Johnson County law enforcement expands on crisis intervention

JOHNSON COUNTY - Several months ago, Johnson County Sheriff's Deputy Brandon Richmond responded to a traffic stop to back up a Department of Transportation officer.

The DOT officer had stopped a man who wasn't cooperating or giving answers to questions. But when Richmond spoke with the man, he noticed something was amiss. He had a 'thousand-yard stare,” Richmond recalled, and he suspected the man might be hearing voices.

'He started to tell me one of the voices told him he needed to do something about his uncle, who was doing something bad,” Richmond said. 'I ended up taking him to the hospital. He was having some schizophrenic-type issues.”

In years past, that man might have wound up on jail on an interference charge or worse if things had escalated and his mental health issues had gone unnoticed. Instead, Richmond credits his handling of the situation to instruction he received last May in San Antonio called Crisis Intervention Training.

The training has taught him and other officers how to not only recognize someone having a mental health issue or other crisis, but how to speak with that person in a way that de-escalates the situation while maintaining officer safety.

It's a departure from what police refer to as creating a 'command presence” and possibly making the situation worse, authorities have said.

'When you have somebody in hallucination mode like that, you can't write them off as crazy,” he said. 'Even though you can't see what they're seeing, that doesn't mean they're not seeing it ...

We've had lots of different situations where just learning a different way to speak to people is the issue.”

Richmond is among seven Johnson County deputies who have traveled to San Antonio to undertake the 40-hour Crisis Intervention Training program put on by the San Antonio Police Department. Other police departments in Johnson County have sent a handful of officers to receive the same training, but officials in the county have plans to build on that training in a big way.

'We've seen the results of what they've accomplished” in San Antonio, said Maj. Steve Dolezal with the sheriff's office. 'We knew it's not sustainable for us to continue to send officers down there ...

Our goal is to bring the training back to Johnson County. We want to expand it beyond that to our region.

'It's a lofty goal, but we want to do this sometime in 2017.”

Dolezal said he hopes to provide training to every law enforcement officer in Crisis Intervention Training next year.

The training eventually will be offered to other departments in the region.

Since Dolezal's visit to Texas, other officials have gone down to San Antonio - including Iowa City Police Chief Sam Hargadine and City Manager Tom Markus. They have returned ready to buy into the training concept.

'It's snowballing,” Dolezal said. 'Hopefully we can keep it going. I don't want to take ‘no' for an answer. I want to figure out how it can happen.”

Like the ‘Wizard of oz'

The Crisis Intervention Training is just one facet of a four-pronged approach to address mental health and homeless issues in the county modeled after the San Antonio approach, said Jessica Peckover, the county's jail alternatives coordinator. Peckover said subcommittees she oversees also are going to explore creating a low barrier homeless shelter that would be open year-round, as opposed to the one only open during the winter months that gives someone with substance abuse issues a place to sleep.

Subcommittees are also exploring the creation of a sobering unit for those under the influence of a controlled substance, as well as the creation of a mental health crisis stabilization network.

Peckover said San Antonio represents the 'gold standard” for intervention training for police, with 95 percent of law enforcement officers there having received the training.

That training also has been expanded to emergency medical service providers and other first responders.

San Antonio also is home to a campus dedicated to serving those with substance abuse, mental health and homeless issues. Its Restoration Center houses a sobering unit, detoxification unit and mental health crisis stabilization unit where visitors can stay up to 24 hours. It also has a primary care clinic and a unit dedicated to addressing heroin addiction.

Across the street is Haven for Hope, a service provider for the homeless, Peckover said. Outside the facility is a no-barrier shelter - essentially a concrete slab with awnings to protect from the rain - for those who are not yet willing or able to give up substance abuse and receive further services.

'If you want to get treatment, you get to go inside,” she said. Inside the shelter, 'it's like the ‘Wizard of Oz' - suddenly things are in color. You go inside and it literally looks like a college campus.”

Haven for Hope offers educational and employment services and works with the Center for Health Care Services - which runs the Restoration Center - to provide a 90-day substance abuse program.

'It's two separate entities, but there's a lot of collaboration,” she said. 'Lines get really blurred. Down there, they do so much strategic collaboration.”

The end result is fewer people winding up in jail or the hospital, which will pass along savings to taxpayers, Peckover said. San Antonio officials estimate their efforts will save taxpayers $50 million over time.

Now, Peckover said, the key is to figure out how to scale down what San Antonio is doing to fit a community the size of Johnson County.

'It's really about figuring out what the capacity is that we have here and what's that going to look like,” she said.

While Peckover will oversee all of the efforts and Dolezal is leading the group looking at expanding the Crisis Intervention Training program, this is not solely a county-led effort. Ron Berg, director of the not-for-profit Prelude Behavioral Services, is leading the group looking at a sobering unit.

Levi Kannedy, administrator for the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics Emergency Department, will spearhead the mental health crisis stabilization group. Crissy Cangeneli, director of Shelter House, will lead the low barrier shelter group.

Momentum

But those efforts need buy-in from the rest of the community, said Cangeneli, who faced resistance to Shelter House's efforts to build a new facility.

'It has to be driven from those other sectors in the community,” she said. 'I don't think it's for us to drive this. I'm happy to drive that work group.

'There needs to be clear support as we go forward designing what this will require, budgetwise, to fully fund a program like this.”

Cangeneli said much of the infrastructure is in place, and Shelter House has a track record of getting homeless people and families placed so they don't need to come back for services. She said that the fact that these discussions are taking place in the community is 'phenomenal.”

'Ten years ago, I would have never thought these kind of conversations and this kind of momentum and desire would be possible,” she said. 'There is a definite will for change. You can feel it.”

Others in the community support the efforts.

'It's probably some of the best de-escalation training there is,” Hargadine said. 'If nothing else would happen to the system, then that by itself is worth doing. We've got the law enforcement side pretty much figured out as far as how we're going to do the CIT training countywide.

'It'd be a shame not to tweak the system countywide.”

Dolezal agreed, noting that if officers don't have somewhere other than jail or the hospital to take people, the training won't have the same effect.

'It's going to take work, but I think it's more disappointing than if we don't do it,” he said. 'I just can't accept ‘no' at this point in time. As long as I'm in my position, I'm going to work for it and push it.”