Randye Kaye remembers one of the heartbreaking days she called the police on her own son.
“As I pick up the phone he says to me, ‘I’m going to f-in kill you. No, I’m not. I don’t mean it.’ And I didn’t know what to do. I’m not trained how do you talk to the police so I said to the police, ‘My son said he’s going to kill me.’ ”
This time, the mom from Trumbull appealed to the police. Her son was mentally ill, she said, and was acting manic. What happened next, Randye says, was remarkable.
“They didn’t arrest him. He called his superior and the sergeant came over and he said, ‘No we’re not arresting this kid. Let’s bring him to the hospital.’ That’s where he needed to go.”
Randye calls her son “Ben” around media to protect his identity. Ben is diagnosed with schizophrenia and Randye says, he has had several run-ins with police, all of them positive because of compassionate training.
Randye and Ben are the beneficiaries of a new wave of police officers. They are called crisis intervention teams, and they are trained to deal with crises involving people with behavioral health disorders.
“You might not completely understand what they’re going through, but you’re going to treat them with compassion and do the best by them that you can,” Manchester CIT officer Bernie Hallums said.
Since 2004, Connecticut has trained roughly 13,00 officers in CIT. There are 38 police departments with CIT policies and another 44 departments with CIT trained officers. These teams work hand in hand with the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and other mental health professionals.
“This is another way to keep people out of jail and keep them from being arrested when it’s a mental health issue that’s really impacting their behavior,” DHMAS Commissioner Patricia Rehmer said.
Just recently, DMHAS received a federal grant to fund specialized crisis intervention teams for young adults, a particularly vulnerable group, according to Rehmer.
For more information on crisis intervention teams and where to find them, click here.