This coming week, dozens of local police officers and sheriff’s deputies will participate in Crisis Intervention Training (CIT).
The training is all next week and helps prepare officers for calls involving individuals experiencing a mental health crisis.
In total, 44 Evansville Police officers and Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Deputies will attend.
Instructors of many disciplines lead the 40-hours of training, which include lectures and scenario studies.
According to the CIT news release, the comprehensive curriculum covers “recognizing signs of mental illness, trauma-informed care, de-escalation techniques, and procedures for emergency detentions.”
CIT also fosters collaboration between law enforcement, mental health professionals, and the community, “promoting a compassionate and effective approach to crisis intervention.”
Officer Mario Reid with the EPD is school coordinator and a lead trainer. He says the CIT school is designed to give officers the tools they need –
“… to de-escalate, provide options, and assist individuals that are experiencing some form of some form of crisis, whether it's a mental health crisis, whether it's maybe sometimes it's substance related crisis.”
He said sometimes it’s an acute personal crisis such as death in the family.
Sheriff Noah Robinson said the training makes officers more aware of others’ mental state.
“I think it makes for a more well rounded police officer, and ultimately leads to less uses of force and fewer custodial arrests,”
he said. “In one way or another, the person's mental health, I'd say more often than not weighs into how we respond to a run.”
Robinson said the program started in the early 2000s and has more law enforcement support today, adding that they “didn’t know what they didn’t know.”
“And this training gives our deputies a fuller appreciation for how the human mind works.”
Reid said such training is a priority through the state of Indiana.
“These classes in this training and providing that is not just just something that they add to officers, but this is something that saves lives and creates opportunities for a better safer community.”
Most deputies and officers in the EPD and sheriff’s office have taken the training. Reid said the state of Indiana’s vision is for each area to have a CIT Steering Committee such as the one overseeing these local efforts.
The training is a collaboration between the committee and the two law enforcement agencies with the Southwestern Indiana Law Enforcement Academy.
This training will take place February 5th through February 9th from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. daily at Ascension St. Vincent Hospital Evansville Manor Annex (3700 Washington Ave.)
Reid said this training works because it is all volunteer.
Robinson said agencies also need robust policies to build such training into their culture.
“(If) you hold your folks to account to use that policy and to use this training, that can have a real impact if it's otherwise, it's just ‘window dressing,’” he said.