AUGUSTA, Maine - Maine police officers and sheriff's deputies could soon be required to receive special training to respond to mental health crises. A bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Richard Malaby would mandate that 20 percent of Maine law enforcement officers have crisis intervention training.
Mental health advocates say the training is a critical tool for de-escalating tense situations and preventing tragedies. But at least one law enforcement group is opposed to the bill.
Nancy - a mother from southern Maine who doesn't want to use her last name - has an adult son with mental illness. She remembers the first time she called police because he was in crisis. It was about 10 years ago.
She says he was delusional and using threatening language, and she called to help get him to treatment. But instead, she says, police threatened to punish him.
"To come up in his face and say, 'Knock it off or I'm going to haul you in,' or to say to parents, 'Do you want to press charges?' is not productive at all," she says. "It's harmful, it doesn't give him a good message, and it doesn't make any headway in changing things."
Since that experience, Nancy says she has learned more about the recommended do's and don't's in asking for help in a crisis. One of the 'do's' is to always ask for a crisis intervention - or "CIT" - trained police officer.
"I think one of the biggest things that comes with officers who are trained is that they know how to de-escalate, rather than escalate, a situation," Nancy says.
And that's the motivation, supporters say, for a proposal to require 20 percent of law enforcement officers in police and sheriff's departments to complete a 40-hour CIT training course.
"You know, around the rest of the country, we're talking about individuals being shot due to race. In Maine, we feel people with mental illness are being shot at higher rates than is acceptable," says Jenna Mehnert, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Maine, or NAMI.
In December, a suicidal York woman was killed by police after she pointed a gun at them. In February, a Smyrna man who was suicidal was shot and killed by police.
"Our concern is how do we create a floor for those families that call us and say, 'I have an adult child with mental illness. I have to call the police often. I've talked to my police chief or sheriff and they tell me they won't send anyone to CIT. But I watch how they interact with my son and I can tell you, they need to do it differently and better, but nobody will listen to me,' " Menhert says.
The president of the Maine Chiefs of Police Association, Robert Schwartz, says he supports CIT training. But he doesn't support the bill. "It's certainly an unfunded mandate, and many police departments cannot afford this."
NAMI provides the CIT training for free. But Schwartz says the requirement would still take officers away from their jobs for an entire week. "You pay them for the school, which is fine, but then you've got to back fill his or her position at time and a half, so it's certainly a big cost factor to some police departments, particularly the smaller ones."
The president of the Maine Sheriff's Association, Joel Merry, on the other hand, supports the bill. "This is important. CIT training - I believe it should be a stronger component of basic training."
One 35-year veteran of law enforcement says he now wishes that he had been given CIT training years ago. Monmouth Patrolman Mike Parshall says he just completed the program in February and says it dramatically changed his approach to his job.
"What it did is it focused a lot of problems I've been seeing in my career into one common theme, and that was mental health," Parshall says.
Parshall says he's already put his training to good use. Earlier this month he responded to a call about a man acting suspiciously at a convenience store. Parshall says the man showed signs of mental illness, but drove away from the store. Parshall and another officer followed him to his residence, where the man became aggressive, lighting a fire and coming after them with a broken light bulb.
Parshall unsuccessfully tried to "tase" the man. This is the moment, he says, when the situation could typically escalate, but Parshall says he made a different decision.
"Rather than escalate it and possibly harm him further, or police officers getting harmed, I decided it would be in the best interest to regroup and try to retreat and try to get crisis counseling there and family members to try to get him into the hospital."
His strategy worked. When Parshall and others returned later, the man ultimately agreed to be taken to a hospital. "It was a huge wake up call. I'm very, very glad that my chief sent me to this training, and it possibly saved this individual's life and my life."
A public hearing on the bill to increase crisis intervention training is scheduled for Wednesday, April 1.
