'We tried everything': Family says system failed paranoid man shot by police

Jessica Cooper hand-delivered a signed court order to the Lincoln Park Police Department in August 2022.

The document would have allowed police to transport her cousin, Shane Cousins, 33, to a mental health facility involuntarily for an evaluation — had the police department followed through.

Instead, Cousins' mental health continued to spiral; his delusions and paranoia intensified, and on Jan. 24, Michigan State Police troopers killed him after he fired a gun at a police helicopter flying above his brother's Detroit home.

More: Police footage shows gunman firing at helicopter in Detroit

In the months leading to his death, Cousins thought planes and helicopters were the government's way of spying on him — or, on some days, a way of dropping cannabis seeds from the air as a means of confiscating his grandmother's land in Tennessee. He'd shoot at aircraft "to scare them off," his family told the Free Press.

He also thought the government was trying to kill him. He walked around his house and yard firing guns. He threw screws in the middle of the street. He thought he was the leader of Ukraine. He thought TVs and radios were sending him subliminal messages. He thought family members were human traffickers, his grandmother part of a cult.

Previous attempts by Cousins' family to help him get a formal diagnosis and treatment failed. And after Cousins barricaded himself in his home with guns and had a standoff with Lincoln Park police on Aug. 7, 2022, the Cooper-Cousins family desperately sought a court order to have him evaluated involuntarily.

That's what Lincoln Park Police Lt. Patrick Culter told them to do, according to a police report of the incident.

On Aug. 17, 2022, a Wayne County probate judge issued the order.

But when Cooper hand-delivered the order to the police department, Cooper said, Culter told her she and her family were harassing Cousins. He wasn't convinced Cousins was mentally ill, she said.

Still, Cooper said her family devised a plan with Lincoln Park police to get Cousins out of his house to a local McDonald's, away from his guns, so he could be apprehended. Officers never showed up, she said.

Reached by phone for comment, Culter said he wasn't authorized to speak to the news media. Lincoln Park Police Chief Scott Lavis, who took leadership of the department this month following Chief Ray Watters' retirement, said he was looking into the matter.

Maybe, if police had taken Cousins in to get help, "he'd still be here," said Shannon Cousins, one of Shane's younger brothers. Around his neck hung a skateboard pendant holding a small portion of his brother's ashes.

"We tried everything," said Cynthia Cooper, Shane Cousins' mother. "We really tried, so hard."

A disconnected system

According to the court order, police had a window of 10 days to get Shane Cousins evaluated at a local mental health facility — in this case, the Hegira Health psychiatric emergency center in Livonia.

“It’s a court order. It should be executed as such," said Kristina Morgan, liaison manager for the Wayne County Probate Court's Behavioral Health Unit.

To Morgan's knowledge, police departments usually follow through on such orders.

But if the court is not made aware that a transport order wasn't executed by a police agency, then enforcement mechanisms are limited, Morgan said.

If a transport order isn't executed, Michigan law requires police agencies to report to the court the reason it wasn't. Then a judge might schedule a review hearing to determine next steps.

In Shane Cousins' case, he was never transported to the Hegira facility, and the Wayne County Probate Court confirmed with the Free Press that Lincoln Park police did not provide a non-execution report.

Mental health advocates say Shane Cousins was a victim of the nation's broken system of addressing and treating mental illness amid an escalating national mental health crisis prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have a disconnected or disjointed system," said Kevin Fischer, executive director of the National Alliance of Mental Illness in Michigan.

More: After 2 killed by police, Detroiters grapple with mental health strategy

Fischer noted a lack of psychiatric beds and treatment centers, as well as a lack of awareness about the support resources that are available.

"We shouldn’t have to wait until someone is in a crisis. We’re reactive when we should be proactive," Fischer said.

Ash Daniels, a mental health advocate and organizer with Michigan Liberation's "Care, Not Criminalization" initiative, called Cousins "another person who was failed by so many systems, who lost his life to the failure of these systems."

"What does that say about our community? People are in crisis and we turn them away," Daniels said.

“We need to start talking about it more. Everybody knows somebody who lives with mental health considerations. It’s OK to not be OK. It’s OK to talk about these things.”

Fischer said police responding to mental health calls at the frequency they do "is not a good system."

Bad days

The Cooper-Cousins family is close-knit, Cynthia Cooper said. They've never been far apart from one another.

Jessica Cooper calls Shane Cousins her "little big brother." She is only 11 months older than him. And although they weren't actually siblings, their parents used to dress them in matching outfits like they were.

Shane Cousins was the oldest of Cynthia Cooper's three sons.

Shane was like a father to his brothers, Shannon and Stone. He taught them how to skateboard. He was the glue of the family, Stone Cousins said. He was outgoing and loved to make others laugh.

His family can pinpoint when Shane Cousins' mental health began to deteriorate.

It started when his friend, Michael Cavanaugh, was killed in a downtown Detroit hit-and-run in 2018. Shane Cousins was there when it happened. He died in his arms, Stone Cousins said.

Then, in 2021, when Shane Cousins and his siblings briefly moved to Tennessee to help their grandmother, his delusions became "full blown," so much so that their grandmother took him back to Michigan in July 2022.

According to Shane Cousins' family, he briefly checked himself into a mental health facility in Tennessee, but checked himself out before he was formally diagnosed.

By August 2022, Cousins had his standoff with Lincoln Park police. Then, on New Year's Day, another close friend of Cousins died. That was the tipping point, his family said.

“He had his good days,” Jessica Cooper said, looking up at the ceiling. There were cookouts, skateboarding sessions, visits with family.

“And he had his bad days," she continued. "But at the end, even on his good days, he wasn’t himself."

Andrea Sahouri covers criminal justice for the Detroit Free Press. She can be contacted at 313-264-0442, asahouri@freepress.com or on Twitter @andreamsahouri.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Man killed after shooting at helicopter was supposed to get treatment