because her boyfriend was having a mental breakdown. He was in his shorts, a t-shirt, and socks, running in the street. According to witnesses, he was jumping on cars.

During Powers' 911 call, the dispatcher asked about weapons. Powers responded, "I think he has a knife."

About two minutes into the same call, the dispatcher said, "you said he had a weapon on him. What kind of weapon did he have?"

Powers answered, "I have it now." And later in the call, she reiterated that she had possession of the folding knife. She told the dispatcher that her boyfriend "needs psychiatric help."

According to the sheriff's department, when a deputy arrived and exited his vehicle, Langfitt charged at him and jumped into the front seat of the patrol car.

"Our deputy's thought at that point was he can't take this patrol car. There's a rifle in it, and the way he is acting, if he takes off in this patrol car, then we have a bigger problem. He was trying to stop that problem," said Detective Ed Troyer with Pierce County Sheriff's Department.

The deputy then fired several shots, killing Langfitt.

"I told them he didn't have any weapons on him. He was unarmed," said a tearful Powers on Friday. "I asked for help and they killed him. I had to watch the whole thing."

The family now has advocates. Andre Taylor, the Executive Director of a group called Not This Time, and James Bible, a civil rights attorney. Taylor and Bible stood beside Billy Langfitt's father, mother, sister, girlfriend, and best friend during Friday's press conference.

"I am not going to allow the media or law enforcement to make this family feel like they are accountable or this young man responsible for his own death because he was having a mental health crisis. It is a shame and I am not going to sit here and allow it to happen," said Taylor. "They said that Billy had a knife. Billy did not have a knife."

Bible added, "The lead detective in this matter has indicated very clearly to this family that there was no weapon on that person at the time that they shot him over and over and over and over and over again."

On Friday, Det. Troyer confirmed Langfitt was not armed.

"I know we said that he had a knife. It turns out he did not have a knife, but the 911 call that came in originally, when the deputy responded, was that he was armed with a knife," Troyer explained.

"This needs to be investigated. This needs to be analyzed, and it also needs to be acknowledged. This is not the way you deal with people in crisis," said Bible.

Sheriff Pastor says the community depends on deputies to do too much.

"What we have done far too often and we continue to do far too much, is we say with regard to substance abuse, with regard to mental illness, with regard to homelessness, we say just let the cops handle it," said Pastor.

Mental health professionals will soon respond to certain calls with deputies to help de-escalate situations. Sheriff Pastor says it is a program that has been in the works for a long time, and it took awhile to get funding. The program should start in May.

The March 16 deputy-involved shooting remains under investigation. Deputy Edwards was placed on administrative leave, something that is standard procedure for the department.

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