Mental Health Crisis: A call for help leads to a tense confrontation between police officers and a mentally distressed man

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) – Elena Weise has been a nurse for 38 years, with experience treating patients who have mental health disorders.

After her workday is done, she tends to a more personal patient – her son, Julian Pino.

Pino suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Psychosis, which started after his lungs collapsed and he went into a coma when he was 16 years old.

“(Pino)’s like an adult stuck in a teenager,” Weise said.

In early May, Weise says her son’s mental health started to deteriorate, so she called psychiatric specialist Alfredo Arellano, who has been treating Pino for the past few years.

"I always tell family members that call me when an individual has decompensated to the point they don't want to come out– when they're aggressive or psychotic, is to involve the crisis response team and the police together,” Arellano said.

Weise said Arellano made a call to have El Paso Police officers and the Crisis Intervention Team take Pino to a mental hospital.

“We rely on this process that works most of the time,” Arellano said. “Unfortunately, this time it didn't work."

Weise says when police officers arrived at her home on May 5th, the crisis intervention team was not there.

"The officer outside told me they're not working today,” she said. “I was surprised because being a psych nurse and being in the health field, those teams are 24/7."

One police officer went inside the house to talk to Pino while another stayed with her outside.

Weise says she and the officer outside heard a commotion, so she opened the door and saw her son running up to his room while the other officer chased him.

“My son had gone to his room and locked the door, so (the officers) just started tearing the door down,” she said.

Weise followed the officers upstairs and started recording on her cell phone as officers detained and used a stun gun against her son.

In the cell phone video, which lasts over two and a half minutes, Pino repeatedly shouts “Christ! Christ! Christ!” as officers work to detain him.

“Put your hands behind your back!” officers repeatedly shouted.

Later in the video, Weise asked officers, “how did it escalate to this?”

One of them responded, “He assaulted a police officer.”

“He started punching us,” the other said.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Weise replied.

“Get back!” one of the officers shouted.

"I am back. I am back,” Weise responded. “I'm not interfering with you, and kicking him is not helping. I respect what you do. I have a lot of friends who are police cops."

“Where are you going to take him?” she asked. “I have the right to know where my son is going.”

“Jail,” one of the officers said.

“Why jail?” Weise asked.

“For assaulting a police officer,” the officer said.

“Yes, but he’s a psych person,” Weise said.

“He’ll get help,” the officer replied.

During her interview with ABC-7, Weise said she feared for her son’s life.

"I don't know how much tasing can be done for it to get to their brain, but he was on the floor. He was not hurting anybody. He didn't have a weapon,” she said. “He was trying to follow commands. They knew he was a psych patient."

While officers were arresting Pino, Weise asked if her son was breathing, to which the officers responded that he was. 

One of the officers then asked her to leave the room because they said she was “antagonizing the situation.”

Weise stopped recording on her cell phone, went back downstairs and called 9-1-1 for medical assistance.

“They had not called for an ambulance,” she said. “They were just going to take him to jail."

Weise says Pino was taken to a nearby hospital and was treated in the Intensive Care Unit for five days before transferring to a psychiatric hospital.

Psychiatric specialist Alfredo Arellano shared his concerns about the current state of mental healthcare in the Borderland.

"I'm kind of sick to my stomach that a situation that could have been prevented or handled differently,” Arellano said. “It's ironic that it happens during Mental Health Month, where police law enforcement need to be a little bit more cognizant."

ABC-7 obtained the police reports detailing the interaction between Pino, Weise and El Paso Police officers through an open records request. The report does not state whether or not a stun gun was used during the confrontation.

El Paso Police Public Information Officer Sgt. Robert Gomez agreed to an interview with ABC-7 to discuss the Crisis Intervention Team, but would not answer questions about the case specifically.

When I asked if we could show him the video Weise recorded, Gomez replied, “you can, but I won't make any comments about it."

Gomez explained that all EPPD officers receive 40 hours of Crisis Intervention training.

As of May 2025, 22 police officers are part of the dedicated Crisis Intervention unit, which means they receive additional specialized training. Those officers work with 13 specialists, two managers, and one director from Emergence Health Network.

EPPD launched the Crisis Intervention Team in 2019, but police say CIT is only able to handle about 50% of the calls involving a person in a mental health crisis.

“It is not 24-hour coverage,” Gomez said. “We'd like to expand it, but right now, with staffing shortages, that's just not possible at this time."

Pino’s psychiatrist believes more collaboration is needed.

“We need to change our belief that mental health is not just one organization's responsibility for our country,” Arellano said. “As long as we think it is, we're going to stay in the same boat."

"The CIT concept is a good thing,” Gomez said. “The department will continue to work on it and improve it as resources become available."

Weise says she plans to retire from nursing soon, but plans to advocate for a new law that would improve training for officers.

“Mental awareness has to be up there. There has to be money for mental awareness,” she said. “If not, take some classes, because this could be somebody's son or daughter. I just worry about our public."

ABC-7 asked Sgt. Gomez about Weise’s statement that the scenario “went wrong, and it shouldn’t have.”

After a long pause, he responded, “I want to agree with her, but I won't talk on the record why.”

ABC-7 also filed an open records request for police body camera video from the incident, which we have not yet received.