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Crisis intervention training spans Mahoning County
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County started Crisis Intervention Team training classes in 2006 with the goal to have at least one officer from every law-enforcement outfit in the county trained to interact with those having a mental health crisis.
Officials reached that goal this week and celebrated during a Friday luncheon at the Youngstown YMCA.
“We approach mental illness as an illness, not a crime, which is a shift from the ’90s and early 2000s,” said Sgt. Jerry Fulmer, the Youngstown Police Department detective who coordinates and teaches the county’s training classes. “The goal of this is to get people who need help into programs, into facilities or services that are better suited for their care as opposed to just locking them up.
“We maintain that we’re still the police. ... Most of us got into this field to help people, and now we’re armed with the tools to get them the help they need when they’re in a mental health crisis.”
Duane Piccirilli, executive director of the Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board, said participating officers take a week off their normal beats to take the weeklong course, which is paid through mental health board levy revenues. They tour the Mahoning County jail – a large population of which suffer from mental health disorders, Sheriff Jerry Greene has said – and juvenile justice center and even role-play hostage negotiation situations, with critiques from Mahoning County negotiators.
“Sometimes, when people are in crisis, their reactions are a little different. ... They’re frightened. They may be experiencing some other emotional situations that would have them react differently,” he said. “We’re trying to give them the tools they need to be able to work with people from all diversities and disabilities and maybe understand what the families are going through. ... It helps them do a better job.”
Michael Brown, a seven-month police officer for New Middletown Police Department – at which all 10 officers have completed the crisis intervention training – said the weeklong course re-introduced him to the human aspect of police work.
“When you get into law enforcement, they give you a badge, they give you a gun ... they tell you [that] you have to be the example for the community,” he said – but what’s sometimes lost is the civilian perspective or human empathy.
To Brown, the training’s about deciding whether to be a robot, a creature of criminal statute, or to come “back home” and remember the human at the center of a crisis situation.
When classes start, the officers leave their uniforms behind and dress in plainclothes, he said.
“When you put the uniform back on after this training, if you don’t feel different, if you don’t feel heart for your community, you need to go back to this training,” Brown said.
“But there is not one officer who has felt that way.”