Empathy Not Sympathy

According to National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), approximately 2,700 locations in the United States have a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT). In May 2022, one such CIT program made it to Lee County.

“We need more complete resources,” said Officer Chase Higgins, explaining the reasoning behind the CIT program. “We need better options and better dispositions for people in crisis than jail. And the main idea is we want to make crisis response safer for everybody involved — law enforcement, people in crisis, mental health providers.”

CIT is designed to train officers on how to handle situations

where an individual may be exhibiting disruptive behavior due to a mental illness or a mental health crisis.

The Opelika Police Department has partnered with East Alabama Mental Health Center, National Alliance on Mental Illness for East Alabama, Tuscaloosa Police Department, Auburn University Sociology Department, Lee County Detention Center and Auburn University Psychological Services to bring a holistic CIT to the county.

Higgins, training officer and CIT coordinator at Opelika Police Department, explained citizens often call the police when an individual is engaging in disorderly or disruptive behavior. Some of these cases involve an individual living with a mental illness. As law enforcement, however, they are primarily there for issues related to the law. They cannot provide mental health care.

In these cases, it’s common to take the individual to jail. However, this results in the individual rarely receiving the treatment they need and being released from jail with the root problem being unresolved. CIT is about breaking that cycle, Higgins said.

While this program can benefit a variety of populations, CIT does aid in protecting Lee County’s veteran population. According to NAMI, 11% to 20% of veterans experience PTSD every year and suicide rates have increased by 25% since 2020.

Higgins noted while veterans have an increased risk of mental

illness, the other side of the coin is veterans also face stigma around mental health because the experience of being a veteran is associated with a specific type of trauma.

“There can be a stigma that veterans are, for lack of a better term and speaking the language ... ‘messed up in the head,’” he said. “[That] veterans are just PTSD-riddled and are always going to be a conflict for law enforcement, and they’re a risk of violence against law enforcement. In reality, that’s not the case.”

For instance, according to a study by the United States Sentencing Commission, veterans only make up 6% of individuals in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons as of 2019.

Higgins said he hopes the program not only makes crisis

response safer for law enforcement, the community and individuals in crisis, but that it also helps break down the stigmas around mental health.

Part of the breaking down of stigmas is done during the training. Higgins said for an officer to de-escalate a situation, they have to be able to see past the behavior to the person behind the behavior. Crisis situations require high empathy in order to successfully talk a person out of a crisis.

“This is a shared training office; Sgt. James Daniel is here; Officer Justin Winter is here,” Higgins said, motioning to the desk surrounding him. “And one of the things that we constantly preach in this office and tie into all of our training is practice empathy, not sympathy. Because empathy enables us to do our job effectively, make rational decisions, not choose based on emotion but to also exercise emotional quotient to understand here’s what this person is going through.”

Higgins said the other emphasis of the program is getting people to the resources they need. According to 2020 census data, Lee County has nearly 10,000 veterans in the area. As an Army veteran himself, Higgins said Lee County holds a lot of veteran resources.

There is a Veterans Court in Lee County should an arrest occur. Lee County is also one of the only jurisdictions in Alabama that has mental health experts in the jail. During crisis situations, Higgins said the department also tries to keep in contact with Lee County Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs.

From a law enforcement standpoint, Higgins said veterans have been more of an asset to the community than an issue. However, programs like CIT exist to ensure veterans continue to have the care and resources they need.

“It’s a partnership between three core entities,” Higgins said. “Everybody’s grouped into one of three slots — law enforcement, mental health professionals and advocates. Advocates include family members, and people with that lived experience.

“The fact that we’ve all come together and said, ‘Hey, this is a need, let’s work on ways to find solutions to the problems and fill the gaps and services’ is probably the coolest thing about CIT.”

OPD’s CIT program is one of the newest in Alabama — it officially began six months ago. Long term, Higgins said he hopes to see a CIT presence in other East Alabama police departments including Chambers, Tallapoosa and Russell County.

“I think for people who CIT serves, it’s important that they know that their peers are steering this,” Higgins said. “They’re guiding this program. ... [I] get to tell people we have some very strong-willed people living with mental illness who are guiding this program to include veterans.”