Fairfield Police Among Departments Honored for Crisis Intervention Team Model

Every day, law enforcement officials must engage with people who have psychiatric problems, or who have temporarily lost control of their emotions due to a set of circumstances. It used to be that when police officers got into confrontations with these people, they responded the same as they would with anyone else: With physical force, if needed.

Today, thanks to new crisis intervention training programs, police officers are better prepared to identify and diffuse confrontational situations with people suffering from mental illness — and get them the help they need. Very often as a result of this training, officers can avoid having to make unnecessary arrests — or are at least avoid bringing additional charges resulting from police altercations. This, in turn, helps keep mentally ill persons out of the prison system, where, in most cases, they don't really belong.

The only challenge, though, is that not every police department has the training in place — it is not mandated on a state or federal level — nor is there strong funding for such programs.

Fortunately Connecticut has been proactive on the issue with the establishment of the Crisis Intervention Team Model, a program of education and training designed to help police officers properly handle persons with behavioral disorders out in the field.

The Southwest Regional Mental Health Board on Thursday honored the Bridgeport, Darien, Fairfield, Greenwich, Monroe, New Canaan, Norwalk, Stamford police departments for their adoption of the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Model, which is gaining attention from law enforcement agencies everywhere.

The event, which was held at the Westport Public Library, included a presentation from Kenneth Edwards Jr., Inspector for the Office of the State’s Attorney Domestic Violence Unit, and father of the CIT program, which he launched in 2000 when he was an officer at the New London Police Department. Coordination of, and training for, the CIT program is provided through The Connecticut Alliance to Benefit Law Enforcement (CABLE), a non-profit organization where Edwards serves as chief instructor and statewide coordinator.

As Edwards explained, the CIT program was launched following an incident in which a young man from New London tried to commit suicide by a method known as “Death by Officer.” The young man failed in his attempt; however the incident resulted in the birth of the program, which trains officers to handle people with all types of mental disorders – whether temporary or longterm. Today 60 law enforcement agencies in Connecticut have their own CIT training programs in place — and the number of departments adopting the program continues to grow.

“Crisis intervention teams have been around for around 20 years or more, but in the beginning they were very small collaborations, between maybe one mental health provider and a police department,” Edwards said. “What we’ve done here in Connecticut, with our CIT program, is expand it to give as many stakeholders as possible a piece of the pie. We wanted the relationship between our mental health professionals and the police departments to be even closer. That’s why, in 2000, we invited our mobile outreach clinicians into the front seats of our police cars – we said, ‘We want you to first respond with us as much as possible.’ ”

Edwards said although the program has been implemented slightly differently in each department, the concept of having a clinical psychiatrist or case worker respond with officers, on a first-response basis, is one of the hallmarks of the program. These professionals assist officers by giving their assessment on people’s mental states when officers respond on domestic violence and other calls. They also openly exchange information with officers to help them better handle situations involving people who are mentally ill.

Edwards said one of the first CIT programs was established in Memphis, Tenn., after officers there accidentally shot and killed a mentally ill man. After Memphis implemented its training program, it got the attention of the U.S. Justice Department, which insisted that it share the concept with other departments. Having heard about the program, Edwards decided he wanted to start a similar one in the New London Police Department. So he and another officer went down to Memphis so that they could study the program and borrow from that model.

The Connecticut Alliance to Benefit Law Enforcement (CABLE), meanwhile, had already been launched as a 501(c)3  non-profit by Connecticut resident Louise Pyers, a clinician whose son had tried to commit “Suicide by Officer” (which is where an individual attempts to commit suicide by taunting police officers to shoot to kill.) She had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get various departments around the state to establish training programs to deal specifically with “Suicide by Officer” scenarios.

“I wanted to train my officers on Suicide by Cop – so I emailed her asking for info,” Edwards explained, recalling when he first met Pyers. “The next day delivery guys show up and start dumping off boxes and boxes of books, tapes and materials.”

He said all the material that Pyers had provided was impressive — and very useful — but it still needed to be organized into a cohesive education and training program.

“She had me,” Edwards said. “She arranged for me to meet with [other area] chiefs and start selling the training to all the [Connecticut] departments.”

Seeing an opportunity to use the non-profit as a way to fund training, Edwards joined up with Pyers to officially launch Connecticut’s first statewide CIT program — but initially the cost of running the program was a barrier.

“As you Chiefs out there in the audience know, there really is no such thing as free training,” Edwards said. “You have to replace the officer [who is in the training.]”

Edwards said at first he and Pyer “tried to do ‘first class’ trainings” — but it was expensive because the officers needed housing, food, and supplies during the weeklong (40 hours) of training. Later they applied for, and were granted, funding through a grant program run by DMHAS to help cover the cost of the training.

“But then what we found was, departments would send officers for training, but they wouldn’t implement a program,” Edwards explained. “So we decided to stipulate that, in order to get the funding for reimbursement, the department had to implement a program wherein those officers responded first. That was a major step.”

As Edwards explained, “The program doesn’t work if you try to do it yourself. It is collaboration, from start to finish – it as a partnership. What makes our classes different, and what makes them successful is that they are multidisciplinary. We have police officers, probation officers, parole officers, mental health clinicians, DCF case workers, even security officers at schools and hospitals – and when they mix together it makes for a great class.”

Edwards said when he and Pyers first launched the program in 2000, “we had trouble filling two classes a year.” But today, “we do five classes a year, and we put somewhere between 30 and 40 officers in each class.”

Classes are held at Mitchell College in New London and at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, among other locations. Training includes identifying the symptoms from different types of illnesses; recognizing states of mind; and detecting if someone has been drinking or doing drugs, among other diagnosis. It covers everything, including how to deal with children with illnesses such as autism; suicide assessment; suicide by cop; post suicide trauma (for police officers); medications (including why some people are resistant to taking medications); and de-escalation techniques. The program also includes an “experiential training” component that gives officers a perspective on what the person might be going through.

Edwards said parole and probation officers are also making use of the program to help prevent parolees from going back to jail.

“We also bring in corrections officers to assist with the de-escalation training,” Edwards said. “If you think about it, who needs de-escalation skills more than a guy who’s surrounded by 40 to 50 inmates?”

Edwards admitted there always will be instances where force must be used.

“The bottom line is, we can’t always control it,” he said. “Under certain circumstances, even an officer with a PhD in psychology is still going to have to use force. There’s no magic bullet, no Jedi mind trick; sometimes people just don’t do what you need them to do.”

However he said the training has been invaluable in helping officers reduce the number of arrests — and the number of physical altercations — with the mentally ill.

“We think it gives police officers skills to avoid problems,” he said, “skills to avoid arresting people who don’t need to be arrested, skills to avoid using physical violence, skills to avoid using, God forbid, deadly force.”

Providing it continues to find funding, the Connecticut CIT program will likely continue to grow. Propelling its growth is the fact that there are more mentally ill people out on the streets every day, mainly due to the closing of state mental health facilities and budget cuts to mental health programs.

For more information about CIT and CABLE, click here.