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Program leaders Linden PD Officer James Edgar, Linden PD Sgt. Abdul Willims, Hunterdon County Prosecutors Office Dectecting Raffaell Vastola, and Unino County CIT training coordinator Maureen O'Brien lead a CIT training program where police officers and mental health professionals learn how to deal with people with mental health issues in law enforcement at the John H. Stamler Police Academy in Scotch Plains.
(Frances Micklow/The Star-Ledger)
SCOTCH PLAINS — When Union County Police Officer Kenny Matz spotted the homeless man outside the county Social Services building in Elizabeth one night last September, he was tempted to shuffle him along in the curt manner cops sometimes need to use to assert their authority.
But then he remembered the crisis intervention training session he’d attended less than a month earlier and decided to talk with the heroin-addicted man, who also appeared to be mentally troubled. Matz even offered the man, with whom he had had several previous encounters, a ride to a local hospital.
As it turns out, the homeless man had been contemplating suicide but the encounter with Matz emboldened him to seek treatment for his undiagnosed schizophrenia and for his drug addiction, the officer said.
"It was like a big altercation every time he came in (the social services building) because he was always freaking out. I’d wind up dragging him out of the building while he’s kicking and screaming," Matz, 31, a three-year veteran of the county force, said of his previous encounters with the man. "But with the class, you learn how to change your attitude and figure out how to see something."
Held three times a year since it was launched in Union County in 2011, the weeklong Crisis Intervention Team training session Matz attended is designed to forge a closer relationship between police officers and mental health care providers while reducing the chance of a bad outcome in an interaction between law enforcement and the mentally ill.
The sessions are voluntary for all police agencies in the county but officials hope as many officers as possible participate.
Besides teaching officers how to recognize signs of mental illness, the training also provides them with contact information needed to summon professionals to the scene to help in difficult situations.
First established in 1988 in Memphis, CIT is now used by law enforcement agencies around the world. In New Jersey, it began in Camden County in 2008 after the death of a mentally ill person in the county jail, said Maureen O’Brien, a retired Union County assistant prosecutor who coordinates the training. It soon expanded to Burlington, Union, Passaic, Mercer and Essex counties.
If officers feel they have to use force, they use their bodies. Through a combination of judo and martial arts moves, they’re trained to grab the legs and arms of the troubled person and bring them down to the ground quickly. One officer lies across the person’s legs while another two officers hold down each of their arms.
That means there’s no need for officers to kneel on the back of a person face down on the ground, virtually eliminating the possibility of asphyxiation, O’Brien said.
Acting Union County Prosecutor Grace Park said there haven’t any major incidents recently involving a mentally ill defendant in Union County. But in neighboring Middlesex County, police in two towns shot and killed mentally ill men in domestic incidents that escalated into violence a month apart late last year.
On Nov. 21, police fatally shot Andrew Murnieks, 28, after officers were called to his South Brunswick home where he allegedly answered the door with a knife. He was shot and killed as police entered the house after four hours of negotiations broke off.
And on Dec. 4, Dixon Rodriguez, 32, was shot and killed by police in Perth Amboy after he allegedly lunged at them with a knife.
Joann Mehalick, CIT police liaison for the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Union County, said the education is making all the difference between a successful outcome and one that could be tragic.
"Now I see such an incredible difference and we hear spot-on things from police officers," Mehalick said. "It’s really an amazing change because education is the key."