Specialized Policing Responses: Law Enforcement/Mental Health Learning Sites
Jurisdictions across the country are exploring strategies to improve the outcomes of encounters between law enforcement and people with mental illnesses. These efforts took root in the late 1980s, with the emergence of crisis intervention teams (CIT) and co-response models. As a growing number of communities engage in the development of specialized policing responses (SPRs), many grapple with the program design process, and are unsure how to tailor models from other jurisdictions to their own distinct problems and circumstances.
In an effort to expand the knowledge base for law enforcement agencies interested in starting or enhancing a SPR, the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center, with assistance from a team of national experts and the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), selected six police departments to act as national law enforcement/mental health learning sites. Located across the country, these learning sites represent a diverse cross-section of perspectives and program examples, and are dedicated to helping other jurisdictions across the country improve their responses to people with mental illnesses.
Salt Lake City Police Department Total number of agency personnel: 575 Sworn: 421 Civilian: 154 Total population served: 184,000 Jurisdiction and state: Salt Lake City, Utah
Program Highlights • CIT statewide effort • Small city and rural community collaboration and coordination across the state • Detective follow-up The Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD) is the administrative lead agency for the Statewide CIT Program in Utah. Department leadership organized a committee in 2000 to review various promising SPRs from across the country to identify the best way to improve the department’s responses to people with mental illnesses. The Department of Human Services Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health (DSAMH), which oversees all mental health authorities across the state, made specialized training for officers responding to people with mental illnesses a high priority around the same time that the SLCPD mental health advisory committee was established. After identifying CIT as the model of choice, SLCPD began conducting CIT Academies in April 2001, hosting officers from across the state. Recognizing the logistical difficulty of smaller departments coordinating their own training, DSAMH supported the SLCPD’s efforts to train officers from around the state. Utah uses a regionalized training academy approach. Statewide planners in Utah impose a set of requirements for each regional academy, including which topics to include and what local site visits to conduct. However, these regional academies are allowed autonomy to make changes to meet the distinct needs of their jurisdiction. For example, to meet the mental health facility site visit requirement, SLCPD takes trainees to the state psychiatric hospital, whereas in a neighboring municipality, they attend a local outpatient facility. To
ensure consistency across the academies, each uses the same end-of-training examination, and all officers who have successfully completed the training are certified by the Department of Substance Abuse as a CIT officer in the state of Utah. In addition to CIT training and statewide coordination activities, SLCPD has implemented additional practices to provide the most appropriate response to a call involving an individual with a suspected mental illness. SLCPD operates a dedicated investigative unit for all calls involving people with mental illnesses called the “CIT Investigative Unit.� Whenever a case is identified as involving an individual with a mental illness, a detective in the CIT Investigative Unit reviews the report and determines if additional follow-up is needed or would be beneficial for the individual. The CIT Investigative Unit will make contact with the consumer to connect that person with mental health services.
To learn more about the Salt Lake City Police Department and their initiatives, contact: Name Ron L. Bruno Title Address Phone E-mail
Detective P.O. Box 145497 Salt Lake City, UT 84114 (801) 799-3709 ron.bruno@slcgov.com
To learn more about the Law Enforcement/Mental Health Learning Sites, coordinated by the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center and supported by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), visit www.consensusproject.org/learningsites or contact Whitney Kujawa (wkujawa@csg.org/240-482-8577). For more information about law enforcement responses to people with mental illnesses, visit www.consensusproject.org/issue_areas/law-enforcement.
2|Page