I believe law enforcement agencies need to increase mental health training for police interventions. Approximately 10% of all police interactions involve a citizen with debilitating mental health issues; the mental illness issues not only increase the chances of police interacting with people, but also escalate the risks. Persons with manic or psychotic symptoms may break laws or appear dangerous or threatening to others, and depressed persons may demonstrate an intention to self-harm, and police facing people having a mental health crisis may respond in ways that harm the disturbed person. Currently, I’m only aware of three prevention/response models used in regards to handling mental health crises: the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Model, the co-responder model and mental-health based responses.
CIT training is not mandated, it is a purely volunteer oriented program. The training in this model consists of 40 hours of coursework wherein mental health conditions are recognized, in addition to suggestions on how to de-escalate tense situations. Role-playing is done to get a feel for the environments that the officers in question may be up against. The offers can also refer citizens for treatment if they feel that they need it. I personally feel like mental health training should be mandated. I think that if we had the training, we could avoid a lot of issues that turn into horrible situations.
A fairly recent example would be the Sonya Massey case. Sonya’s mother called into the Sangamon County Sheriff’s department on July 6th, 2024. Apparently, Sonya was having a mental breakdown but the department was not informed of this fact. The situation was not handled correctly, the situation escalated and Sonya Massey was shot and killed by a deputy. Body cam footage was revealed, and while she did hold a pot of hot water that might have been interpreted as a “threatening” movement, the deputy did not need to threaten to throw water in her face. She apologized and ducked before he shot her 3 different times. The entire situation could have been avoided with more training regarding how to handle mental health issues. This was just one example but there are plenty more. For example, police were present here in Springfield when paramedics killed Earl Moore Jr., who was suffering from alcohol withdrawal and hallucinations. And a Chatham police officer shot Greg Small, Jr. after his mom called for help when he was suffering a mental health crisis and running around with a knife (threatening to self-harm, not threatening others). Mental health training should be mandated, not optional.
The co-responder model allows the situation to be handled by a mental health professional on site with them collaborating with the police rather than the local police department handling everything alone. Yet, this method has raised some concerns by the police officers, as some of them think this is not as effective as the police officers handling the situation themselves. The question is, is it effective with the population? There needs to be input from the community and family members as well as tests on this method. Without looking at all the data, we do not have all the facts and do not know how effective it actually is. One question that needs to be asked is if by adding another player into the occasion, are we hurting the officers’ egos? Staffing has also been an issue as the availability of mental health professionals may be lacking. This is because of the hours needed for these calls and the burnout that the stressful encounters can cause. These issues especially may be inflated due to the federal funding freeze brought on by Elon Musk and the Trump administration. I could go on and on about that but I digress.
The mental health based responses model involves mental health professionals who are not sworn officers to assist with the calls coming from individuals who are experiencing mental health crises. These “community service officers” (as they are called) are able to provide crisis intervention as well as social services to the population, while also diverting them from further involvement with the criminal justice system. However, while this model resulted in the most amount of crises dissolved on the scene, it also led to the most arrests. More information would be needed to see why the arrests increased during this time but as the crises were dissolved at the scene this method somewhat worked. Once again, data would need to be collected to determine how effective it actually is from those involved.
Mental health crises are no joke, and situations tend to escalate quickly when they are not handled properly. I know from experience that even minor bouts of anxiety are seen by some officers as an unnecessary inconvenience. A few years ago I was in a car accident and I got hit by a pickup truck. The truck hit my little Toyota so hard that it turned around in the complete opposite direction on the side of the road. I was having a panic attack, and having some trouble breathing. The officer at the scene told me that my emotions were unneeded and that I had to get over them quickly so that I could give a statement. My only thought process was: if that was the response to me, what are they saying to others with more serious bouts of mental issues? Therefore, I will say once again that mandatory mental health training needs to be implemented and that the amount of training needs to be enough to see some tangible results.
Work Cited
ICJIA | Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. (n.d.). https://icjia.illinois.gov/researchhub/articles/responding-to-individuals-experiencing-mental-health-crises-police-involved-program
I am also often wondering about this issue. Police departments typically cost about 20% to 30% of a city operating budget (when benefits and retirement pensions for retired police are added to current costs of maintaining a force). I believe the national average is 2.4 sworn officers for every 1,000 residents. What intrigues me are studies showing that police may only spend less than 5% of their time thwarting property crime or violent crime or catching perpetrators of those crimes, and mostly police are doing other things. Could we perhaps divide the police force into two groups: one group would spend 20% to 50% of their time stopping crime and catching criminals, and another group would do the mental health interventions and many of the other things that police are doing? What would happen to crime and public safety if we had 1.4 sworn officers for every 1,000 residents, but had 1 community services officer for every 1,000 residents, and all these community service officers were trained in mental health, conflict resolution, emergency medicine, and legal issues (like police)? Would that make us safer?
As state and federal governments aren't adequately serving persons with mental illness, it seems to me that cities and counties need to step up, and perhaps city and county budgets should allocate about 4% or 5% of their revenue toward hiring persons who can deal with people in mental health crises, or caseworkers who can help people who are prone to the complications that come with serious mental illness. This might require local governments to trim 1 or 2 percentage points of their operating budgets from infrastructure, law enforcement, fire departments, libraries, and parks, so there would be some decrease in spending for those vital local government services, but would the resulting improvements in mental health care and interventions with people in mental health crises provide a benefit that would offset the loss of force size in fire and police departments or the decrease in money allocated for libraries or infrastructure? I suspect that this would be a wise use of local public investment, but without good research and some good examples, I'm left guessing this, rather than able to claim that I know with certainty that it is true.
I have heard that crisis intervention teams and alternatives to traditional police responses have been effective in places like Portland, Maine, and Eugene, Oregon; but I'm not sure about Nashville, Tennessee; and there are controversies about whether social workers can participate in coercive enforcement of the law.
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