Crisis Intervention Teams Training
Program Description and Background
Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT) gives police officers new strategies and tools for identifying, preventing and de-escalating mental health crisis calls. CIT decreases arrest and injury rates for people with mental illness, increases officer and citizen safety, and enhances public involvement in law enforcement efforts.
Created by the Memphis, Tennessee Police Department in 1987, CIT has been replicated in numerous cities across the country. The core components of the CIT program include:
1) Selective recruitment and intensive, 40 hour, training of police officers who become specialists in crisis intervention and de-escalation; and 2) Improved access to mental health care and services.
Given sufficient time and distance, CIT officers can successfully prevent and/or de-escalate volatile mental health crisis situations -- calls that all too often become violent interactions that threaten both officer and civilian safety. When available, CIT trained officers respond to calls for service that indicate a citizen is experiencing a crisis and may be suffering from mental illness. And, when circumstances warrant, CIT Officers follow up with the citizen, his/her family, and/or a mental health agency to determine if further action is necessary. More often than not, the CIT officer's efforts result in voluntary transports to appropriate mental health and psychiatric care.
What is unique about the Colorado effort is that CIT is not limited to one police department; rather, CIT in Colorado began as, and continues to grow as, a multi-jurisdictional initiative across the State. In addition, CIT in Colorado is lead by a state, rather than a local, agency: the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice.
In July of 2000, the Division of Criminal Justice began organizing CIT by facilitating educational meetings and presentations for community leaders and stakeholders. The result of these meetings was the decision (based on community support and commitment) to pilot CIT in two of Colorado’s most populated regions: Jefferson and Denver Counties. The first CIT classes were held in May and June of 2002 for five police and two sheriffs departments in Jefferson and Denver counties. Since that time, the Division has hosted and organized 34 CIT classes.
To date, 1,700 law enforcement professionals representing 63 police and sheriff’s departments have graduated from CIT in Colorado.
The Division of Criminal Justice continues to lead the charge for CIT across the State; providing staff support, class development, program coordination, technical assistance, and funding. Currently, funding is provided, in full, by the Edward Byrne Memorial Fund via the Office of Drug Control and System Improvement, a unit of the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice.
Achievements
Within days of the first CIT graduation, CIT officers report that their newly acquired skills and knowledge changed both their response to crisis calls as well as the outcome of the calls. The officer’s written reports have supplied data that certainly support their claims, for example
*Over 74% of CIT calls have resulted in transport to treatment, including hospitals, detox centers and mental health centers.
*Only 4.2% of mental health calls involving a CIT officer have resulted in an arrest.
*Although over 55% of CIT calls involved a weapon, in over 98% of CIT calls no injuries occurred to officers or citizens.
Why CIT?
Across the country, there is a dramatic increase in incarceration rates of people with mental illness. Colorado is no different. Since 1990, the percentage of persons with serious mental illness in the Colorado prison population has increased from 4% to 16%. Alarmingly, over 24% of juveniles in the Colorado Division of Youth Corrections have a serious emotional disorder and 16% of adults in the Colorado Department of Corrections have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness. Criminal justice practitioners know that a large number of individuals with mental illness enter the criminal justice system as a result of their untreated mental illness.
Accessing treatment in Colorado is not an easy task. According to a 2002 Colorado “Population in Need” study, over 66,000 Coloradoans with serious mental illness are unable to access any treatment. Adding to the problem is the fact that public funding for mental health services is shrinking. In the past 2 years, the budget for Colorado’s public mental health system was cut by nearly $12 million dollars. Denver’s public mental health center alone suffered $5 million in budget reductions.
With a growing number of Coloradoans unable to access mental health services, law enforcement officers are increasingly becoming the “first responders” to mental health crisis calls. Aside from the risk of arrest for inappropriate and sometimes dangerous behavior, both officers and citizens run the risk of these calls escalating into volatile and even violent interactions. Prior to CIT, Colorado’s law enforcement agencies had no program to teach officers the skills needed to safely and effectively handle these calls.