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NYPD Must Use Specially Trained Officers to Deal With Mentally Ill: Report

By Trevor Kapp | January 19, 2017 3:47pm | Updated on January 19, 2017 5:58pm
 The NYPD needs to bring its officers up to speed on how to deal with the emotionally disturbed, the Department of Investigation said.
The NYPD needs to bring its officers up to speed on how to deal with the emotionally disturbed, the Department of Investigation said.
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DNAinfo/Nikhita Venugopal

ONE POLICE PLAZA — The NYPD is dragging its feet in dispatching specially trained officers to respond to calls involving the mentally ill, a new Department of Investigation report charges.

The report, released Thursday, focuses on an 18-month investigation into the NYPD’s Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model, which aims to teach officers how to handle emotionally disturbed people.

As of December, just 4,700 officers — or 13 percent of all NYPD officers — had completed the training.

The DOI said the NYPD should implement a CIT strategy that assigns specially trained officers to calls involving the emotionally disturbed.

“For NYPD to advance its policing in this critical area, it must implement an effective system for getting the newly trained officers to the situations where their training is most needed,” DOI Commissioner Mark Peters said in a statement.

The NYPD receives roughly 400 mental-crisis calls a day but has yet to implement a dispatch system to ensure officers who have already received the training respond to those calls, the report said.

The DOI recommends the NYPD revise its patrol guide to make sure CIT-trained officers use the skills they’ve learned in crisis situations.

The NYPD said it's currently assessing the CIT program to maximize response efficiency and added that the highly trained Emergency Service Unit can also respond to calls regarding the emotionally disturbed.

"The department is providing a list of all crisis intervention trained officers to supervisors in commands during every shift to enable them to direct officers, where appropriate, with the enhanced training and skills to those types of calls," Assistant Commissioner J. Peter Donald said in a statement.

In October, NYPD Sgt. Hugh Barry fatally shot mentally ill Deborah Danner, 66, in The Bronx after she refused to drop a baseball bat.

Mayor Bill de Blasio called the shooting “unacceptable” and later said “Deborah Danner should be alive right now.”