Local law enforcement participates in “Crisis Intervention Training”

Handling people with behavioral health issues isn’t easy, and it could change the way local law enforcement works. More than three quarters of the Salinas Police Department and Monterey County Sheriff’s Office have undergone “Crisis Intervention Training.”

Many call the 40-hour training course “invaluable.” At the end of the course, officers are put into different scenarios to execute the new training they’ve received.

“Most of the training entails the signs, symptoms and techniques to deal with people in crisis,” Commander John Thornburg with the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office said. “Usually mental health crisis.”

Officers learn different techniques to work with people who face different crises.

“If we have someone who is delusional or having really fixed false beliefs,” Behavioral Health Unit Supervisor Melanie Rhodes explained, “We might be coaching them like, “don’t get in a power struggle with them.””

Within the last two months, at least three lives have been saved thanks to CIT-trained officers and members of Behavioral Health. You may recall the suicidal subject that scaled an electrical tower in Salinas back in April. Earlier this month, a suicidal man was threatening to kill himself in a cemetery in North Salinas. And on Tuesday, a Salinas man held authorities at bay for hours. All tense situations, deescalated because of law enforcement and Behavioral Health working together.

“Behavioral Health and law enforcement seem very separate but there is a lot of overlap there,” Rhodes said. “We do come across some of the same individuals.”

Behavioral Health staff may not be in uniform, but they could be part of law enforcement soon. That’s because of a new plan for Mobile Crisis Unit Workers housed in local law enforcement agencies in the South County, the Peninsula and Salinas. They would work nights during part of the week and weekends, when most of the calls for Behavioral Health Services would be needed.

“At the request of law enforcement,” Rhodes explained. “(They would) be asked to respond out to a situation to help in the assessment, in the evaluation.”

A similar program is running in the Bay Area. People here are looking for guidance there to get this program up and running. One worker has already been hired. Two more spots need to be filled. In July, a memorandum of understanding with the participating law enforcement agencies need to be completed to get this program off the ground.