Police host crisis intervention training course

Rebeca Piccardo/News Director

Police cars from all over Miami-Dade County were parked around the University last week, as a special training course took them away from patrolling their dominion and into a classroom.

The University Police Department hosted a Crisis Intervention Team course, a 40-hour training to help officers recognize signs of mental illness in a crisis so that they know how to manage the situation without an arrest.

Instead, officers use the “Baker Act” to institutionalize the person to be evaluated and treated. Last April, The University police had three Baker Acts, according to the online crime log.

College students are at the highest risk for mental illness, said Miami-Dade County Judge Steven Leifman, who helped lead the initiative to improve the treatment of mental health subjects, both locally and in the state.

Although there is a genetic predisposition towards mental illness, Leifman said that trauma and stress are also triggers.

Alexander Casas, the chief of police at the University, said the training gives officers a different toolset to help them handle any at-risk student, work with the University counseling services, and when necessary, enforce the Baker Act.

On Wednesday May 14, Leifman spoke to the officers in training at the University about his experience with mental illness cases, and how shocked he was when he first found out about the state of mental-health treatment in the state about 14 years ago.

With no real treatment system in place, most people with mental illnesses end up in the criminal justice system and the Miami-Dade County Jail serves as the largest psychiatric facility in the state, said Leifman.

“You get into this profession to help people, but are not always given the tools to do it,” he told the officers.

With CIT training, Leifman and Habsi Kaba, the CIT coordinator and liaison, offer the police departments a different perspective on mental illness and crisis situations—which will help them decide when to arrest a subject and when to help get them treatment.

Miami-Dade County has the largest percentage of people with serious mental illnesses of any other urban community in the country, with about 9.1 percent of the population either diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression.

The Eleventh Judicial Circuit started a Criminal Mental Health Project about ten years ago to divert nonviolent misdemeanor cases when the defendant has a serious mental illness into treatment instead of jail time or release. Now defendants with low-level felonies can be diverted as well.

The program has a pre-booking section, which is the officer’s CIT training, and a post-booking section to divert mentally-ill subjects that have been recently booked in jail.

With four CIT facilities open in the county and about 4,100 trained officers, arrests have gone down enough to close a penitentiary, Leifman said.

“What we’ve done is 80 percent of the solution, the other 20 percent, I’m working on,” said Leifman.

[alert type=”blue”]Participating Law Enforcement/Corrections Agencies in Miami-Dade:

Miami Police Dept.

Miami Beach Police Dept.

Hialeah Police Dept.

Miami Dade School Resource Officers

Pinecrest Police Dept.

South Miami Police Dept.

Sunny Isles Police Dept.

Coral Gables Police Dept.

Sweetwater Police Dept.

Surf Side Police Dept.

Florida International University Police Dept.

Homestead Police Dept.

Opa-locka Police Dept.

Key Biscayne Police Dept.

North Miami Beach Police Dept.

Aventura Police Dept.

Miami Dade Sheriff’s Office

Miami Shores Police Dept.

North Miami Police Dept. Corrections[/alert]

 

-news@fiusm.com