Daily Herald opinion: No more ‘verbal judo’: New Naperville P.D. crisis team emphasizes true nature of today’s police work

It has been encouraging in recent years to see the assertive steps taken by local police departments toward increasing officer awareness of mental health issues they may encounter and of how to manage them. In addition to in-house training, many agencies have implemented policies and practices that incorporate mental health professionals and social workers more directly into the handling of crisis situations, and we have no doubt this deeper level of expertise has helped better control situations that might otherwise have produced trauma or even tragedy.

Now, the Naperville Police Department is refining the approach further with the implementation of a full-time Mobile Crisis Intervention Team devoted specifically to cases involving mental health, family violence or missing persons.

Police Chief Jason Arres indicated the advance in policing the team represents in a Naperville Sun story by Carolyn Stein we published on Sunday.

“I never thought I’d see something like this. I don’t know that I would have thought of something like this,” he said. “It was not in policing. We were talking verbal judo back then. That was the big word for de-escalation, and that was just quickly trying to connect with someone.”

Successful police interactions are not verbal judo anymore. Today, agencies are finding that pacifying tense situations requires much more insightful, nuanced attention.

The overwhelming majority of Naperville’s department — 90% — have had crisis intervention training. But the MCIT offers at least two important advantages. One, it enables responding officers to hand complicated cases over to personnel with specific training and experience then move on to other important duties. And then, it allows that team not just to de-escalate a given crisis, but to follow through on underlying issues and develop a more stable, long-term solution.

Justin Cunat, a seven-year department veteran and now an officer on the new team, which also includes a specially trained K-9, said it was common previously to move from one crisis to the next without really seeing the long-term results of a particular case. Now, he’s able to be part of a larger solution to problems that have mental health issues as their source.

“It also gives us the opportunity as officers in this unit — who interviewed and wanted to do this very niche job — a chance to actually see these calls through,” he said.

“Law enforcement” used to seem an appropriate synonym for police work, but nowadays we know that the term falls far short of describing the job of typical police officers. Innovations like the Naperville Police Department’s once-unimaginable Mobile Crisis Intervention Team emphasize the true nature of police work and the kind of structures and practices required to make it successful.