Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Beat Intro Voiceover 00.10 This is the Beat – a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Circle of Respect Interview Jeremy 00.18 Hello. I’m Jeremy Writt on behalf of the Cops Office with Major Sam Cochran, retired, of the Memphis police department and Dr. Randy Dupont. Thank you, gentlemen, for coming to talk with us today. Sam, we’ll start with you – what exactly is a Crisis Intervention Team? Sam 00.34 Well, the Crisis Intervention Team, often referred to as CIT, is a first responder model within law enforcement. Other branches have been utilizing and developing CIT, such as Corrections, but the First Response addresses crisis issues relating to mental illnesses. And it’s about community partnerships. Jeremy 00.58 And Dr. Dupont, what type of incident requires a Crisis Intervention Team? Dr. Dupont 01.02 There’s a wide range of incidences that seem to be helpful with if you have a Crisis Intervention Team. But particularly, we tend to focus on those behavioral crisis, where the officers are called in to intervene and they have to make a number of decisions and intervene in a way that successfully resolves that situation. Jeremy 01.16 And how do these teams fit in with the community policing philosophy? Dr. Dupont 01.19 I think in many ways, this is really the, an excellent example of community policing. The officers themselves, often in a proactive sense, will go out and reach out to the community and get to know the individuals that have mental illness in their community. And therefore, they’re better able to respond when a crisis event does happen. We look for partnerships with the community itself, in which not only do we have the partnerships in name, but they actually participate in our training, they’re involved in on-going steering committees, they provide feedback – and there’s a feedback loop for this – so on all levels of this thing, we have a very, very intense community partnership. Sam 01.48 And if I could stress just one point of that Jeremy. Jeremy 01.51 Certainly. Sam 01.52 The partnerships are real. Sometimes, partnerships are – they look good on grant paper, and I mean that respectfully so of course – but I’m saying with CIT, not only do you have to have the partnerships on paper, so to speak, but they have to be active. They have to be active and they have to unite in an ownership of the CIT program. Jeremy 02.16 And I’m sure that realness of that partnership is one of the benefits, but if you could, speak about some of the other benefits to law enforcement professionals. Sam 02.27 In essence, in concluding the partnership and going into law enforcement, there are multiple partnerships. But the three primary partnerships is law enforcement, of course, and mental health providers or mental health services and advocacy. And many times, the two strongest advocacy is the Mental Health of America and NAMI – and NAMI taking probably one of the stronger leadership roles to that of CIT. But to law enforcement, it brings a connectedness to the community within the content of community partnerships. But within that, it also brings a relationship of those partnerships – an identity. So the officers are being educated, but I think it’s in many ways – and I hate to be kind of broad within the concept – but it is a change of heart in many ways. And I’m not just talking law enforcement – I’m talking about the community as a whole. Jeremy 03.26 Now, say I was a member of a law enforcement agency. How could I get a Crisis Intervention Team started ? Sam 03.35 Well, in Memphis, we have a CIT center at the University of Memphis and that can be written at the three w’s, CIT.memphis.edu – that’s our webpage – and then you can send email to CIT.memphis.edu. And with that kind of information, you can start obtaining information about CIT as well as contacting the National Alliance on Mental Illness webpage. They too have linkages to CIT information there on their website. And then you reach out locally within your community. You look out for those advocacy – you look out for those key mental health partners that seem to be a natural fit – mental health centers, hospital emergency rooms, state hospitals, VA hospitals. VA is a very strong – the Veteran’s Administration – is a very strong partnership. And so when law enforcement start bringing in those key partnerships that I mentioned, then they start sitting at the table and they start saying, “well what exactly is CIT?” And they can reach out, we can send CIT material to better understand that CIT – it’s not just a training program, it’s a community program. So we send out material to help emphasize this is not just about coming in and training ‘x’ amount of hours. This is about coming in and looking at the community and how we can unite the community together to forge a better understanding and looking at some of the services that oftentimes are not what they need to be. And we’re talking mental health services. And so this united effort of law enforcement, mental health and family members and consumers of mental health services really does unite CIT as a community program. Jeremy 05.21 You both have mentioned mental illness. Dr. Dupont, if you could, explain how responding to an incident involving someone with a mental illness is different. Dr. Dupont 05.32 Well some of the skills are the same – obviously the safety skills remain very critical. Nonetheless, there’s also an additional level of skill that it takes to de-escalate and be able to resolve that situation. And we focus a lot on those de-escalation skills. Officers often don’t have that background. Some have some natural talent in it, but what we look to do is to bring that out and to be able to capitalize on that talent so they can make a successful intervention. We do find that individuals with mental illness sometimes respond differently than one would expect, particularly compared to individuals without mental illness. And so it’s important to be able to recognize those differences and know how to deal with them in a pretty sophisticated fashion. Jeremy 06.06 You said some of the officers have a natural skill set. Is there anything you can do to help develop these skills? Dr. Dupont 06.13 We think so. We have a 40-hr training that officers go through and we find that officers rate that as some of the best training they’ve had as their law enforcement career and they consistently tell us that. And our goal is to take them from a basic didactic knowledge – or a book knowledge – and bring them into practical knowledge by the end, so they feel empowered. And there’s some good outcome data that suggests that it dramatically increases their confidence in their ability to deal with behavioral problems on the street. Jeremy 6.35 If you could, briefly share an example of a situation where you had to response to an incident involving a person with mental illness. Sam 06.44 Well, there was one occasion I recall. An individual – it was very intense – it did involve a weapon. It was serious in nature and our CIT officers arrived on the scene and they worked very, very diligently with this individual, trying to work – and this individual, being able to communicate with the officers – as Dr. Dupont was saying that we really play a lot of emphasis on verbal de-escalation and we were successful. But the uniqueness of this – because we have many examples of success stories like this – but the uniqueness of this, on another occasion we had an opportunity to hear from this individual. And he wanted to express his sorrow. He wanted to apologize to the officers. He was an elderly gentleman and his message was very emotional and he was crying as he was talking to some of us as officers. And he kept saying, ‘please tell the officers’ – that were there on that particular scene – he says, ‘Please tell the officers I’m sorry. That wasn’t me. That wasn’t me.’ And I think sometimes we lose sight of the human side of an illness and we oftentimes identify the illness as the person – and that’s not the case. We have people who are ill. They have a brain illness and sometimes that illness affects emotions and sometimes it affects other avenues of human behavior. But this individual was experiencing a very serious crisis, but when it was over and when he was well and when he had gone through recovery, he remembered his actions to a certain degree. And he was very sorry that he had exhibited some behavior and he wanted to let the officers know that that wasn’t him. He did not want to hurt anyone. And that’s pretty emotional – that’s pretty emotional for officers to hear – but it helps to unite the human side of all of us. And sometimes we’re very fragile when illness comes into play – whatever level. Jeremy 8.56 Well unfortunately we’re out of time, but before we end here today, I’d like to give you an opportunity to tell other law enforcement professionals about some of the resources that are available to them to deal with. Dr. Dupont 09.13 One thing that I think is important is that the Department of Justice has been funding a lot of the efforts to provide this technical assistance. So departments can reach out to us or to others that are available in their local area without a lot of concern about cost. CIT is one of the lowest cost programs you’ll find. It’s done a lot by the volunteers in the community that provide the expertise. It’s done a great deal by NAMI and those things that they provide and by other people who have already developed the CIT programs. In this area, for example, in Orlando there is a program that will reach out, that they help other cities and they’ve expanded to all of south Florida – and again, without cost to those agencies. So I think it’s important to know there is very good funding around to help these kind of efforts without a lot of cost to the departments. Sam 9.52 And also, the International Association of Chiefs of Police has just initiated a new summit report about mental illness in crisis responses – an excellent report. So law enforcement can contact International Association of Chiefs of Police, requesting a copy of the summit report and this would be very valuable information about some of the things that are happening across the United States. Jeremy 10.16 Thank you both, gentlemen. Dr. Dupont 10.18 Thank you very much. Beat Exit Voiceover: The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice Cops Office. The Cops Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships and solving problems. ####END OF TRANSCRIPT#### Cops Office Transcript 10-28-10 1