Prioritizing Mental Health Training for MPD and First Responders

Initial pledges of city council members to abolish or defund the Minneapolis police have morphed into, “we didn’t mean abolish.  We will still need armed police officers to respond to violence.”

Stop and think.  If concerns about current policing includes use of force, violence, racist attitudes, and militarization, how will relegating officers to being the “gun squad” reform the culture?  What a miserable job that would be. That can’t be healthy. I was told when I started in 1975 that only 15% of an officer’s time is spent on law enforcement.  That has been more recently validated by University of Eastern Kentucky research.  We were taught the police are often the first point of public contact for the city, ambassadors if you will. For me, that other 85% is what made it rewarding to come to work.

It is now often said, officers are asked to respond to issues that they are unprepared to deal with. That is sometimes true.  First cited is usually responding to mental health crises.  You know what?  Many officers are well prepared for that.  Really? How?

In an eleven-month period in 2000, there were three fatal encounters between Minneapolis police and people in mental health crises; this included Rocco Dandrea, Alfred Sanders, and Barbara Schneider.  Outraged family members, advocacy organizations, and the public demanded answers and change.

Then Chief Robert Olson directed me toward Memphis, where police and the community had developed the seminal Crisis Intervention Training approach.  Our MPD academy director and the department psychologist paid a visit to Memphis and came back highly recommending crisis intervention for Minneapolis.  With the support of Hennepin County, NAMI, TASKS Unlimited and, Senator Paul Wellstone, CIT came to Minnesota.  MPD was the first Minnesota adopter.  As a result, MPD officers received recognition and appreciation from mental health non-profits the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and TASKS Unlimited.

That training, which remains similar today, involves a 40-hour curriculum.  It teaches about major mental illnesses, medications, understanding the psychology of mental health crisis, best practices to de-escalate, and safely resolve them.  It often includes panel discussions with people that have a mental illness and their families.  The course is taught by practicing mental health clinicians and experienced CIT officers. Usually cited as the most important components of the curriculum, are crisis intervention role plays.  Today we have professional actors who can authentically portray major mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, serious depressive episodes, as well as autism and traumatic brain injury.  If officers approach a scenario with a command and control attitude, the actors will escalate.  If officers use the techniques they have been taught, remain empathetic, compassionate, and persistent, the actors allow them to have success.

This training, born in MPD, is now provided by non-profits external to police departments, dedicated to helping first responders learn to resolve mental health crises effectively and non-violently.  Two of the Minnesota non-profits that do this work are the Minnesota Crisis Intervention Team (MNCIT) and the Barbara Schneider Foundation.  I have worked with both and am currently on the board of MNCIT.

In recent years MNCIT training has expanded to include Fire, 911, EMS, and security professionals. Really, it is highly beneficial training for any potential first point of contact for a person in mental health crisis.

I have sat in while veteran Minneapolis police officers attended the CIT course. As you might expect, homicide investigators were skilled communicators, but so were the street cops.  I was impressed with the training delivered by clinicians, CIT police trainers, and the actors. I was even more impressed with how seriously officers took the role plays, the compassion they showed, and their patience to resolve crises peacefully.  MNCIT has trained virtually all incumbent MPD officers as well as recruit classes.  The MNCIT curriculum has become approved training for the consent decrees by both the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and the Justice Department.

In partnership with Mental Health Resources, based in St. Paul, who provide many of our clinical instructors, MNCIT delivered 57 classes for 1,328 total attendees in 2024.

While the training focuses on mental health crises, the de-escalation skills imparted generalize well to the many areas of conflict officers must try to resolve.

In an ideal world the police would not be involved in mental health response.  There are a number of reasons why that is unrealistic.  Calls do not always come in as a mental health crisis, the call involving Barbara Scheider came in and was dispatched as loud music.  Sometimes violence or the threat of violence is present.  Sometimes police are the only emergency responders immediately available, and the police will just encounter people in crisis while on routine patrol.

When I was the police chief at the University of Minnesota there were numerous times when an officer dropped his or her gun belt and dove into the Mississippi river to save someone who had either fallen into the river or attempted to take their own life.  The Washington Avenue bridge has drawn many, from poet John Berryman on, to commit suicide with a leap into the river. Just this week there was another appeal to the Legislature to fund barriers to inhibit impulsive fatal decisions on the Washington Avenue Bridge.

On one occasion a young woman drank a caustic liquid (Drano) and jumped into the river.  A UMPD officer, former Gopher lineman, Mark McElroy to be precise, dropped his gear, dove into the river, and brought her to safety.  Then, he swam back out to recover the container floating in the river so the paramedics would know exactly what she had consumed.

Another UMPD Officer, Marianne Scheel, dove into the river to save lives on multiple occasions.

Impulsive suicide attempts by students were a definite concern.  I awarded lifesaving recognition to a group of students who saved another student’s life by persuading her to come back over the railing and calmed her until UMPD arrived.

MPD also has many life-saving success stories.  A man despondent over the breakup of his relationship, was stopped on the Lyndale Avenue bridge over Minnehaha Creek.  He stepped from his vehicle, doused himself in gasoline, and produced a cigarette lighter.  Traffic was rerouted during this rush hour incident, CIT officers provided him one of their own cell phones, and initiated a protracted dialogue with him.  Ultimately, they convinced him to accept help.

It has sometimes been suggested this level of effort is only offered when the person in crisis is Caucasian.  That is not so.  A much beloved, now passed on, Black Officer, Riley Gilchrist, was a trained hostage negotiator.  On his last night with MPD he conducted a multi-hour negotiation with an African American gentleman in crisis, threatening to take his own life, who would only speak with a Black officer.

If higher level mental health resources are available and appropriate, like the Minneapolis Behavioral Crisis Response Team, we should absolutely provide that.  Co-responder programs, a social worker and a police officer, in Minneapolis and a number of suburbs, have increased as an option. My wife was a Hennepin County Social worker with a mental health caseload for 34 years. Everyone who knew Barb’s work says she was excellent.  She was physically assaulted three times, once fairly seriously.  She developed a good sense for danger. When there was potential danger, she would ask a police officer to accompany her.  If the scene was safe, she would thank the officers and let them get back to other duties.  She said she never had a bad experience with either a Minneapolis or a suburban officer.

Without doubt police officers will remain involved in mental health crisis response.  That being the case, it is incumbent upon us to assure that our officers have the resources, understanding, and training to compassionately bring mental health crises to safe conclusions.