The Detroit Police Department is working to expand a program to train officers to better respond to confrontations with the mentally ill, according to Bridge Michigan.
The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) program was started a year ago and the department expects the newly expanded program to improve the department’s mental health response. A fifth of the department’s patrol officers, along with patrol supervisors and other specialized officers are expected to receive training by the end of 2021.
Before the program was started in 2019, Detroit police officers had no extensive training for dealing with the mentally ill─a crucial shortcoming in the state’s largest city police force according to critics.
“The Detroit Police Department deals with more people suffering from mental illness and substance abuse than any other law enforcement agency in Michigan,” Michigan State Court Administrator Milt Mack, a longtime proponent of criminal justice reform for the mentally ill, told Bridge Michigan. “It’s vital that officers in this department are trained to handle people in those situations.”
The department now joins other Michigan law enforcement agencies that have had similar programs in place for years.
This training is critical because police officers are usually the first to be called in situations with individuals in mental health crises
“When you look at the number of calls we handle daily, we average 20 calls a day involving the mentally ill,” Detroit Police Chief James Craig told Bridge Michigan.
According to Craig, the Detroit Police Department were called 6,654 times to handle situations involving mentally ill individuals through Nov. 20 this year. Of those situations, nearly a thousand involved an individual that was armed and violent, he adds.
These confrontations can often be deadly, both for officers and the mentally ill.
A 2015 national study found that individuals with untreated severe mental illness are 16 times more likely than other civilians to be killed by law enforcement.
A 2019 analysis by MLive found that of 43 police officers killed in the previous 20 years, 13 were killed by people who suffered from or showed signs of mental illness─nearly a third of the officers killed over that time period.
So far, more than 50 Detroit officers have completed the CIT program.
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