The police leave the scene after a patrolman’s fatal shooting of a 30-year-old man at 71 Lupine St. in Pawtucket on Tuesday morning.

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The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

Betty Swift said when her 30-year-old son had emotional problems a few months ago in Massachusetts, she called the police for help. They took him to Massachusetts General Hospital without incident.

“I thought he could get the same help here,” she said yesterday in a telephone interview. “But I was wrong.”

On Tuesday, a Pawtucket police officer shot and killed Jason M. Swift in the apartment he shared with his mother, at 71 Lupine St. It was the fourth fatal police shooting in Pawtucket in two years.

“I called them for help and they killed him,” she said.

Betty Swift said she went to a neighbor’s home to call the police after her son began talking to himself Tuesday morning. She said her son had had what she described as a nonviolent “nervous breakdown” a few months earlier. She said she called 911 for help getting him to Butler Hospital, a private psychiatric facility in Providence.

When the police arrived, at about 7:30 a.m., Betty Swift said, “I told them he’s a big man and he’s going to think you’re trying to harm him.”

Jason Swift was big, about 6 feet 4 inches tall and 300 pounds. When he went outside, he was brandishing a Samurai-style sword that, according to his mother, was sheathed.

His mother said he dropped the weapon when the police told him to. She said she grabbed it and threw it out of the yard. According to the police, the sword was later found outside.

Police officers told Jason Swift to put his hands behind his back, she said, but instead her son pulled his shirt over his head.

According to Betty Swift, the police tried to subdue him, and he struggled, hitting one of the officers in the head and knocking his sunglasses to the ground.

“You could see it, they got so angry when Jason hit [the officer’s] glasses off,” she said.

At that point, she said, the officers used pepper spray on him. But he wasn’t subdued. He ran back into the apartment.

“He was trying to get into his house,” Betty Swift said, “to his safe haven. He was afraid of them. They didn’t need to kill him.”

At that point, she said, she was standing near the stairs, trying to keep her son from going inside.

“They yelled at me to let go, but they didn’t follow him,” she said. Instead of subduing him while he was still disoriented from the pepper spray, she said, “they waited for him to get up there.”

According to the police, once in the apartment, Jason Swift agreed to be handcuffed, but then there was a “violent struggle.” One officer fired two shots, killing Swift.

Meanwhile, Betty Swift said, she was escorted from the property.

“They didn’t tell me anything,” she said. “I was down the road and I saw the ambulance … I thought maybe they gave him a beating.”

The officers would not tell her what had happened, Swift said. They had her wait for a superior to arrive.

“He said, ‘Ma’am, your son is dead.’ ”

Betty Swift said she hasn’t gone to see her son’s body, which is at the medical examiner’s office.

“I can’t see him because I feel like I killed him,” she said, gasping for air over the phone. “I called them for help and they killed him. If I hadn’t called them, he would still be alive.”

Tuesday wasn’t the first time the police responded to an incident involving Jason Swift. The previous night, at about 9:20, a woman went to the Pawtucket police station saying she was the victim of a domestic assault that had occurred on Lupine Street, just east of Route 95 in the northern end of the city. Maj. John Whiting, a spokesman for the Pawtucket police, said the woman is the mother of Swift’s 1-year-old son, Matthew. The couple had argued and Swift had allegedly pushed her, and when she tried to call the police, he allegedly took her cell phone and drove off in her truck. Police officers searched for Swift, but didn’t find him.

THE POLICE have not released an incident report about the shooting, saying that the investigation continues. But they say that when two officers responded to the call about an “emotionally disturbed individual with a knife” outside 71 Lupine on Tuesday morning, they found Swift acting “erratic” and “threatening” outside the building. Swift was swinging a sword, said Police Chief George L. Kelley.

Following protocol, the officers attempted to subdue Swift with pepper spray and physical force but Swift eluded officers and went inside to his third-floor apartment, according to Kelley. The officers called backup and another patrolman arrived. The officers apparently chased Swift into his apartment. At some point he took off his clothes. Swift indicated that he would cooperate with the officers and agreed to be handcuffed, Kelley said. Then there was a violent struggle, Kelley said. One of the officers — identified yesterday by the department as Patrolman Wallace H. Martin — fired two shots. Department officials placed Martin, who works the midnight shift, on administrative leave until an investigation by the department and the state police is complete, according to Whiting.

Pawtucket police do not use TASERs, or electronic stun guns, Whiting said.

In a news release yesterday, the medical examiner’s office said the cause of Swift’s death was gunshot wounds that injured his heart, lungs, aorta, liver, esophagus and kidney.

Jason Swift was a 1996 graduate of Tolman High School. He has a Myspace page with a picture of himself and and his son, Matthew, where he talks about his interest in directing films, stand-up comedy, music, philosophy and health. Unemployed at the time of his death, he was looking for experience in film, production and casting because his goal was to start a production company.

Betty Swift said that she wanted people to know that her son is not the monster “he is being made out to be.”

She said a civil suit would be filed against the city on behalf of Matthew Swift.

Whiting said the Pawtucket police follow the protocols of the Rhode Island Municipal Police Training Academy, although he would not go into detail, saying it had been a while since he was at the academy.

Asked if the Police Department had reexamined its procedures or made any changes after the last three shootings that occurred in the past two years, Whiting said, “Every time a police officer fires a gun in the City of Pawtucket, even if it’s a police officer who lives in a different community, there is a firearms report review process to ensure the discharge of the firearm was in full compliance with rules and regulations, to see if policy should be changed, even the killing of a dog.”

He said the department is still reviewing information to determine whether there will be any changes. He cited the January decision of the grand jury that cleared three Pawtucket officers in the shooting death of Jason Audette, a burglary suspect who refused to drop his .32-caliber pistol.

Steven Brown, head of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “The pattern raises enough questions that a proactive department would be thoroughly analyzing all its protocols and procedures to minimize these types of incidents from occurring in the future. It’s very unclear whether that has happened. One thing we are probably going to do is file an open-record request to get copies of their policies and procedures in terms of use of force and interaction with mental disabilities. What are their policies and have they been followed in these incidents?”

THE STATE MENTAL-HEALTH advocate, H. Reed Cosper, says reports of the actions of the Pawtucket police in shooting a man with apparent emotional problems raises concerns.

“Under the circumstances, there are red flags about the procedures of the Pawtucket Police Department. I don’t think emotionally disturbed people should wind up getting shot.”

Cosper said national police standards urge officers to take steps to de-escalate a situation when dealing with emotionally disturbed people, “and you don’t do that by macing them; you talk to them. Those are the skills that should be taught.”

“It requires patience and it requires a little skill but mostly it requires managing your own fear, your own feelings” as a police officer, said Cosper.

The Police Executive Research Forum, a national police organization based in Washington, D.C., advances proper policing procedures through research.

In 2002, the forum partnered with the Council of State Governments and several mental health associations to publish a report about how the police should deal with the mentally ill.

According to that report, titled, “Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project,” officers “should approach and interact with people who may have mental illness with a calm, non-threatening manner, while also protecting the safety of all involved.”

The report recommends several de-escalation techniques, including that officers “remain calm and avoid overreacting,” “indicate a willingness to understand and help” and “speak simply and briefly, and move slowly.”

Anthony Silva, the director of the Rhode Island Municipal Police Training Academy, said officers are faced with tense moments that change rapidly and have to make split-second decisions. When using deadly force they have to consider the size of the person, if the person has a weapon or their proximity to a weapon, their intent toward the officer and their propensity for violence.

Whether they are afflicted mentally or not, they have to obey the lawful command of a police officer, Silva said.

“It would be impossible to write a standard for the mentally incapacitated. … A person who is armed shows propensity for violence whether they are mentally afflicted or not. It has no bearing on how force will be used. Anyone who is unstable if anything, history and experience will show, is much more dangerous as the individual is much more likely to inflict serious bodily injury. Our level of awareness has to significantly increase for someone who is unstable. If they are unstable, they are not rationalizing.”

tmooney@projo.com