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New program offers mental health training for police

St. Joseph News-Press - 8/17/2016

Aug. 17--There's a relatively new program in the area that trains area police in how to deal with people who exhibit mental health symptoms.

It's called the Crisis Intervention Team committee, CIT for short, and it's comprised of law enforcement and local mental health and social service officials.

Dr. James Reynolds, Northwest Missouri Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center medical director, said the program is designed to train officers to recognize persons exhibiting mental health issues rather than treating it as a criminal problem. CIT is modeled after a similar successful program in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1980s.

It's primarily an educational endeavor, Dr. Reynolds said, for the 27 local area law enforcement agencies and mental health providers in the Northwest Missouri region that comprise the CIT committee.

"We get together on a monthly basis and we share information, we talk about difficult cases that we have in our jurisdiction and we plan educational opportunities primarily targeted towards law enforcement officers," Reynolds said.

It helps the officers to be better able to respond and recognize a mental-health-challenged person as compared to seeing their behavior as threatening or confrontational, he added.

"We don't want someone being locked away when that's not absolutely necessary," Reynolds said.

Sgt. James Langston of the St. Joseph Police Department said it's a good program that provides a support network for area law enforcement.

"We got into this career field to help people, and helping people means getting them the services that they need," Langston said. "Some people need to be locked up in jail, some people need to be hospitalized and some people just need to talk to somebody, and that's kind of our goal is to do that. And by having good crisis intervention team trained officers, it ends up reducing use of force."

Jen Gentry, community mental health liaison for Family Guidance, said CIT helps officers also be aware of the mental health resources available.

"It's not just about educating, but how we can help other folks, and how we can recognize our own struggles so that we are able to help other people more efficiently," Gentry said.

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