Community toolkit: Louisiana police undergo training to handle mental health emergencies

Apr. 4—When a wanted suspect barricaded himself inside a car and threatened to harm himself last week at Nicholls State University, police used special training to defuse the situation.

Using skills acquired in crisis intervention training, Nicholls and Thibodaux police worked together to take the suspect into custody peacefully.

"As law enforcement officers, we go through constant change and training," Thibodaux Police Lt. Clint Dempster said. "Multiple sources and efforts were used in trying to defuse the situation for hours. Although physical retrieval of the subject was eventually necessary, the subject was safely removed and taken in for a medical evaluation. The crisis intervention training is one of those trainings that we at the Thibodaux Police Department are taking very seriously and are working hard to have all officers certified in this training."

The South Central Louisiana Human Services Authority, which manages behavioral health care in Terrebonne, Lafourche, Assumption and four other parishes, offers free 40-hour crisis intervention training to help police safely interact with those who are mentally ill.

"This is something we wanted to offer law enforcement officers to give them extra tools in their toolkit when they're responding to individuals in crisis," said Lisa Schilling, the group's executive director. "Officers are taught how to respond and how to de-escalate those situations.

The organization has been providing crisis intervention training for about eight years and models its program from training conducted in Memphis, Tenn.

"We are certified with the Memphis model," Schilling said. "That program has been in use for years and is very easy to follow. It has specific core elements that have to be taught to the officers. They learn from instructors, do role-play and hear from people that have behavioral health diagnoses who share from their own personal stories about how better to do deal with them in a crisis situation. It makes a huge difference in how they deal with those individuals."

Peter Scharf, a criminologist at the LSU School of Public Health and Justice, said the Memphis model is effective when put to proper use.

"The Memphis model is the gold standard," he said. "Police are trained in empathy skills, active listening and body language. There are all kinds of things they can do when there is an agitated subject to resolve the situation without violence. With the number of cases floating around the country, this is just a critical skill to have."

According to report by the Washington Post, 25% of people killed by police across the country in the first half of 2015 showed signs of mental or emotional illness.

The Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office responded to 169 calls in 2016 involving someone with a mental illness or disability. In 2017, it responded to 239 calls and to 270 in 2018. There were 349 calls in 2019 and 410 last year.

Thirty-three Lafourche deputies have taken the crisis intervention course and another 21 are scheduled to undergo the training over the next two months, the Sheriff's Office said.

"The training is superb," Lafourche Sheriff Craig Webre said. "The world today is much more complex and we interact with people who have a combination of mental health issues and impairment with drug addiction or substance abuse. It takes a lot of years of training and education to become an expert in that field, and the police academy only gives you so much information."

Mental illness can be difficult to spot, Webre said.

"It's not always that obvious," he said. "A lot of times it's much more subtle. This training gives the officers additional opportunities to try and respond in a way that doesn't harm themselves or the public and better assists the person they're interacting with."

In Terrebonne, the Sheriff's Office responded to 259 calls in 2017 involving someone who was mentally ill. Deputies responded to 297 in 2018 and 256 in 2019. Those calls increased to 303 in 2020.

Terrebonne Sheriff Tim Soignet said crisis intervention training has helped a lot of officers resolve volatile situations peacefully.

"Law enforcement has evolved throughout the years," Soignet said. "When it comes to de-escalation, we spent a lot of hours training to de-escalate situations and dealing with people who are mentally compromised. We've defused far more than those that go bad. Sometimes it involves someone who just lost their cool because they got divorced. We had a SWAT standoff with a guy whose wife was cheating on him. It affected his rational behavior and we tried to calm that storm to put him on a better path. You don't know what you're dealing with and we have to get to the root of the problem. De-escalation is the key, and we don't want to add fuel to the fire. That goes with every situation."

Though not every incident is resolved peacefully, crisis intervention training has been effective in reducing violent outcomes, according to a study conducted by the Journal of American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

"The goal with de-escalation is to get a subject to respond in a positive way rather than a negative way," Dempster said. "Although this does not work in every incident, it is pertinent that we use all resources available to defuse a situation without anyone getting hurt. Often as officers, we are dealing with people who are going through some type of crisis at the worst points in their lives."

Staff Writer Dan Copp can be reached at 448-7639 or at dan.copp@houmatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanVCopp.

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