Mental Health

DoJ Findings of 12 Sep 2012, posted here:
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/September/12-crt-1111.html
show patterns and practices of civil rights violations by the Portland Police Bureau.

BJA recognizes Crisis Intervention Team as a best practice for law enforcement jurisdictions throughout the United States. The program is designed to teach law enforcement officers the behavioral characteristics of mental illness and to provide officers with practical de-escalation skills to help them effectively mediate crisis situations involving people with mental illness while diverting those in crisis to treatment and other services instead of incarceration. BJA has been supportive of many CIT efforts, including the CIT International Conference for several years.

This engagement is to provide the 40-hour training entitled “Peer Support for Public Safety” for the Montgomery County, Md. Police Department by William Hogewood of Crisis Associates LLC. The Montgomery County Police Department’s Peer Support Team has been in existence since 2001 and aids department employees and their families who are involved in traumatic personal and job-related incidents. The training is needed to provide guidance on peer support related functions such as communication techniques, reading body language, nature of trauma etc.

We are a relatively new division and have not organized a conference previously and are seeking utilize the training expertise from BJA to help identify and provide quality trainers and presenters for our conference.

Local planning efforts have identified the problem of low levels of treatment success among criminal justice population, due in part to a lack of evidence-based programming among treatment providers, as well as the absence of a validated system for treatment matching. The resulting high rates of recidivism are a public safety hazard as well as a considerable burden on the limited resources of the local criminal justice system.

The Institute for Law Enforcement Administration (ILEA) is attempting to develop a Police and Family Conference Train-the-Trainer curriculum that can be utilized by police agencies throughout the United States and Canada.