Fairbanks man sues Department of Public Safety over violent trooper response to mental health crisis

A Fairbanks man is suing the state Department of Public Safety over claims that Alaska State Troopers seriously injured him while attempting to transport him for a mental health evaluation last year.

During the October 2023 encounter, the troopers’ SWAT team in tactical gear with weapons drawn surrounded and violently entered the home Philip Wrobel Jr. shares with his family, according to the civil lawsuit filed earlier this month in Fairbanks Superior Court.

The complaint filed by attorney Jeff Barber accuses the troopers of attacking Wrobel, punching him in the face, and “violently subduing the plaintiff in a manner which was inconsistent with his known mental illness.” It also claims they “were woefully and inadequately trained” based on “outdated policies and procedures which discriminate against disabled individuals suffering from mental illness.”

Wrobel’s wife, Heidi Wrobel, said in an interview this week that the encounter shows how broken the system is for responding to mental health crises. The troopers shocked her unarmed husband with a Taser, beat him, strangled him and fired less-lethal projectiles at his face, she said.

The response left 58-year-old Philip Wrobel hospitalized for eight days with multiple broken bones, bruises covering his face, torso and arms, and a traumatic brain injury, according to Heidi Wrobel. Her husband has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder from the encounter, she said.

The extensive damage to their home — shattered windows, lingering tear gas, broken doors and burned flooring — has displaced the family for nearly a year so far, Heidi Wrobel said.

The lawsuit filed Sept. 10 names the department as well as eight individual, unidentified troopers who responded to the home that day.

Austin McDaniel, a spokesman for the department, declined to respond to a request for comment this week and said any comment from the state will be made through court filings. The Department of Public Safety had not been served by Thursday, according to court records.

In an online statement about the response that initially included Philip Wrobel’s name, troopers wrote that the Special Emergency Reaction Team responded “because of prior statements made by Wrobel.”

Heidi Wrobel said she wants to see troopers respond differently to situations involving mental health crises because she doesn’t want to see anyone harmed in the same way her husband was.

“They treated him as if he was disposable,” she said. “They treated his mental illness and his disability as a crime and that’s not okay. That has to stop.”

Looking for help

Philip Wrobel was diagnosed with bipolar disorder with schizophrenic tendencies when he was 27, his wife said.

She said her husband’s diagnosis hasn’t been a major issue for most of their 37 years together, but when his infrequent manic episodes surface, they can be significant. Three episodes required hospital visits to help stabilize him, she said: “It’s more of a controlled environment ... once he’s able to sleep and is able to start regularly eating, he snaps out of it.”

On Oct. 11 last year, Heidi Wrobel said, her husband was in the midst of a manic episode and had hardly slept or eaten for what she estimated was at least a week. Wrobel said she called Fairbanks Memorial Hospital to see if she could get him evaluated.

A hospital nurse told Heidi Wrobel that the city’s Mobile Crisis Team, which includes a specially trained behavioral health clinician, could help transport her husband for an evaluation.

After some initial conversations, Wrobel said she called the team to their home that evening. When the responders showed up, she said, she was surprised to see they were accompanied by troopers.

Wrobel said she would not have requested the service had she known troopers would also respond. She works as the manager of a mental health clinic and said she believes calling law enforcement in situations involving mental health crises can be detrimental.

“They are set up to deal with crime and criminals, they are not set up to handle mental health,” she said.

‘Military force’ for a mental health crisis

On that October day, Philip Wrobel initially agreed to go to the hospital with a trooper, but was startled by another officer who approached quickly and then decided not to go, Heidi Wrobel said. The responders left and told her they would be filing for a court-ordered involuntary assessment in the morning, she said.

The next afternoon, on Oct. 12, Wrobel said she was on her way home when troopers called to find out where her husband was. By the time she reached the area, she said, the street was lined with trooper vehicles. She said she was stopped at the end of the street and not allowed to go near her home.

Heidi Wrobel said the response confused and worried her. Her husband had been checked for weapons the day before and troopers knew he was not armed, she said. He also hadn’t been aggressive or done anything previously to prompt such a response, she said.

“For somebody that’s in a mental health crisis to approach them with a military force, it really seems unreasonable,” she said. “It’s excessive force.”

Heidi Wrobel said her husband told her he remembered seeing a number of people outfitted in tactical gear with weapons outside their home, but then he fell into a deep sleep in his recliner. At that point, she said, he’d been without rest for days.

Under siege

Heidi Wrobel said she watched for more than four hours as troopers “laid siege onto the house.” An armored vehicle that looked to her like a riot tank pinned open the front door with a battering ram. When Philip Wrobel woke up, he later told his wife, he was terrified and went into the garage, where again he fell into a deep sleep.

The troopers began shooting out the garage window and throughout the home with less-lethal projectiles and sent in canisters of tear gas and set off flash bangs throughout, she said.

“He couldn’t hear because of the explosions, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t see,” Heidi Wrobel said. “He did not know what was going on.”

Eventually, Heidi Wrobel said, she reached her husband by phone. He told her he didn’t know what was happening and that the military was attacking the house.

SWAT team members went into the home as Philip Wrobel was in the kitchen, trying to get into the crawl space so he could breathe, his wife said.

“He was tased, he couldn’t move, they started beating him when he couldn’t move,” she said. “He couldn’t comprehend how intense the pain was — he was in so much pain and then it stopped. He thought it was over, but they tased him again. He thought he was going to die.”

Heidi Wrobel said the troopers also shot her husband in the face and arm with less-lethal projectile ammunition and strangled him. A group of eight troopers then “carried him, upside down, bleeding from the head to the ambulance” waiting outside, she said.

A changed man

At the hospital, doctors treated Philip Wrobel for fractures on his orbital socket, jaw, vertebrae, ribs and other areas of his face, Heidi Wrobel said. He also had nerve damage to his arm, she said.

Today, her husband still experiences extreme pain, difficulty with his arm, a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, his wife said.

“I don’t think that he is the same person,” she said.

When Heidi Wrobel returned to the home she and her husband were living at with their pregnant daughter and two grandchildren, she said she was shocked by the amount of destruction. There was lingering tear gas throughout the house, shattered glass and broken windows and blood spatters reaching as far as the kitchen ceiling, Heidi Wrobel said.

The family has been unable to return home and is renting an apartment until repairs are finished, she said. Their homeowner’s insurance has covered the rent for the year, but that assistance will end this October. They’re still trying to figure out where to go next.