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Training To Help Police Know When To Back Off During Mental Health Calls

By Sam Cholke | January 16, 2017 1:16pm | Updated on January 17, 2017 10:41am
 Police officers and paramedics will start training together on how to respond to mental health calls, situations police were critiqued for by the Department of Justice for too readily using force.
Police officers and paramedics will start training together on how to respond to mental health calls, situations police were critiqued for by the Department of Justice for too readily using force.
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DNAinfo/Sam Cholke

SOUTH LOOP — Chicago police, firefighters and paramedics are joining up to train together on how to handle mental health calls, situations that a recent federal investigation found officers were rarely prepared for and often responded to with force.

The new collaborative training including everyone from 911 dispatchers to police, paramedics and hospital staff, is supposed to help police better respond to a mental health crisis, officials said at a Monday press conference at the Chicago Fire Academy South, 1338 S. Clinton Ave.

Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said about 35 percent of the force will get crisis intervention training by the end of the year. He said this new collaborative training will help officers differentiate mental health issues from other problems earlier in the encounter and know their role as other first responders show up.

“With this extensive training they’ll have a better understanding of what to look for, the signs to look for to determine that person is in crisis,” Johnson said. “I can tell you from having done this for years that you do approach it differently if you can identify a person as having a mental health crisis rather than someone just out there being nefarious.”

The Department of Justice was critical of the police in a report released Friday. The report portrayed officers as likely to respond with force even when they knew a person suffered from mental health issues.

RELATED: Black, Latino Chicagoans Face Police Abuse, 'Deadly Cycle' Of Violence: DOJ

“Officers, who were responding to a call that a woman was ‘off meds’ and ‘not violent,’ Tasered an unarmed woman because she pulled away and ‘repeatedly moved [her] arm,’” the report says. “CPD did not conduct any investigation or review of these incidents to determine whether its response to these events was appropriate or lawful, or whether force could have been avoided.”

Supt. Johnson declined to comment on to specific instances of force used by officers against people with mental health issues mentioned in the report.

“That’s why we continue having training, to give these officers the tools they need to conduct themselves accordingly,” Johnson said. “This training adds to that level of confidence that they’ll know what to do when they get out there.”

RELATED: City Barely Keeps Track Of Police Shootings, Excessive Force, Probe Finds

Police and paramedics on Monday ran through a scenario showing how police and paramedics will be trained to respond when the eight-hour classes start in February.

In the simulation, two officers called to a faux bar because a woman seemed disoriented. The two officers asked a few questions and then promptly faded into the background when paramedics arrived, their job seemingly done.

Police and Fire department trainers will be watching and critiquing the response, but the long-term effectiveness of the training will be left to the Fire Department.

Leslee Stein-Spencer, director of medical administration and regulatory compliance for the Fire Department, said her department will be responsible for going back through actual calls and updating training if there are still issues.

She said joint trainings between the Fire and Police departments had been rare at the South Loop facility until now. She said once the program is fully up and running in April, it will run once a week.

Johnson said the new program is a “down payment” on more training for officers in the future, something the Department of Justice said police are severely lacking.

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