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Crisis Intervention TEAM (CIT) Training for
Law Enforcement
update
on Bucks County NAMI's CIT efforts
(CIT)
on the Move Across America
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JUSTICE
Cops and the Mentally
Ill
How police can better handle emotionally
disturbed citizens.
By Eugene O'Donnell | Newsweek
Web Exclusive
From coast to coast, mentally ill
people, without reliable access to the costly on-demand
care they need, are left to fend for themselves. In the
aftermath of the movement in the 1970s to close large
mental asylums, many of today's mentally ill are left to
their own devices; they are often homeless and without
full-time advocates. With government unable or unwilling
to properly serve this population, the criminal-justice
system is left to pick up the slack.
full story
Officers get view of mental illness
By Madison
Park |
Baltimore Sun Reporter
June 15, 2008 The Sheriff's
Office, the Maryland State Police and police officers
from Harford's three municipal departments teamed up
with staff members from the county's Office of Mental
Health and Upper Chesapeake Health to create a crisis
intervention team for transferring people with mental
illness from police custody to mental health systems.
Officers learned about personality disorders,
schizophrenia and dementia, and how to recognize them.
In one lesson, they wore headphones and were assigned to
perform everyday tasks while they listened to voices.
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June 1, 2008
Crisis program teaches patience
By LEO STRUPCZEWSKI
Courier-Post Staff
At the
end, the 45-year-old man -- who was cutting
himself with a 15-inch knife and asking for
police to shoot him at Newtown Lake Park --
stopped.
He
offered up his knife, handle first, and walked
with a detective to a nearby police cruiser.
No
handcuffs, no list of charges.
The
tense, 25-minute standoff ended peacefully last
week and police drove the man, who suffers from
schizophrenia, to the county's mental health
screening center for evaluation and treatment.
read
full article on this
website or
online
(CIT)
on the Move Across America
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Officers who talked man from rooftop honored
May 5, 2008
By Barbara Boyer
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Two rookie officers who
persuaded a distraught person not to jump from the roof of a
four-story building in the Ludlow section of North Philadelphia last
month were saluted today by Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey.
The 26th District's Michael Cermignano, who has been on the job six
months, and Domenic Bowes, on the job a year, were given
commendations of merit.
"Through their training, they were actually able to talk to this
individual and calm the person down and prevent the individual from
jumping," he said.
The commissioner said he would place the commendations in the
officers' personnel files, shook hands with them, and recognized
their "great" work.
The officers are part of a relatively new training program to help
police deal with emotionally disturbed people. They talked to the
man for an hour before getting him to come down, Ramsey said. The
man was taken to Episcopal Hospital and admitted to the mental
health unit, Ramsey said.
The training was provided through a federal grant to create a
crisis-intervention team, said Lt. Francis Healy, special adviser to
the commissioner.
Police also can call Behavioral Health Services for a crisis team
that includes mental-health counselors and medical professionals,
team coordinator Michele Dowell said.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20080506_2_Phila__police_officers_given_merit_commendations.html
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De-Criminalizing Mental Illness
 TIME
magazine reports on police department training and procedures
that prepare officers to work with people who have a mental illness.
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Statesman
Journal.com July 5, 2008
Late Monday night,
Andrew James Hanlon, 20, was shot and killed by Silverton (Oregon)
Police Officer Tony Gonzalez, who was responding to a report of a
burglary in progress.
Hanlon had been
struggling with paranoia and delusions in recent months, although he has
not been formally diagnosed, said his brother-in-law Nathan Heise, who
lives in Silverton.
full article online |
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Mental Illness Clients Deserve Respect And
Understanding
By Jennifer Gross ...the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports
that the number of inmates in jails and prisons with mental illness
quadrupled in just six years — from 283,000 in 1998 to 1.25 million in 2006.
This surge coincided with the closure of the last of the hospitals.
full article |
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Officers undergo "mental"
training
By
Shae Crisson
(11/27/07
– RALEIGH NC) -
Law enforcement officers from across the state are going through unique
training to learn how to deal with mentally ill patients.
more |
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Crisis
Intervention Team
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Crisis
Intervention Team - Memphis Police Dept.
CIT Coordinator: Major
Sam Cochran
http://www.memphispolice.org/Crisis%20Intervention.htm
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Mission
The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) program is a community
partnership working with mental health consumers and family
members. Our goal is to set a standard of excellence for our
officers with respect to treatment of individuals with
mental illness. This is done by establishing individual
responsibility for each event and overall accountability for
the results. Officers will be provided with the best quality
training available, they will be part of a specialized team
which can respond to a crisis at any time and they will work
with the community to resolve each situation in a manner
that shows concern for the citizen’s well being.
Read
online about the CIT: "In
My Opinion" an article by Major Cochran |
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Law enforcement and
people with severe mental illnesses
A natural outgrowth of a mental health system that withholds needed
treatment until a person with a mental illness becomes dangerous is that
police officers and sheriff’s deputies are forced to become front line
mental health workers. The safety of both law enforcement officers and
citizens is compromised when law enforcement responds to crises involving
people with severe mental illnesses who are not being treated. In 1998,
law enforcement officers were more likely to be killed by a person with
mental illness than by an assailant with a prior arrest for assaulting
police or resisting arrest. And people with mental illnesses are killed by
police in justifiable homicides at a rate nearly four times greater than
the general public.
Briefing Paper Law enforcement and people with severe mental illnesses |
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Give all police options to help the mentally
ill
Cherry Hill
Courier Post - Cherry Hill,NJ, USA
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Camden
County is rolling out a crisis intervention team approach that
should be offered soon to other municipalities.
Mentally ill residents who appear to
be a danger to themselves or others often are the toughest calls for
police to answer. These residents often fail or cannot comply with
police orders. This can lead to someone, usually the mentally ill
resident who is acting out, getting hurt.
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Kevin Cerbelli |
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North Jersey |
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Police lack training to deal with crisis
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
By ED BEESON and KAREN KELLER
HERALD NEWS
To his sister, Aleksander Malek was a delusional man in need of help.
To the Clifton police officer who encountered him on April 28, Malek,
wielding a machete and a pipe, was a threat who needed to be stopped.
The officer shot Malek once in the chest after he refused to drop the
weapons.
During the past week, police statewide have shot three people described
as having a mental illness or mental disability.
Such events raise questions about police training in dealing with the
mentally disabled
full
story on this site
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Posted on Fri, Feb. 02, 2007
Phila. graduates first police trained in nonviolence
The Philadelphia Police Department has graduated its first class of 18 officers trained to help defuse situations involving the mentally ill.
The ceremony came two weeks after police shot and fatally wounded a knife-wielding man who shouted "Kill me! Kill me!" in Center City after two attempts to stun him with a Taser failed.
The plan to train officers for the department's Crisis Intervention Team was in place before the shooting. The program has resulted in a "significant decrease in injuries to officers an civilians" in other cities, the department said.
The officers, who graduated yesterday, took part in an intensive four-day training program. The department plans to train up to 25 percent of the officers in the East Division, covering the 24th, 25th and 26th Police Districts.
Joseph A. Gambardello
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Philadelphia Inquirer Jan. 20, 2007Crisis training for city police
It's intended to help selected officers deal peacefully with potentially lethal confrontations.
By Robert Moran, Inquirer Staff Writer
The Philadelphia Police Department soon
will begin training selected officers on how to handle mentally ill people
without resorting to violence or deadly force.
Crisis intervention team (CIT) training has been in the works
for months, and comes just after police on Sunday fatally shot a deranged man
who had burglarized City Hall and threatened officers with a knife.
"In light of the recent tragedy, we need to move quickly
to adopt the training throughout the department," said Joseph Rogers,
president of the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania. The
organization participated in developing the training program.
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Posted on Fri, Jan. 19, 2007
Jill Porter | 'Suicides by cop': Victims' only crime is being
sick
WHEN HE WAS at his most desperate, mortally depressed and
living on the street, Sean Kindig once considered "suicide by cop."
Now, many years later, Kindig, 46, is married, living in a
"half-a- million-dollar house in South Philadelphia," and recovering
from his crippling depression. That's why he's devastated - and
infuriated - that Charles Kelley never got the same chance.
Ocoee
man named Crisis Intervention Team Officer of the Year
Orlando Sentinel - Orlando,FL,USA
What happened in the next 90 minutes earned Hernandez the honor of Crisis
Intervention Team Officer of the Year at a breakfast today in downtown
Orlando. ...
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of Bucks County
Pennsylvania
