Correspondence Regarding the Worst Day of My Life So Far
I wrote a much fuller account of the worst day of my life so far in a very long blog post, but if you're short on time, these emails should give you the basic idea. For clarity's sake I present the latter two in chronological order of each party's involvement, which is the opposite of the order they were sent.
To the Editor of the Salt Lake Tribune
My Experience with the Logan City Police
Like many, I have personal reasons for adding my voice to the well-deserved backlash against police practices in this country.
On January 14, 2020, police officers showed up at my apartment in Logan for two apparent purposes - to harass and threaten me over an abrupt and largely fabricated complaint from my neighbors, which they did without once asking about my side of the story, and to make me go to the hospital for psychological treatment, which they did even though I told them I had no health insurance.
The officers wrongly assumed that I knew exactly what I had done "wrong", and didn't bother to explain it before they commenced bullying me. Over the next ten minutes they dropped fragments of their inaccurate version of events which I was too shell-shocked to dispute. I cooperated throughout the ordeal, but their belligerence didn't lessen until they came to their second purpose, at which point they suddenly switched tactics and started pretending to be concerned about my emotional health.
It was unequivocally the worst day of my life. I had never felt so confused, frightened, humiliated, and lonely all at once. The only reason I didn't kill myself that night was so my friend who spent hours trying to comfort me wouldn't feel like she'd failed. Since then, the trauma has faded to a constant presence in the back of my mind and I haven't had a real chance at catharsis until these last couple weeks.
After this experience, I wasn't surprised to learn recently that almost half of the people killed by police in this country have a mental illness or disability, like me.
The Salt Lake Tribune didn't publish this letter, which was quite a disappointment, but of course they don't have to publish anything they don't want to publish.
Like many, I have personal reasons for adding my voice to the well-deserved backlash against police practices in this country.
On January 14, 2020, police officers showed up at my apartment in Logan for two apparent purposes - to harass and threaten me over an abrupt and largely fabricated complaint from my neighbors, which they did without once asking about my side of the story, and to make me go to the hospital for psychological treatment, which they did even though I told them I had no health insurance.
The officers wrongly assumed that I knew exactly what I had done "wrong", and didn't bother to explain it before they commenced bullying me. Over the next ten minutes they dropped fragments of their inaccurate version of events which I was too shell-shocked to dispute. I cooperated throughout the ordeal, but their belligerence didn't lessen until they came to their second purpose, at which point they suddenly switched tactics and started pretending to be concerned about my emotional health.
It was unequivocally the worst day of my life. I had never felt so confused, frightened, humiliated, and lonely all at once. The only reason I didn't kill myself that night was so my friend who spent hours trying to comfort me wouldn't feel like she'd failed. Since then, the trauma has faded to a constant presence in the back of my mind and I haven't had a real chance at catharsis until these last couple weeks.
After this experience, I wasn't surprised to learn recently that almost half of the people killed by police in this country have a mental illness or disability, like me.
The Salt Lake Tribune didn't publish this letter, which was quite a disappointment, but of course they don't have to publish anything they don't want to publish.
To the Logan City Police Department
Because Google is apparently not publishing business reviews at this time, I decided to send this to you directly. I expect the only thing it will accomplish is to give me some small sliver of satisfaction from knowing that you know that one of your officers single-handedly erased all of my respect for law enforcement months before George Floyd's murder, but I'll take what I can get.
[Quote:]
In January a couple of officers abruptly showed up at my apartment, responding to a complaint from my neighbors. I had no idea what was going on. These neighbors had never once said anything to me themselves about real or perceived problems. The police never explained to me in plain English why they had come. They never asked me one single question about my side of the story. Instead, one of them said nothing while the other immediately launched into throwing his weight around and trying to scare me into compliance even though I never showed one iota of resistance or disrespect. For at least ten minutes he was nothing but belligerent while I was nothing but cooperative. He never explained what exactly the problem was but from the details he dropped here and there made it obvious that either my neighbors had straight-up lied about some things or he just hadn't bothered to get them straight himself. He told me to stop doing things that I had never done.
He told me not to talk to, call, or text my neighbors ever again. He said, "Consider this a warning." I would have complied with this "warning" if my neighbors had been adults and made this request themselves instead of pretending to be my friends for months, and I would have complied if the officer had just explained it to me without turning it into a threat. Despite this being my first time hearing any of this, he chose to assume from the moment I let him into my apartment that I knew exactly what I'd done wrong, wouldn't cooperate, and needed to be taught a lesson. And he knew that his uniform gave him impunity to treat me in a manner that would have gotten him fired from any other job.
When this officer was done verbally abusing me, he switched tactics and started pretending to be concerned about my emotional health and asking if I felt suicidal. Yes, he literally tried to play "bad cop good cop" by himself even though he had another cop with him. If he was really so concerned he could have maybe, I don't know, not prefaced it by deliberately confusing and scaring the crap out of me? He made me go to the hospital despite me explaining that I had no health insurance. He knew this was part of his purpose for showing up in the first place and still chose to first treat me in a manner that anyone over the age of three could have told him would only make me more suicidal (which it did, very much).
I was not arrested or accused of anything illegal, but before driving me to the hospital they frisked me for anything I could use to hurt myself (even though the hospital rendered this precaution entirely superfluous by taking my clothes away). For no legitimate reason that I can discern, they chose to do this after we had left my apartment, on the sidewalk in front of their police cars and in full view of the entire block. After the abusive officer dropped me off he said I could call the station and ask to talk to him if I wanted, because he apparently thought I was the stupidest person on the planet and would see him as something remotely resembling a friend or ally. The only reason I would ever want to talk to him would be to say some things unfit for publication in this review.
I forgave my neighbors after about a month because one of them was brain-damaged and delusional in the most literal sense of the word. All of our mutual acquaintances including their own roommate felt that their reaction to me was stupid, immature and uncalled for. But at least it wasn't malicious. I can't say the same for the police. I don't fault them at all for taking the complaint seriously and looking into it - they would have been criminally negligent in their duties if they didn't - but the way they went about it was wrong, full stop. I would feel safer entrusting my mental health to the first person I see on the sidewalk than the Logan Police Department. Their gross incompetence has traumatized me since then and probably for a very long time to come.
[Close quote]
It was a one-star review, of course, but only because zero-star reviews aren't an option for some reason.
- Christopher Nicholson
Much to my everlasting shock, they never responded. And after I was so polite by not mentioning Officer Nelson by name or explaining what he could go do to himself.
[Quote:]
In January a couple of officers abruptly showed up at my apartment, responding to a complaint from my neighbors. I had no idea what was going on. These neighbors had never once said anything to me themselves about real or perceived problems. The police never explained to me in plain English why they had come. They never asked me one single question about my side of the story. Instead, one of them said nothing while the other immediately launched into throwing his weight around and trying to scare me into compliance even though I never showed one iota of resistance or disrespect. For at least ten minutes he was nothing but belligerent while I was nothing but cooperative. He never explained what exactly the problem was but from the details he dropped here and there made it obvious that either my neighbors had straight-up lied about some things or he just hadn't bothered to get them straight himself. He told me to stop doing things that I had never done.
He told me not to talk to, call, or text my neighbors ever again. He said, "Consider this a warning." I would have complied with this "warning" if my neighbors had been adults and made this request themselves instead of pretending to be my friends for months, and I would have complied if the officer had just explained it to me without turning it into a threat. Despite this being my first time hearing any of this, he chose to assume from the moment I let him into my apartment that I knew exactly what I'd done wrong, wouldn't cooperate, and needed to be taught a lesson. And he knew that his uniform gave him impunity to treat me in a manner that would have gotten him fired from any other job.
When this officer was done verbally abusing me, he switched tactics and started pretending to be concerned about my emotional health and asking if I felt suicidal. Yes, he literally tried to play "bad cop good cop" by himself even though he had another cop with him. If he was really so concerned he could have maybe, I don't know, not prefaced it by deliberately confusing and scaring the crap out of me? He made me go to the hospital despite me explaining that I had no health insurance. He knew this was part of his purpose for showing up in the first place and still chose to first treat me in a manner that anyone over the age of three could have told him would only make me more suicidal (which it did, very much).
I was not arrested or accused of anything illegal, but before driving me to the hospital they frisked me for anything I could use to hurt myself (even though the hospital rendered this precaution entirely superfluous by taking my clothes away). For no legitimate reason that I can discern, they chose to do this after we had left my apartment, on the sidewalk in front of their police cars and in full view of the entire block. After the abusive officer dropped me off he said I could call the station and ask to talk to him if I wanted, because he apparently thought I was the stupidest person on the planet and would see him as something remotely resembling a friend or ally. The only reason I would ever want to talk to him would be to say some things unfit for publication in this review.
I forgave my neighbors after about a month because one of them was brain-damaged and delusional in the most literal sense of the word. All of our mutual acquaintances including their own roommate felt that their reaction to me was stupid, immature and uncalled for. But at least it wasn't malicious. I can't say the same for the police. I don't fault them at all for taking the complaint seriously and looking into it - they would have been criminally negligent in their duties if they didn't - but the way they went about it was wrong, full stop. I would feel safer entrusting my mental health to the first person I see on the sidewalk than the Logan Police Department. Their gross incompetence has traumatized me since then and probably for a very long time to come.
[Close quote]
It was a one-star review, of course, but only because zero-star reviews aren't an option for some reason.
- Christopher Nicholson
Much to my everlasting shock, they never responded. And after I was so polite by not mentioning Officer Nelson by name or explaining what he could go do to himself.
To Logan Regional Hospital
On January 14, 2020, I had a brief stay at your hospital. A few days later I took a phone survey with a robot about my experience and I basically said it was great. I lied because I wanted you to leave me alone and stop reminding me about the worst day of my life. However, I now realize that I denied you the opportunity to improve your services for future patients, and I don't want anyone else to ever be treated the way I was, and I feel guilty and I want to set the record straight. I'm not sure if this email address is the best place to direct this information but I'm really not interested in talking to anybody over the phone so it will have to do.
To refresh your memory, I was brought in by Officer Nelson of the Logan City Police Department for the suicidal feelings that he exacerbated a thousandfold by coming to my apartment and bullying me for ten minutes over things I didn't do. He never once asked about my side of the story and instead passed along to you the version he got from Officer Hansen who got it from my brain-damaged neighbor Talease who thinks she can read people's auras and see the future. I could write (and have written) several paragraphs about the nightmare he put me through but I'll forebear since your institution obviously had nothing to do with it. I just want to be clear that he didn't know what the hell he was talking about, and you may quote me on that. I have a crazy idea that maybe police officers who don't know how to do anything besides swagger and threaten people shouldn't be sent to deal with mental health crises. At least I survived the encounter because I'm white.
The social worker noted that I came to the hospital “voluntarily”. The only reason I came “voluntarily” is that after Officer Nelson refused to take “I don't have health insurance” as an answer, I was smart enough to realize he wasn't actually giving me a choice. The hospital staff suggested that I could sign up for Medicaid but until that was set in stone, staying for more than a few hours was completely off the table no matter what. If you had forced me to stay and miss work for a few weeks, then given me a bill for tens of thousands of dollars, I would have killed myself anyway and left a note explaining where you could stick it. What's the point of saving someone's life just to actively make it far worse than it already was? I know you have little control over this country's medieval healthcare system but I feel like that's a factor you should think about.
As you know, nobody at the hospital gave me a consent form or anything like that to do the things they did. After I left they realized their mistake and frantically called me five times to get my verbal consent over the phone. It actually seems kind of stupid to me that the police can force me to go to the hospital against my will, but then the hospital can't actually do anything unless I say so. I kind of wish I had refused and sued you instead.
I didn't particularly appreciate it when three or four people congregated in the corner of the room where I was being held and murmured among themselves about my alleged “stalking”. That was the only word I caught but it was plenty loud. Did Officer Nelson forget to tell you I'm not deaf? If your staff insisted on taking his false version of events as incontrovertible truth without discussing it with me at all, they could have at least had the decency to only talk about it behind my back.
I know the stupid hospital gown was just standard procedure for reasons that I'm sure make perfect sense, but it didn't help. At all. This may come as a surprise, but having my clothes taken away and being left half-naked in a cold white room in a building full of strangers where I don't want to be in the first place doesn't make me feel safe, comfortable, or relaxed in any way. I know, I'm so weird.
When the social worker came to talk to me, I thought, Ah, after this nightmare of being harassed and threatened and dragged around by bullies, finally someone is going to listen to my side of the story. Wrong! I tried to talk to her about it, but she was basically like “Yeah, whatever, I don't care, just let me ask the generic questions I'm assigned to ask as fast as possible so I can leave.” I don't know much about what social workers are actually supposed to do but I know she was trying to make me not be suicidal, and she did a spectacularly lame job of it. Her inability or refusal to consider that maybe, just maybe, my explanation of why I felt misunderstood, persecuted, alone and hopeless in that moment could possibly have some relevance to the task of helping me not want to end my life didn't impress me much.
She gave me a piece of paper and I wrote down the kind of things she wanted to see so that we could both leave like we obviously both wanted. The one helpful thing she did was make sure I arranged to spend the evening with a friend. Strangely, without the benefit of any law enforcement or medical training, this friend was the first person all day who treated me like a human being and made me feel like someone gave a crap about me. That night when I was too busy experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder to get one second of sleep, the only reason I didn't kill myself to escape the pain was that I didn't want her to blame herself and feel like she hadn't done enough for me.
Even though it's been several months, I get angrier the more I think about my experience. But I hope this feedback is useful and that your hospital can eventually move into the twenty-first century.
- Christopher Nicholson
I sent the first draft of this email to a generic "Contact Us" email address. It was blocked by an automatic filter. I let it go, but over a month later I got angry enough to edit out the swear words and send it again. A few weeks after that, I went to leave a one-star Google review and discovered an actual patient feedback email address, so I edited out pretty much every part that wasn't sarcastic or openly insulting and sent it a third time. Ten days later, someone sent a response on actual paper. The hospital was six blocks from my apartment, but thanks to Donald Trump's screwing with the postal service, the letter took more than two weeks to arrive.
To refresh your memory, I was brought in by Officer Nelson of the Logan City Police Department for the suicidal feelings that he exacerbated a thousandfold by coming to my apartment and bullying me for ten minutes over things I didn't do. He never once asked about my side of the story and instead passed along to you the version he got from Officer Hansen who got it from my brain-damaged neighbor Talease who thinks she can read people's auras and see the future. I could write (and have written) several paragraphs about the nightmare he put me through but I'll forebear since your institution obviously had nothing to do with it. I just want to be clear that he didn't know what the hell he was talking about, and you may quote me on that. I have a crazy idea that maybe police officers who don't know how to do anything besides swagger and threaten people shouldn't be sent to deal with mental health crises. At least I survived the encounter because I'm white.
The social worker noted that I came to the hospital “voluntarily”. The only reason I came “voluntarily” is that after Officer Nelson refused to take “I don't have health insurance” as an answer, I was smart enough to realize he wasn't actually giving me a choice. The hospital staff suggested that I could sign up for Medicaid but until that was set in stone, staying for more than a few hours was completely off the table no matter what. If you had forced me to stay and miss work for a few weeks, then given me a bill for tens of thousands of dollars, I would have killed myself anyway and left a note explaining where you could stick it. What's the point of saving someone's life just to actively make it far worse than it already was? I know you have little control over this country's medieval healthcare system but I feel like that's a factor you should think about.
As you know, nobody at the hospital gave me a consent form or anything like that to do the things they did. After I left they realized their mistake and frantically called me five times to get my verbal consent over the phone. It actually seems kind of stupid to me that the police can force me to go to the hospital against my will, but then the hospital can't actually do anything unless I say so. I kind of wish I had refused and sued you instead.
I didn't particularly appreciate it when three or four people congregated in the corner of the room where I was being held and murmured among themselves about my alleged “stalking”. That was the only word I caught but it was plenty loud. Did Officer Nelson forget to tell you I'm not deaf? If your staff insisted on taking his false version of events as incontrovertible truth without discussing it with me at all, they could have at least had the decency to only talk about it behind my back.
I know the stupid hospital gown was just standard procedure for reasons that I'm sure make perfect sense, but it didn't help. At all. This may come as a surprise, but having my clothes taken away and being left half-naked in a cold white room in a building full of strangers where I don't want to be in the first place doesn't make me feel safe, comfortable, or relaxed in any way. I know, I'm so weird.
When the social worker came to talk to me, I thought, Ah, after this nightmare of being harassed and threatened and dragged around by bullies, finally someone is going to listen to my side of the story. Wrong! I tried to talk to her about it, but she was basically like “Yeah, whatever, I don't care, just let me ask the generic questions I'm assigned to ask as fast as possible so I can leave.” I don't know much about what social workers are actually supposed to do but I know she was trying to make me not be suicidal, and she did a spectacularly lame job of it. Her inability or refusal to consider that maybe, just maybe, my explanation of why I felt misunderstood, persecuted, alone and hopeless in that moment could possibly have some relevance to the task of helping me not want to end my life didn't impress me much.
She gave me a piece of paper and I wrote down the kind of things she wanted to see so that we could both leave like we obviously both wanted. The one helpful thing she did was make sure I arranged to spend the evening with a friend. Strangely, without the benefit of any law enforcement or medical training, this friend was the first person all day who treated me like a human being and made me feel like someone gave a crap about me. That night when I was too busy experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder to get one second of sleep, the only reason I didn't kill myself to escape the pain was that I didn't want her to blame herself and feel like she hadn't done enough for me.
Even though it's been several months, I get angrier the more I think about my experience. But I hope this feedback is useful and that your hospital can eventually move into the twenty-first century.
- Christopher Nicholson
I sent the first draft of this email to a generic "Contact Us" email address. It was blocked by an automatic filter. I let it go, but over a month later I got angry enough to edit out the swear words and send it again. A few weeks after that, I went to leave a one-star Google review and discovered an actual patient feedback email address, so I edited out pretty much every part that wasn't sarcastic or openly insulting and sent it a third time. Ten days later, someone sent a response on actual paper. The hospital was six blocks from my apartment, but thanks to Donald Trump's screwing with the postal service, the letter took more than two weeks to arrive.
![August 18, 2020 Christopher Nicholson 457 E 800 N Apt 4 Logan, UT 84321 Dear Christopher, Thank you for your email about your care in our Emergency Department. I apologize for the lack of concern that was expressed by the staff during your Emergency Department stay. We take your experience very seriously, and we continually look for every opportunity to improve. At Intermountain Healthcare, we want to provide excellent care, and I can imagine this has been upsetting for you. Your email was shared with our Emergency Department and our Crises Department Manager. Since you were brought in by a law-enforcement officer, our Emergency Department goal is to provide an assessment and a safe environment to patients that are having suicidal thoughts. We are glad that you had a friend to help provide this safe environment and were able to be discharged home. Your feedback will be used to help educate our staff in providing a safe and healing environment. I understand that our hospital gowns are not comfortable for patients and may not provide the modesty patient's [sic] desire. These gowns do help provide safety to our patients and staff. Again, I apologize for your experience during your mental health crises. We welcome the opportunity to talk with you further, if you have any concerns, please contact me at 435 716-5995. I am very happy to help and will make sure your questions are addressed. Sincerely, [signed] Breck Rushton, RN, MPH Patient Advocacy Team Intermountain Healthcare, Cache Valley](/uploads/4/9/4/8/49486603/published/img-20200907-0005.jpg?1599525615)
I appreciate very much the hospital's willingness to apologize for its failings and commit to doing better. I wish I could say the same for the police.
