Our agency has prioritized the need to develop a comprehensive response to those within our community who are experiencing crisis and/or living with mental illness, in order to best assist them and connect them with services in the community. Our first priority is to provide training to our officers to better equip them with the skills and knowledge to de-escalate crises and be better able to assist those in crisis. Building upon the success of our past TTA with the BJA, we are requesting the assistance of the BJA to support another CIT training. We have identified a clear need, based upon the increase in mental health related incidents within our jurisdiction and upon survey of officers who attended our past CIT training (supported by the BJA), to have more officers trained. We recently received notification of a funding award to support our agency's implementation of an embedded mental health clinician. By training additional officers within our agency, we will be able to ensure that more CIT trained officers are available on each shift and to prioritize their response to mental health related calls. Training additional officers will also bolster our future embedded mental health clinician program, by ensuring that more CIT officers are able to respond with the clinician to such calls for service. We would like to expand upon our previous CIT training also by prioritize offering additional seats in the training to other law enforcement agencies in our region to help build a regional CIT program, of which will have an even greater effect not only in our jurisdiction, but regionally.
Within a three year period, our agency observed a 51% increase in calls for service related to mental health incidents and the average time spent per individual call for service has also increased significantly. On a regional level, the death rate by suicide in Oswego County continues to be significantly greater than the statewide rate. With the growing percentage of calls for service that our officers are responding to being related to mental health, it is of great importance that we prioritize providing them with more comprehensive training to better identify mental illness, increase connection to services, and divert persons with mental illness away from the criminal justice system.
Please check the box next to the following questions if the answer is 'yes'.
Please enter the applicable Event Date if there is an Event associated with this TTA.
When entering an Event Date, the Time is also required.
Please respond to the Performance Metrics below. The Performance Metrics questions are based on the TTA Type indicated in the General Information section of the TTA.