Elgin police committed to crisis intervention training

"Please, please, let me die," pleaded a man curled in a fetal position under a desk.

Elgin police officer Robert Henke crouched down. "You can call me Bob," he told the man. "What's your name?"

The man told Henke he lost his job because he couldn't stay awake. The officer asked him what medications he was taking and patiently persuaded him to go to the hospital.

The man was an actor and the conversation was part of role-playing sessions during a 40-hour, five-day crisis intervention training program this week for 40 officers in Elgin. More than half the department will be trained by the end of this week to deal with people with mental illness or addiction, mirroring crisis situations they increasingly encounter on the job.

Elgin previously had 55 officers take the training, which cost $18,000 for the week. The department plans to "continue going above and beyond" by training more officers and dispatchers, Police Chief Jeff Swoboda said.

"Mental illness is just so prevalent in society," he said. "It's important that officers responding - especially to emergency calls for service - quickly identify someone who is a criminal about to hurt people, and somebody who is having some type of mental illness crisis that they don't even know what they are doing."

The training was provided through Northeast Multi-Regional Training by instructors certified by the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standard Board. The recommendation is that at least a third of police officers within a department get trained, with the goal of having one trained officer per shift.

Earlier in the week, individuals with mental illness shared their first-person accounts, including some negative interactions with police. On Thursday, trainer Mark Benson talked about psychotropic medications - including how they might affect people's reactions to police.

"Unfortunately, whether you wanted to or not, you've become the case managers for a lot of these people, because the system has broken down," he said.

Officers should ask people in crisis - or their relatives - what medications they are taking, and call 24-hour pharmacies or consult smartphone apps about potential side effects, Benson said. For example, some people who've been on medications for a long time can't feel pain, or hot and cold, he said.

"Do you think some of your typical control tactics are going to work on someone who doesn't feel any pain? Absolutely not," he said.

Some people react negatively to medications by not being able to sit still, so they march in place or pace in a circle. "If you contain them or prevent them from moving, they are going to become violent," Benson said.

Elgin Sgt. Katy Potts said the training shines a light on what might be going on "inside" people who come into contact with police. "It helped me become more empathetic about the whole issue," she said.

Henke said that during role-playing, he used some skills he learned this week, along with some he's been applying for years.

"It's good knowledge to have when we figure out different individuals," Officer Teo Ravadan said. "Some of it we have been doing without knowing what it's called."

Crisis intervention training is also useful in everyday calls, including cases involving shoplifting, speeding and neglected animals that might be connected to mental illness, Swoboda said. "If we can recognize it quickly," he said, "we can get them the help they need quickly."