By Vic Vela
Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE — Drug-addled individuals committing petty crimes, suicide threats by those who feel depressed and helpless, The mentally ill on the streets with nowhere to turn.
These are not uncommon situations that police in Santa Fe have to deal with. But a program to be launched early next year aims to help officers and medical personnel work together to provide assistance to those having a hard time helping themselves - without unnecessary incarceration.
“The focus is linking up people to treatment rather than facing law and order and arrests,” said Mark Boschelli, clinical director of Presbyterian Medical Services.
Boschelli will help train selected Santa Fe police officers and sheriff’s deputies to form a new area Crisis Intervention Team program after the New Year. The program is meant to help law enforcement better handle situations with individuals who are not committing serious crimes, but who police are consistently having problems knowing what to do with.
“We deal every day with people who really need help,” said Santa Fe Police Deputy Chief Benjie Montaño. “The goal is figure out how to better respond to these type of calls. The more we can get help, the less we have to keep responding to, which helps everyone.”
The CIT program - modeled after successful programs elsewhere in the country, including one in Albuquerque - will enable police to work with mental health practitioners, who will help to provide assistance in situations that call for it.
“We want to make sure these people stay out of detention centers and away from judges for small violations,” Boschelli said. “We want them to get the help they need.”
Boschelli said examples of situations where police and medical personnel can step in to help those facing mental health or drug problems are those committing minor crimes, such as small-time shoplifting or urinating in public.
“The idea is to talk to the individual to see what their needs are,” he said. “An officer may see a homeless person who might be mentally ill stealing a newspaper from a box. The officer may start a conversation that goes something like, ‘I notice you’re taking that newspaper. Is there something special about that?’ ”
“The person may say they need it to keep dry from the rain. Then the officer would know what resources are available to the individual right away.”
A trained officer will know after assessing the situation where that person needs to go to get help, be it a shelter, a doctor’s office or a substance abuse treatment center.
The training cost of $10,000 is included in next’s year’s police budget and police are hoping to implement the program in March.
The first CIT program was established in Memphis in 1988 after an officer there shot and killed a mentally disabled man, according to information from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The shooting led the city to form a partnership with police and mental health advocates to form a program where the focus is to provide training for officers to best deal with individuals and to properly transfer them from police custody into the mental health system, where they can get some help.
The new Santa Fe program will join programs in hundreds of communities in 35 states, according to CIT literature.
Though the program is designed to help officers who interact with the mentally ill, those who suffer substance abuse problems also will be the focus of training.
“We see that 65 percent of those with mental health issues also have drug problems,” said Boschelli.
Police say trained CIT officers can better handle crises when they are called to a scene or even prevent crises from happening in the first place.
“Sometimes, when we deal with these kinds of people, it can really lead to someone getting hurt if it’s not handled properly,” said Montaño. “And that includes the officers.”
When Santa Fe officers start their program, they can look no further than Albuquerque Police Department as a guide to how it works.
“Our program is considered one of the models in the country,” said APD Det. Liz Thomson. “Memphis is the goto program in the East. We’re kind of the go-to programs in the western United States.”
The APD detective said tools learned from the program has enabled officers in Albuquerque deal with situations that are often sensitive. She said suicide threats are the most common, but also in some hostage situations as well as when crimes are committed by homeless individuals who are mentally ill.
But Thomson said not every cop is a good candidate for the training.
“It’s important to have diversity in our ranks,” she said. “We need officers who are comfortable dealing with SWAT situations, too. You try to match up those with the personality and empathy skills to best work (with the CIT program).”
Thomson said the Albuquerque program has especially been effective in reducing violence.
“It’s an important program because it saves lives,” she said. “Across the board, it has reduced police shootings and reduced the numbers of officers injured in shootings.”
Boschelli said building a rapport with people who have mental health issues is important for all sides involved.
“A lot of time the first contact (for people with mental health issues) is with law enforcement,” he said. “And officers, after a while, know them by their first names. Police can really be a friend to them.”
Copyright 2008 Albuquerque Journal