One woman threatened to stab herself in the neck. A man said he would kill himself and everyone around him.
They were among thousands of people taken each year to the county's mental health facility, perched on a wooded hillside between several north Santa Rosa neighborhoods. There, they were placed on temporary holds to prevent them from hurting themselves or others.
But the Charles M. Norton Mental Health Center, designed to be a safe haven for people suffering severe psychiatric disorders, is not secured.
About once a week, staff call police to report that a patient under a psychiatric hold walked away from the Chanate Road facility, according to a Press Democrat analysis of police dispatch records over the first eight months of 2012.
"It's a problem," said Michael Kennedy, Sonoma County's director of mental health services. "We would like zero people to leave. That is our goal."
While in some counties people are taken to emergency rooms or directly to psychiatric hospitals, Sonoma County's Psychiatric Emergency Services facility is among just a handful in the state designed as an intermediate place where people are evaluated outside of the commotion of a hospital. About 10 patients a day are seen there and the facility has at least eight beds for overnight stays.
At the Norton Center, a security guard posted at the front door is prohibited in most cases from physically restraining people who try to leave, Kennedy said. These people are patients, not prisoners, he said. When one tries to leave, staff often walk or run alongside and talk them into coming back.
Kennedy said it would be costly to upgrade the 73-year-old facility to comply with modern safety codes, which would allow it to lock its doors.
The rules require locked psychiatric care facilities to have alarms and unlocking systems in place so people can exit in emergencies, such as a fire. The cost of refurbishing the building could be very expensive, in the "six figures," Kennedy said.
"We can't lock the place," Kennedy said. "We have no choice, with the facility that we have. We have no ability to secure it."
Psychiatric Emergency Services, or PES, is the county's triage center where people come for immediate treatment during a mental health crisis. It serves about 3,400 people each year.
About half of its patients arrive voluntarily seeking help, and many of those patients are free to leave.
The other half have been deemed by a court to be unable to care for themselves or were brought in by police or a mental health professional and placed on a temporary "hold."
So far, Kennedy said each person who has fled the facility has been found or returned on their own, most within an hour. The longest case this year took four days.
But some mental health advocates and law enforcement officers say the Norton Center's unlocked-door policy exposes officers and the public to unnecessary risk.
The county becomes "legally and ethically responsible" for people who are under temporary civil commitment, said David France, deputy director of Sonoma County's National Alliance of Mental Illness.
France said he was "shocked" that the program doesn't do more to keep people safe.
"It just takes one person to have something serious happen," France said.
Santa Rosa Police Lt. John Noland, the department's liaison with the county mental health department, said the calls are a high priority for patrol officers.
"You can't provide services if people are walking away. It slows everything down," Noland said.
PES staff called Santa Rosa police on 52 occasions between Jan. 1 and Sept. 8 to report that a patient had walked away from the Norton Center, according to police dispatch records.
During 34 of those calls, dispatchers noted that the missing person was "on a hold" or "on a 5150 hold," which refers to the section of state law that allows police or medical staff to involuntarily confine people suspected of suffering mental disorders that make them a danger to themselves or others.
And in six additional cases, the person was said to be a conservatee, meaning they are gravely disabled and a judge decided they cannot care for themselves.
The outcomes varied.
Of the 52 calls reporting people who walked away from the Norton Center, police records do not clearly show the resolution in about 35 percent of the incidents.
About 30 percent of the call records indicate police were able to locate the missing individual.
But 21 percent of the call records state police were unable to immediately find the subject. And 11 percent of the call records indicate the individual returned on his or her own.
Only one call record states that Norton Center staff recovered the missing person.
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