A judge on Monday dismissed the federal lawsuit brought by the family of Osaze Osagie, a 29-year-old State College man who was shot and killed by borough police serving a mental health warrant in 2019.
In a memorandum opinion accompanying the summary judgment, U.S. Middle District Judge Matthew Brann wrote that the three officers who went to Osagie’s Old Boalsburg Road apartment on March 20, 2019 were not mental health professionals and could not be held liable “for failing to be something they are not, and a death they did not cause.”
State College Borough, officers M. Jordan Pieniazek and Christopher Hill, Lt. Keith Robb and Capt. Chris Fishel were named as defendants in the suit.
“Though the Court empathizes with the loss suffered by the Osagie family, that does not entitle them to relief,” Brann wrote. “The State College Police Department is, as the name suggests, a department of police officers, not mental health professionals. They were police officers when Sylvester Osagie requested that they involuntarily commit his son to receive medical treatment, and they were police officers when his son charged at them with a knife.”
Osagie’s father, Sylvester, filed the lawsuit in November 2020, seeking unspecified damages for what the family called “years of systematic failings” by State College police to implement policies and practices that protect people with mental health disabilities during police encounters. The lawsuit had claimed wrongful death, excessive force, assault and battery.
The Osagies’ attorneys — Andrew Shubin, Kathleen Yurchak and Andrew Celli — said in a statement that the family had not yet decided if it would appeal Brann’s decision.
“While the family is devastated by the Court’s decision, they understood at the beginning of this process that Courts are reluctant to impose civil liability on police departments even when their encounters with the mentally ill, those in desperate need of treatment, are fatal,” the attorneys wrote. “In its memorandum, the Court wrote that it was beyond its ”purview’ to determine ‘the solution for how to best fill the ‘gaps’ through which individuals such as Osagie fall and law enforcement’s role in that solution…’
“Although the family hasn’t decided whether to file an appeal, they will continue to honor their son by bringing light to the manner in which law enforcement interacts with the mentally ill; they believe these encounters, done responsibly, should result in compassionate and empathic treatment rather than the death of a loved one.”
Osagie, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and Asperger’s syndrome, had a history of mental illness and had been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons at least six times. According to court records and an outside investigation by Pennsylvania State Police, Sylvester Osagie had grown increasingly worried about his son’s mental condition from the end of 2018 through March 2019.
On March 19, 2019, Osaze Osagie sent text messages to his father indicating he might hurt himself and others. Sylvester Osagie contacted State College police asking for a 302 warrant for involuntary mental health evaluation and treatment to be served, noting that his son had been acting erratically and was likely off of his medications.
After Osaze Osagie’s former case worker spotted him leaving a nearby grocery store, Pieniazek, Hill and Robb went to his basement apartment. In the narrow hallway, according to the state police report, Pieniazek knocked on the door and covered the peephole as he asked for Osagie to speak with them while Hill remained on a step in the stairwell with Robb behind him.
Osagie answered the door holding a steak knife and refused to come out, according to the police report. After briefly moving out of view, Osagie came toward Pieniazek with the knife, refused commands to drop it and said “kill me.” When Osagie charged forward with the knife, Hill deployed a taser to no effect before Pieniazek fired four shots, three of which struck Osagie.
District Attorney Bernie Cantorna’s report on a state police investigation that cleared the officers of wrongdoing said the encounter lasted less than 30 seconds and that the officers who were attempting to back away were in a “life-or-death situation.” The state police Heritage Affairs Section concluded that racial bias played no role in the shooting of Osagie, who was Black.
Brann rejected several arguments that contended the officers had acted recklessly or intentionally provoked Osagie.
Despite a department policy to call a crisis worker in such situations, county mental health officials said it was their policy not to appear at the service of 302 warrants. Brann wrote that it was not unreasonable for the officers “to forgo a futile request for assistance,” nor to treat the call as a “routine” mental health warrant service.
Had Pieniazek not covered the peephole, however, “it may have decreased the risk that Osaze answers the door with a weapon, if he answers at all,” Brann wrote.
But in determining the officers had qualified immunity, Brann wrote that “so long as the responsibility for filling those [mental health service] gaps falls upon police officers, the law affords them ‘the breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments about’ how to do so.”
Pennsylvania law required the officers to take Osagie into custody for mental health evaluation, Brann added.
“Whereas Osaze’s family could evict him, mental health facilities could ‘transition’ him out when he overstayed his welcome, and Centre County [Mental Health and Intellectual Disabilities] could refuse to assist when they believed Osaze presented too great a danger, no such option was available to SCPD,” Brann wrote. “Though this does not give law enforcement carte blanche to flagrantly violate the law, the alleged violations do not rise to that level.”
The Osagies’ attorneys noted that the court did not endorse the officers’ tactics.
“In the end, the Court relied upon legal principles like qualified immunity to conclude that these factors were not sufficient to allow this case to go before a jury,” they wrote. “That is a shame, but it is, sadly, a regular feature of this kind of litigation.”
Osagie’s death has been a catalyst for change in the borough and Centre County. It led to the formation of a Community Oversight Board for the State College Police Department, multiple external reviews of borough policing, the addition of a social worker program to the department, the creation of a borough diversity, equity and inclusion department, the revival of the Task Force on Policing and Communities of Color and a joint task force that reviewed and made recommendations for the entire breadth of the county’s mental health crisis services.
“In the wake of Osaze’s death and the family’s decision to demand accountability through the courts, the Borough and Centre County, took a number of steps to address the manner in which we provide care to the mentally ill and protect them from interactions, like Osaze’s, that needlessly result in the death of a person who needs help,” Shubin, Yurchak and Celli wrote. “… Much more needs to be done, but the family takes comfort in the love and support of the community and the fact that their response to this son’s death played a role in achieving some measure of change.”
