CIT Model Of Crisis Intervention

Because the police are expected to be able to deal directly with mentally ill persons on the street, the development of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training has been crucial in giving police officers the education they need to respond to situations involving persons with a mental illness, persons in a mental health crisis, persons who have attempted suicide, persons who are threatening suicide, or persons who are emotionally disturbed. In order to best understand CIT, it is imperative to note the statutory definition of mental illness. According to Ohio Revised Code 5122. 01 (2016), mental illness is defined as, “a substantial disorder of thought, mood, perception, orientation, or memory that grossly impairs judgment, behavior, capacity

to recognize reality, or ability to meet the ordinary demands of life”. The CIT model also helps people with developmental disabilities. Police officers need to be trained to handle potential situations where mentally ill persons pose as threats to themselves or others.
The development of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) programs have allowed police departments to train their officers in appropriate responses to mental health calls, as well as learning how to relate to people presenting signs of mental illness. Crisis intervention training proves itself valuable because it gives officers more confidence when dealing with high-stress situations such as someone threatening suicide. If the police are called to a home invasion and the perpetrator or victim have a mental illness, his or her behavior may be unpredictable, putting everyone in danger. If officers can properly identify and respond to mental illnesses, they may not be forced to make fatal decisions.
The CIT model was created in 1988 when a man who had a history of mental illnesses and substance abuse was shot by a Memphis police officer.

After this fatality, the Memphis CIT model was constructed. According to Watson, Ottati, Draine, and Morabito (2011), “the goals of CIT are to increase safety during mental health crisis calls and to divert individuals with mental illness away from the criminal justice system and to appropriate mental health services”. Aside from forty hours of classroom training and scenarios, a major component of the CIT model is referring people to a mental health facility where they can take advantage of community resources. This also includes police officers transporting people for mental health evaluations. Residential crisis stabilization programs are paramount to modern crisis care. Because of this, police officers need to be familiar with community mental health resources so that they can have a designated drop off place for psychiatric emergencies. This also means that crisis facilities need to have a rapid law enforcement drop-off area where officers can drop a person off quickly, so they can return to their jobs and not be tied up with these calls for hours. A quick turnaround time is critical to providing a viable and good option for police officers that are responding to mental health

calls.
Some police officers think that assessing crisis situations and transporting individuals is time consuming and they do not like the available options. It is important for police departments to build good relationships with providers in the mental health system. A collaborative effort is required in order for CIT to work most effectively. Crisis stabilization facilities function within a strong CIT partnership. According to Compton, Bahora, Watson, & Oliva (2008), “CIT is considered by many to be the most rapidly expanding and promising partnership between law enforcement and mental health professionals”. Officers need to be able to link a person with treatment so that they can resolve the mental health call. There also needs to be good resources for individuals in need of treatment that do not meet the criteria for an emergency evaluation. Availability of mental health services is key to ensuring CIT effectiveness. According to Lamb, Weinberger, and DeCuir Jr. (2002), “Collaboration between the law enforcement and mental health systems is crucial, and the very different areas of expertise of each should be recognized and should not be confused”. If there are good mental health services available, officers will be more likely to have voluntary transports rather than having to involuntarily take a person which can often end violently, thus putting officers in dangerous situations or in bad positions. Officer safety can be in jeopardy when a mentally ill person reacts violently to the options an officer gives them.
According to Finn and Stalans (2002), “It is estimated that mental health calls account for about 5-10 percent of all calls for police service” (p. 279). It is important to remember when a call goes to dispatchers, dispatchers try their best to rely as much pertinent information to the responding officers, but this may not always include information about a suspect’s or victim’s current mental health diagnosis or any mental health conditions. This is one of the reasons why officers need to be properly trained in identifying and responding to mental illnesses. When an officer arrives on scene, they need to be able to appropriately assess the situation and assess any threats, as well as assessing a person’s state of mind. Officers are the calming factor on the scene.
These types of situations require a specialized perspective.

They not only have to handle such calls with a tactical and safe approach, but they have to handle these people with empathy and understanding. If someone poses as a threat to themselves or others, officers need to be able to gain control of the person without having to call a negotiation team and preferably with a low-lethality method. Interventions they may use include de-escalation, risk assessment, and lethality determination. Officers are also responsible to use good discretion when determining whether a person should enter the mental health system or the criminal justice system. With crisis intervention training, officers can prevent a number of mental health crises by understanding the nature of these calls and can develop better discretion, as well as develop patience and compassion. Sometimes it is better to be patient with a mentally ill person, rather than trying to clear the call as quickly as possible. Patiently managing a situation with a person suffering from severe symptoms of mental illness ensures not just their own safety, but others’ safety as well. Giving the person clear choices during the interaction will also help facilitate a positive and patient interaction. Patiently managing a mentally ill person can prevent detainment, which is a big goal of CIT. Too many mentally ill people are ending up in jails where they receive little to no treatment at

all.
It has been debated whether crisis intervention training should be mandated or not. All departments differ on this position. CIT is now in forty states and in two-thousand jurisdictions. The Columbus Police Department has about three-hundred and seventy CIT trained officers right now. Columbus has now provided crisis intervention training for the last two recruit classes because of the complexity of these types of situations. According to the Communications Bureau (2018), Columbus alone had 6,300 mental health calls and 6,199 suicide calls in 2017. This number proves that police officers are almost guaranteed to come in contact with people who are going through mental health crises. Because this number is fairly high, police officers must learn to take a trauma-informed approach to policing. Trauma-informed policing is taught by good CIT training. Instead of asking someone “what’s wrong with you?”, officers need to take the approach “what happened to you?”. The police need to understand that a lot of mental issues stem from a trauma history. According to Hogan (2018), “ninety-percent of people with serious mental health issues have trauma histories”. Taking this trauma-informed approach is a core principle of crisis care.