HANCOCK COUNTY — Dealing with people who show signs of mental illness is becoming more and more common for law enforcement agencies.
Training police how to handle with those situations is key to helping officers — and the people they’re trying to help — stay safe.
For the second year in a row, the Greenfield Police Department recently was host for a week-long Crisis Intervention Team program. Officials presented mental health information, including road maps on how officers should deal with mentally ill people they encounter.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryLearning what officers need to be saying and how to say it, because of stigmas associated with mental health, was one of the big takeaways.
GPD Sgt. Corey Decker has been a police officer for 13 years and never used to deal with the types of scenarios he and other officers are facing these days surrounding mental health, he said. He and other officers say they’ve noticed an increase in calls associated people who are mentally ill. They are glad to learn more about how to handle them, because the people involved in these calls often have committed no crimes.
“It takes more of your patience and time to deal with these types of scenarios to get the proper result at the end, but every call is different, and you never know what you’re going to get,” Decker said.
The recent CIT program was the third class in two years put forward by law enforcement leaders in the county, who have trained about 75 officers to date. Their goal is to have all officers countywide take the class by 2020.
The first two days of the program featured medical professionals who shared information on mental health diagnoses, giving officers signs to look for in the field.
Recent estimates show the prevalence of serious mental illness in U.S. jails: 14.5 percent for men and 31 percent for women, according to the National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health. That equates to 2 million mentally ill people entering jails each year. The National Alliance on Mental Illness points out that many people who are arrested will receive no treatment for their underlying problems and are less likely to receive treatment once they are released.
The primary goal of CIT programs is to increase safety in encounters and, when appropriate, divert people with mental illnesses from the criminal justice system to mental health treatment.
One of the things the officers did in the local CIT training was take part in role-playing skits designed to let the them test their newly learned skills in a safe environment before practicing them in the field.
It’s important for police to be able to determine whether someone they’re talking to is simply agitated or in a real mental health crisis, said Matt Holland, deputy chief of the Greenfield Police Department.
Holland noted the closing of state mental hospitals has created a group of people who are not being properly cared for. Those citizens often end up in the path of police officers, who have to learn skills on how to work with them.
“We’re the ones who are now having to be the people who are pointing them in the right direction as far as resources for their mental health,” Holland said.
Wes Stegman has been a deputy for the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department for nine years and said the information given to officers gives police more confidence in how to handle mental health cases.
“Any time we can feel good about what we’re doing, we know we’re doing the right thing to get the job done,” Stegman said.
While officers always train on how to use their weapons and how to approach difficult, dangerous scenarios, learning how to slow down, listen and better communicate is something Stegman appreciates.
“This training has been a lot of that,” Stegman said.
Many of people officers encounter haven’t committed crimes, Holland said, but they find themselves in situations where police are called in to de-escalate high emotions. Giving police the proper tools to deal with these types of situations helps keep police and the community safe.
“Just recognizing the signs is the first step,” Holland said.
One of the biggest things officers learned during the training is the importance of taking time for themselves to make sure they don’t get themselves into a mental health crisis.
Over time, the stressful work can take a toll, leading to post-traumatic stress disorder. Supplying them information will lead to better self care and help police look out for each other.
The CIT program is an outside-the-box approach, Holland said, training officers in different ways than they’ve done in years past. While some information shared with the officers may be met with skepticism at first, organizers have gotten received feedback after police have used the new skills in the field.
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A Crisis Intervention Team program is designed to teach first-responders the best ways to help those dealing with mental health issues. Officers collaborate with mental health providers and other community stakeholders through training on how best to deal with the lack of mental health crisis services for community members.
The training involves a straight-forward strategy that begins with four tips in dealing with a person suspected to have mental health issues:
1) Introduce yourself
2) Ask for the individual’s name
3) Label the emotion
4) Summarize what the person has said
Source: The Greenfield Police Department
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