Police Mental Health Initiative

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2009

Persons with mental illness are falling through the cracks of the social safety net and are landing in the hands of police officers, in the arms of the criminal justice system, and within the grasp of the correctional institutions at an alarming rate. Recognizing the fact, Suffolk County is not unaffected by this national issue, in 2007 the Suffolk County Police Department launched a comprehensive initiative geared towards dramatically improving services provided to persons with mental illness by establishing formidable, cooperative relationships between law enforcement and the mental health community, by dramatically improving the efficiency of police-hospital interactions as they relate to obtaining emergency psychiatric care for persons with mental illness, by upgrading the level of training for police officers by implementing a Crisis Intervention Training program, and by enhancing the level of citizen participation in Police Department operations as they relate to the handling of mental health emergencies.