Crisis prep

Local officers are taking a step toward understanding more about mental illness, substance use disorder and other crises.

Jay and Blackford counties are starting a crisis intervention team, a program intended to create a partnership between police, mental health advocates and mental health professionals to better serve those with mental illness in crisis. 

It starts with offering a 40-hour course to train the county’s law enforcement, which was completed this week at Jay County Sheriff’s Office. The training curriculum, outlined by the National Alliance on Mental Illness Indiana and put together by a local steering committee, walks officers through discussions with local legal and subject matter experts, mental health professionals and providers, citizens impacted by mental illness and others trained through the program. Officers also engage in roleplaying scenarios to practice active listening and de-escalation. It includes handling situations that involve those impacted by suicide, struggling with substance use and living with neurocognitive disorders. 

Jay County Sheriff Ray Newton trained in the course through Delaware County previously. Newton praised crisis training, describing the information as a tool for patrol and correctional officers.

“We have representatives from every agency that deals with mental health come in and teach us how to deal with it,” said Newton. “And that’s one thing, you know, we lacked in the past. We didn’t get the training that we needed.”

According to Crisis Intervention Team International, its “Memphis Model” was first created in 1988. Crisis Intervention Team founders Randy Dupont and Sam Cochran led the first programs in 2008, which later became the founding board members of the non-profit organization.

Its basic goals, according to its website, are to “develop the most compassionate and effective crisis response system that is the least intrusive in a person’s life” and to “help persons with mental disorders and/or addictions access medical/mental health treatment rather than place them in the criminal justice system due to illness related behaviors.”

For the last few years, the Consortium for Opioids Response and Engagement of East Central Indiana (CORE-ECI) has been working in local communities to “strengthen and expand substance use disorder prevention, treatment and recovery services,” according to Purdue University’s website. In connection with that effort, Purdue University’s HealthTAP program helped facilitate a crisis intervention steering committee for Jay and Blackford counties, explained Regina Pilotte, interim director of HealthTAP.

“We’ve been working on breaking down stigma,” explained Pilotte, noting CORE-ECI is in its third year — the initiative runs through August — and is translating leadership to local community members.

Jay County’s Crisis Intervention Team is different from Jay County’s Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) team, which aims to help first responders in the aftermath of dealing with a traumatic event. Crisis intervention directly involves the community, and teams regularly host 40-hour classes as well as in-service trainings, or continuing education for crisis intervention team members.

Hartford City Police Department captain Joel Allred underwent a virtual crisis intervention training course in 2020. As a leading instructor in the classes this week, Allred pointed to benefits with in-person classes, such as visiting different sites and actively participating in roleplay scenarios.

He also noted the importance of understanding how to handle different situations.

“A fair majority of our calls for service involve people who have some form of mental illness from the entire spectrum, from very mild to severe,” said Allred. “That’s why I think it’s important, for us to hone our skills in … interacting with people who are going through these crisis times, because our end goal is to serve them the best we can. Going to trainings like this is how we learn to do that … this is a place that we can learn and make those mistakes without having real-world consequences.”

IU Health Jay security officer Nathan Springer first received crisis intervention training when he became Portland police chief in 2014. Now retired from the role, Springer noted he would have benefitted from taking the course as a young officer.

“I was put into situations that I didn’t feel comfortable with and I always felt like I could have done better with,” he said. “This training just … arms that officer with extra resources.”

Springer added that Meridian Health Services first brought up crisis intervention training nearly a decade ago. At that time, he explained, staffing issues, time restraints and other trainings that took precedence kept the training from becoming a reality then.

This week’s course taught officers from different departments in Jay, Blackford and Delaware counties. Plans are to offer more classes in the future.

Officers are regularly thrown into situations on the job in which they can utilize the information, said Newton.

“My ultimate goal is to have everyone trained in it,” he added. “There’s a lot of valuable information training, I mean, I use it a lot … you don’t really think you’re using it, but you are.”