Crisis Intervention Training Update
What we want: For all law enforcement officers from Columbia Police Department (CPD) and from Richland County Sheriff’s Department (RCSD) to be trained in 40-hour Crisis Intervention Training.
Through our research on Mental Health problems in Columbia, we learned that oftentimes people in a mental health crisis were hauled to jail: the worst place for someone in a mental health crisis. We learned that law enforcement officers are not always trained in how to identify and de-escalate mental health crisis situations. We identified Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) as a solution that has worked in communities across the country. CIT involves knowing how to identify and de-escalate a mental health crisis, and knowing where to bring someone for help. This is a training offered from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
At our Nehemiah Action in 2018 we asked Columbia Police Chief Holbrook and Richland County Sheriff Lott to commit to training all of their officers in Crisis Intervention Training, and they said “yes”! There were other organizations that had been asking for nearly 10 years for officers to be trained, and as a result the Columbia Police Department had 8 officers trained in CIT. Because of our people power at our Nehemiah Action in 2018, they now have 189 officers trained in CIT! We asked both the Chief and Sheriff for updates in early February and have not heard back from Sheriff Lott. The last time we heard, RCSD had an additional 80 deputies trained in CIT.
In addition, both CPD and RCSD have started implementing partnerships between law enforcement officers and a social worker to address mental health related calls. Since COVID paused CIT training for a time, we will be working to follow-up with both the Chief and Sheriff to ensure they are filling all of the available CIT classes available to them. Between the City and County that is five trainings a year with a capacity of 25 officers each to train.
