4 April 2025, El Paso, Texas, Steven Zimmerman – There may be a time when we have a member of our family or a friend who is undergoing a mental health crisis. During that crisis, we may have no choice but to seek help from the Police or emergency medical professionals. Ms. Darcy Thomas had to do just that for her son, Martin Herrera-Garcés.
For two days, while calling 911, hoping they would send an officer out, Ms. Thomas repeatedly told Police that her son had bipolar disorder and was off his medication. For two days, nothing happened; no one responded to her calls.
On the third day, 10 April 2024, officers finally responded. Both a Patrol unit and the Crisis Intervention Team arrived on the scene.
“The lady that was supposed to talk to him [CIT Officer] was too scared to get out of the car,” says Ms. Thomas, “and the other guy talked to him, and he was fine.”
Patrol told Ms. Thomas that CIT showed up at the scene and refused to leave her car.
“This happens more often than Command wants to admit,” says a Lieutenant with the El Paso Police Department. “If I’m not mistaken, the CIT officer that responded to the Herrera-Garcés case is the same one that hid behind the car in another case, in the Northeast, while her partner hid behind a bush.”
Ms. Thomas, when she called 911 for service, had never experienced that there would be help for her son. What she was met with was the beginning of a nightmare.
When a person who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder stops taking their medication, several things can happen individually or all at once. Symptoms they’ve suffered can return or grow worse. They can have manic episodes, depression, or mood instability. Everything when one is off their medication can lead to hospitalization, relapse, or even suicidal thoughts.
Knowing this, CIT refused to speak to Ms. Thomas’ son, Martin. The Patrol officer’s only advice was to seek an Emergency Detention Order (EDO).
Ms. Thomas did obtain an Emergency Detention Order. In the application, she detailed how her son was not taking his medication, how he was starving himself, and exhibiting signs of paranoia.
Ms. Thomas has always maintained that her son, during the days leading up to the shooting death, was not violent. However, she was forced to say something about her son, or she couldn’t get him any help.
“They kept asking if he treated me or someone else, and I kept telling them no,” says Ms. Thomas. “They kept telling me I had to say something or they wouldn’t help him. They forced me to say that I was worried he would hurt himself or someone else.”
Questions she was asked were if he had pushed her, slapped her, or done anything violent to her.
In the image below, a page from the application for the EDO, Ms. Thomas originally answered “I don’t know” to the question of whether she possesses a risk of harm to others.
“Everything I wrote about my son was not enough for them to do anything,” says Ms. Thomas. “They treated me like they were cops asking me all kinds of questions. They made answer yes to that question or they wouldn’t offer any help for my son.”
According to the El Paso County website section on Mental Health, you find the following, “The sole purpose of an emergency detention order is to help someone receive an evaluation and emergency psychiatric treatment if needed. Emergency detention orders are not designed nor intended to ever lead to an arrest. Rest assured that the individual’s well-being is the priority.”
“I called the police for help because I was concerned about his well-being,” says Ms. Thomas. “He wasn’t eating, he wasn’t sleeping, he was talking like he wasn’t all there.”
On 15 April 2024, the El Paso Police Department arrived to execute the EDO. At 1305 HRS, Ms. Thomas received a text message asking if she was home and could open the door. After Ms. Thomas said she wasn’t home, they told her that Police were already at her home.
Ms. Thomas, who spent the night in her car at a nearby Albertsons, was visited by several police officers to talk about her son. When officers arrived, Ms. Thomas became worried about how the Police were going to treat her son.
“The girl officer, when she was standing there, talking to me, had one hand on her gun and another on her taser,” says Ms. Thomas. “They showed up to talk to me like they were ready to draw their guns on me. I freaked out.”
It was at this point that Ms. Thomas immediately went to withdraw the Emergency Detention Order.
When Ms. Thomas took the request to withdraw the order, she was met with resistance and confusion.
“I called Michael Gomez and told her that I wanted to stop the emergency detention order because I knew at that point they were going to hurt my son,” says Ms. Thomas. “Michael told me that even sent the form it would still take thirty days for the order to get taken out of the system.”
The last message Ms. Thomas received from her son was him saying he would take a shower and asking if he could bring him some tacos. After that, she never heard from him again.
It is unclear what exactly happened between the time Ms. Thomas met with officers in the Albertsons parking lot and the first call to 911 for shots fired came in. Were officers periodically trying to gain entry into the apartment? Were they causing her son to have another mental health crisis? We will never know.
We know that we’ve sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking the entire case file, which the police and the district attorney promised Ms. Thomas but have yet to receive.
Another FOIA was for the CIT and SWAT after-action reports, such as the following:
Fusion Packet Martin Garces, last modified 12 April 2024
Tactical Alert 300 Sky View last modified 12 April 2024
300 Sky View_CMT Duties last modified 8 June 2024
Emerging Event Notifications for 300 Sky View
AORs for 300 Sky View last modified 20 August 2024
We were told the requested documents do not exist, even though several officers have given us the titles and locations of the requested records.
After the death of her son, Martin Herrera-Garcés, there were issues with the issuance of a search warrant and the way officers documented the property seized from the apartment.
“The way they listed what was seized, by writing it on the back of the warrant, is unprofessional,” says an officer with the El Paso Police Department. “Nothing indicates the serial number, make, model of firearms retrieved, or any descriptors. This is not how we are supposed to do it.”
This list of items taken does not describe what rounds or gun parts are used—this is not how it is done.
“It’s as if they were in a rush to get everything and get out of there,” says another officer with the El Paso Police Department.
Again, no one we spoke to knew why the warrant was obtained in the first place.
“The warrant doesn’t make sense; what is the criminal element involved here,” asks a Lieutenant with the Department. “SWAT killed the man; what is the criminal element here? Why the warrant? They could have searched, absent a warrant, incident to the events.”
There is something wrong with how El Paso Police Chief Peter Pacillas honors his commitment to transparency and how members of the Crisis Intervention Team interact, or don’t, with members of the public who are suffering a mental health crisis.
“I don’t believe that they [EPPD] have anybody’s welfare in mind,” says Ms. Thomas. “I think they figure a mental health person is a threat, and they just want to kill them, like the person at the carwash. They are not trying to help them; they are accelerating the problem to where they feel threatened or backed into a corner, and this is how it ends.”
Below is the Crisis Intervention Team Standards that were published under Chief Allen:
They did this to our father also. They saw him in the street, something going on in his mind, and they did noting. It wasn’t long after some clueless cop said he didn’t meet the requirements for help that he killed himself. They need actual people educated in mental health problmes, not some high school grad with a two year college degree.