Darien Police Department, along with six other departments from Southern Fairfield County, was honored at Southwest Regional Mental Health Board's annual meeting Thursday for their commitment to providing specialized Crisis Intervention Team training to their officers -- a program that improves outcomes for officers, persons in psychiatric crises, their family members and the community as a whole.
Departments to be honored include those from the communities of Monroe, Fairfield, New Canaan, Darien, Norwalk, Stamford and Greenwich. The meeting took place this week at the Westport Library.
Keynote speaker Inspector Kenneth Edwards Jr., from the Office of the Chief State's Attorney, provided an overview Crisis Intervention Teams. Edwards was instrumental in bringing this specialized training to Connecticut when he established the first CIT program in within the New London Police Department in 2000.
The CIT model was developed to address the special challenges face by law enforcement when responding to crisis calls involving persons in a psychiatric crisis and to better serve the community.
Many people with severe mental illness have slipped through holes in the safety net of community treatment services since the closing of state psychiatric hospitals 10 years ago.
Current laws also prohibit families from getting help for their loved ones until the illness reaches a critical stage. As a result, police officers are often the first responders to crises involving persons with mental illness and they need specialized training in how to appropriately respond and defuse situations.
CIT brings together police officers and mental health providers in a 40-hour training course to develop "treatment teams" who are prepared to safely and appropriately respond to crises involving those with mental illness. Concerned that Region 1 was left out of the initial state-funding of the CIT program, the SWRMHB has been working closely with the Connecticut Alliance to Benefit Law Enforcement, to ensure this training is made available to police departments within Southwestern Connecticut.
For more than eight years, Southwest Regional Mental Health Board has taken a lead in addressing the overrepresentation of persons with mental illnesses in the criminal justice system, at four times higher for men and eight times higher for women than in the general population.
SWRMHB convenes the Decriminalization of Persons with Mental Illness Committee which brings together representatives from local law enforcement, the criminal justice system, mental health providers, shelters and others to divert persons with mental illness and/or addictions, when appropriate, from the prisons and jails. CIT is an integral part of this effort and SWRMHB is pleased that many police departments in southwestern CT have brought this proven model to our communities.
The Southwest Regional Mental Health Board is a citizen's watchdog and advisory council, with State mandate to assess and promote improvements in mental health and addiction services in Southwestern Connecticut, including the towns/cities of Bridgeport, Darien, Easton, Fairfield, Greenwich, Monroe, New Canaan, Norwalk, Stamford, Stratford, Trumbull, Weston, Westport and Wilton.