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MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS Number

1-800-499-7455


Local Base Service Units
215-785-9765
215-257-6551
215-345-5327

NAMI Bucks HELPINE:  1-866-399-NAMI (6264)

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    to NAMI.org

Crisis Intervention TEAM Training for Law Enforcement

update on Bucks County NAMI's CIT efforts

Crisis Intervention Team Program Fact Sheet from NAMI National

'It's not illegal to be mentally ill' EastValleyTribune.com

SHARING THE STREETS: Phoenix police officer Dave Beauchamp checks on a homeless man who displays symptoms of mental illness near Grand Avenue in Phoenix. Beauchamp and his partner, Nick Margiotta, are trained in crisis intervention for situations involving persons with mental illness.
 
Watch video of Crisis Intervention Team trained officers in action

Part 1   Out on the Streets - Mentally ill in Minnesota
KARE - Minneapolis,MN,USA
Police tell us scenes like this - personal crisis intervention - often involving the mentally ill, now account for about one-third of their case load. ...

Part 2 video:   Broken lives, broken system - behind bars 

There's a mental health crisis in this country that's been developing over decades. With treatment centers closing, more and more mentally ill people end up in jail, prison, or in the local hospital emergency room.

 

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 

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.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1651002,00.html?cnn=yes

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

http://www.cit.memphis.edu/
articles on Memphis CIT website
The 2008 National CIT Conference will be held in  Atlanta,GA November 4-6, 2008.

Officers undergo "mental" training

Officers undergo "mental" training  By Shae Crisson

- Law enforcement officers from across the state are going through unique training to learn how to deal with mentally ill patients. more

Crisis Intervention Team

Crisis Intervention Team -  Memphis Police Dept.
CIT Coordinator: Major Sam Cochran  
http://www.memphispolice.org/Crisis%20Intervention.htm 

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  

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

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.

     

 

 

 

          

                        Kevin Cerbelli

 
Khiel fatal shooting case reignites issue of cops vs. mentally ill
New York Daily News - New York,NY,USA
... scene involving a mentally ill person. But Falk argued police departments in Memphis and Houston provide superior crisis intervention training to their ...more

 

   North Jersey             

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

 

 

  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   

   Philadelphia Inquirer  Jan. 20, 2007

Crisis 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.

First Crisis Intervention Team in Pennsylvania:   Laurel Highlands CIT encompasses law enforcement agencies of the city of Johnstown and other towns in Cambria and Somerset Counties in West Central PA.  First group graduated and certified  April 2007.

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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