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EDITORIAL: Aid training, regionalize

Times-Tribune - 2/2/2017

Feb. 02--The criminal justice system, from the street through courtrooms to prison cells and sometimes to the morgue, has become a major component of how the United States treats mental health problems.

It often enters the public consciousness when violence is involved -- when a mentally ill person commits violence or when police shoot someone incapable of complying with their directions.

That's what happened in 2009 when Scranton officers shot and killed Brenda Williams, an Air Force veteran who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. She wielded a knife while approaching police and did not comply with their demands that she stop.

Mental health advocates and the Doherty administration responded with the Scranton Area Crisis Intervention Team, an effort to train police officers to deal safely in the field with people exhibiting symptoms of mental illness.

Since then, the group has trained 139 people in law enforcement, education and other fields. But now, armed with an $415,000 grant from the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, the group hopes to train 600 police officers and related personnel, according to Alex Hazzouri, CEO of the Advocacy Alliance.

Local governments should leap at the opportunity. Such training can help to protect not only people suffering from mental illness, but the broader public and responding police officers.

But, as in so many matters involving effective local policing in Pennsylvania, training is not just a matter of money but of fragmented, inconsistent public safety due to the state's antique system of local governance.

Many local governments likely will not participate in the free but highly valuable training because their departments consist of one or two part-time officers who work for multiple governments and can't be released for training.

The answer for more effective policing, not just for the mental health training, is regional departments. They would have full-time officers and offer far more consistent coverage and opportunities for training and increased professionalism.

Inability to make officers available for valuable training itself is a mark of institutional dysfunction that local governments and the Legislature should address through the development of more regional police departments.

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(c)2017 The Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pa.)

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