Ky. LEOs aided by communication training

January 13, 2009 10:26 AM

Editor’s note: Dr. Dennis L. Controy says, “Dealing with the emotionally disturbed has always presented a quandary for law enforcement. Individuals suffering from mental illness are often those who suffer immensely, and as such, elicit sympathy from the rest of the population. All of us can look at their condition and be glad we are not suffering from a similar affliction. Yet the mentally ill person poses unique threats to police officers.” Read his article Communication difficulties with emotionally disturbed people

By Dariush Shafa
Messenger-Inquirer

OWENSBORO, Ky. — Several local and area police officers are back in the classroom this week, learning how to improve their communications skills with a certain part of the population they often see.

Officers from the Owensboro Police Department, the Daviess County Sheriff’s Department and the Henderson Police Department are participating in Crisis Intervention Team training each day this week. The 40-hour class is aimed at helping officers in the field better understand and deal with people who may be mentally ill, developmentally disabled or distraught and suicidal, among others.

“The whole basis of it is on safety,” said Denise Spratt, a retired Louisville Metro Police lieutenant who now is director of the Kentucky CIT program. “That’s the safety of the officers themselves, the safety of the people they’re dealing with and the safety of the public.”

The course teaches officers how to recognize signs and symptoms of someone’s mental state or frame of mind, how certain medicines -- or lack of -- can affect a person’s behavior, suicide prevention and how to de-escalate a situation and calm a person down. They also learned about the elderly, post-traumatic stress disorder and developmental disabilities such as autism and mental retardation.

In essence, the course teaches officers how to try to prevent the use of force in some situations. It also gives officers the resources to get a person medical attention instead of a night in jail.

“We can get them the treatment they need instead of putting them in jail, where they don’t need to be, clogging up an already overloaded system,” Spratt said.

Officer Tim Stokes, an officer with Louisville Metro Police and instructor with the CIT program, said the training helps bolster a police officer’s already-extensive training, which is mainly focused on enforcement and protection of public and self.

“We’re trained to react instead of proactively, and this is a way to be proactive,” Stokes said. “By being better communicators, we can be better police officers. This training allows us to work on those communication skills.”

The training can also help officers foster better relationships with those on their beats who may be dealing with one of the issues covered in the training. By better understanding the person’s problems, Stokes said, an officer can become a support system for that person and encourage the person to do what’s best.

“It’s a way to give them positive support to maintain that treatment so they don’t put themselves at risk. Sometimes that little support can go a long way to keeping someone compliant with their treatment regimen,” Stokes said. “Better compliance reduces strain on the (mental health care) system.”

By training officers to act in ways that don’t lead to a confrontation, it also reduces the risk of harm to an officer or members of the public and thus helps lower a department’s liability.

OPD Chief Glenn Skeens, who also serves as head of the CIT Regional Advisory Board that was formed in September 2008, said when this week’s course is over, the goal is to have 20 percent of his local force CIT-trained and eventually, he wants all officers to have the training.

“We need to increase our skill sets to be prepared to deal with those critical calls and have our officers trained to deal with these calls as professionally as possible,” Skeens said.

Officer Jim McCarty, one of the CIT-trained officers at OPD, said even though he was a people person to start with, the training has helped him be better at dealing with people.

“It used to be you had somebody acting a certain way and we’d always take them to the hospital or take them to jail. This gives us the training to be more vocal with them, talk to them and discover what the problem is,” McCarty said. “We try to find out what the problem is, with more negotiating skills than force skills. It gives you new eyes to look at things with ... You try to persuade them into at least seeking help.”