Shadow Arrests: Chicago Police Make Growing Use of Forced Psychiatric Hospitalization
Invisible Institute, South Side Weekly, and Mindsite News by Josh McGhee, Dana Brozost-Kelleher, Isabelle Senechal, Sam Stecklow, Jenna Mayzouni, Allende Miglietta and Stephana Ocneanu, August 28, 2025
On a gloomy Sunday afternoon in Chicago, Sgt. Andrew Dakuras hopped out of his patrol car in front of a downtown highrise and strolled into the elevator, finishing a text as the doors closed. He rode up to the 31st floor, exited and stopped at the third door on the left. He knocked: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
“One second, I’m getting dressed,” yelled a voice from behind the door, captured on Dakuras’ body-worn camera. A minute passed. “Coming…”
When Janette Bass, a petite, fifty-nine-year-old white woman, finally unlocked the entrance to her condo on this day in 2019, she also opened another door: one that led her to being taken against her will to a hospital emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation based solely on the decision of a police officer. That has now become an increasingly common event, one experienced by six Chicagoans every day, according to 2024 data gathered by Invisible Institute and MindSite News.
That summer day six years ago, Dakuras walked into disarray—dishes and pans scattered around the kitchen, papers paving the way to the dining area. Bass tried to tell Dakuras what happened.
The main water line broke in the building. A group of men entered her apartment when she wasn’t dressed and refused to leave. She tried to complain and was banned from the building office. She called the police several times. She changed the locks on her door at a cost of $200. She finally filed a police report and now wants to fill in missing details, she said. Dakuras declined to sit and the conversation took a turn.
“Ma’am, if you talk to the detective, the detective can amend it,” Dakuras said. Growing agitated, he called the officer who she said took the original report. She’s already talked to him multiple times, she tells Dakuras. His voice grows louder. “Ma’am, I’m talking on the phone. Do not interrupt me.”
She tries to plead her case, then pauses. “Don’t scream at me, sir. I’m the victim,” Bass says. Moments later, Dakuras ends the call, and walks to the door to leave. She asks for his name and takes a picture of him. He doubles back, but refuses to file an additional report.
“Ma’am, are you in crisis?” he asks.
“Because of you,” she retorts.
“Are you under the treatment of any doctors?” Dakuras continues.
She tells him to leave. He refuses and radios for an ambulance. “What hospital can I take you to?” Dakuras asks. “You can go one of two ways: you can go voluntarily or you can go involuntarily.”
Bass calls a friend and tells them she’s being arrested. She asks the officer to leave more than sixty times over the next four minutes as he follows her around the apartment. Then she flees.
“I felt I had nowhere to go,” Bass later told Invisible Institute and MindSite News. “I’m like a trapped rat.”
Dakuras chases her down the stairs and into the hallway on the 27th floor, throws her onto the ground by her shirt and handcuffs her. “Janette, this is not how rational people act,” Dakuras says. “This is not normal.”
Bass was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, then transferred to another hospital and held against her will for what she recalled as a “couple days” before being released.
Normal
The Chicago Police Department handles over a hundred mental health-related incidents every day. Some end in arrests, some may lead to voluntary transport to medical facilities and some end with no action taken at all. But in recent years, data obtained by Invisible Institute and MindSite News shows officers are increasingly turning to a more controversial option: forced hospitalization, detaining people against their wishes at a hospital emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation.
For more than two years, the two newsrooms obtained and analyzed data from the Chicago Police Department on its handling of mental health-related incidents. Between 2023 and 2024, the first years for which comprehensive data is available, the number of police-initiated hospitalizations increased from 1,764 to 2,319—an increase of more than 30 percent. During these years, more than 20% of mental health calls responded to by Chicago police resulted in an officer deciding to forcibly hospitalize someone.
In total, police have involuntarily hospitalized people for psychiatric reasons at least 6,700 times since 2021, according to the analysis. Chicago police officials did not respond to a list of questions about use of forced hospitalization.
Read more from South Side Weekly here.