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By Jennifer Elise Chase
Since 2002, the police department in Portland, Maine has fielded
increasing requests from 911 callers asking to speak with "blue
circle" officers. And dispatchers who answer those rings know that's
a good trend.
Wearing a circular, one-inch blue pin means an officer has completed
Maine's Crisis Intervention Training, a 40-hour program that for
the last two years has helped more than 70 of Maine's police officers
learn the best ways to respond to psychiatric emergencies. Because
the CIT program has helped clients in need be less wary of officers,
Portland's squad is becoming as much known for its kind demeanor
as its deftness in breaking up misdemeanors. And officers are proud
of it.
"It's now a collaboration, where it used to be us against them,"
says Sergeant Robin Gavin, a 21-year officer with Portland's police
department. "It used to be the police officers against the social
workers or case managers… They relied on us when everything went
to hell. [But] now, we have a collaboration."
That collaboration comprises a partnership between Maine's chapter
of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI); Ingraham,
a local crisis hotline provider; Spring Harbor psychiatric hospital
and the Portland Police Department, all of which converged to bring
to Maine the CIT program. It includes an overview of psychiatric
illnesses, including their effect on a person's behavior, as well
as discussions with mental healthcare consumers about the importance
of responding respectfully and safely to individuals experiencing
a psychiatric emergency.
Educators - all of whom volunteer - include people with mental
illness and their family members, mental healthcare professionals,
advocates for the mentally ill and emergency room staff.
The CIT program has trained law enforcement officers in Portland,
South Portland, Westbrook, and Augusta. In April, the program invited
its New Hampshire neighbors by training five officers from the Cheshire
County Sheriff's Department and the Keene and Jaffrey Police Departments.
"We were thrilled they chose to come over to our state," says Gail
Wilkerson, chief of marketing at Spring Harbor Hospital. "It takes
all of us to make it work and to work well and I think [the CIT
program] is sort of a metaphor on how to treat [mental illness]."
NAMI, Maine wrote the initial grant that launched the program,
but all counterparts are quick to call the effort collaboration,
and one that still exists. Within six months of traveling to Memphis,
Tenn. to learn about the CIT program there, Maine's CIT program
was complete. It was quickly put to work. According to Gauvin, common
psychiatric crises in Portland largely involve suicides, suicide
threats or drug overdoses. With Portland's elder population, CIT
officers deal with a lot of dementia, typically caused by improper
diet.
"On the street, what happens is officers have a little more empathy,"
he says, "because most of the time, when we see people on the street,
they probably have mental illness."
It is that empathy that has likely brought about the greatest amount
of good in the eyes of Maine's healthcare professionals.
"I see [police officers] taking time out of their hectic jobs to
speak with people in a very positive way," says Joe Everett, assistant
director of operations at Ingraham. "[And] what personally pleases
me is the consciousness we raise with police officers with mental
illness."
"It gives police officers permission to be human and work with
people," he says.
Others agree. "What I'm seeing here in Maine is officers having
the opportunity to spend more time in the community," says Melissa
Gattine, one of the initial group who, along with Gauvin and Joyce
Cotton from Spring Harbor trekked to Memphis two years ago.
No one has had his eyes opened more than Gauvin. "There was an
exercise that a woman did at NAMI [in Memphis] that brought me around,"
he says. "She had a dry erase board with a line drawn vertically.
And on one side she said, 'Name all of the slang words associated
with mental illness.'" Gauvin says people spouted words like "nuts,
crazy, kooks."
"On the other side, she asked for names for people [diagnosed]
with cancer," where terms like "brave" and "strong" were offered.
The instructor's point, says Gauvin, was to show that mental illness
is a disease like any other. Police officers in Maine now treat
it as such.
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