[Disclaimer: Due to my Department's restrictive internal disciplinary policies regarding their personnel's expression of personal opinion, certain details and aspects of my background have been intentionally redacted from this story.]
Emotionally Disturbed Persons
Calls involving emotionally disturbed people are often the most precarious for everyone involved. Obviously, police officers are not trained mental health professionals, nor have they been educated as such. In the New York City Police Academy, Officers are given a very cursory prep course on how to deal with emotionally disturbed persons, or "EDPs" in cop talk. And this course is basic, at best. In fact, the NYPD brass just recently declined to offer an enhanced training program, effectively saying that they think their current position is sufficient. Why would they do this? Especially considering that issues involving mental hygiene have become one of America's growing crises? Well, in my opinion, it boils down to the Department's (and the City's) liability.
As of this writing, according to the NYPD Patrol Guide, an Officer's primary duty when responding to a call involving a violent emotionally disturbed person is to "isolate and contain" the individual (whatever that means) until the Emergency Services Unit can arrive and deal with the situation accordingly. Officers are directed to keep a minimum distance of 20 feet between themselves and the individual, and await the response of this highly trained unit. The problem is that Emergency Services are almost never available in a timely manner, thus rendering their aid all but useless. The vast majority of the time, this leaves the first responding Officers, who are relatively untrained, to handle the situation and bring it to fruition themselves.
When I was in the academy, instructors taught a course on "Verbal Judo"; a class devoted to teaching rookie Officers how to deescalate a situation without having to resort to physical force. We received a day-long lecture on the subject, and participated in a few scenarios with hired actors. That was it. What kind of training is that? And, from what I've heard, not much has changed. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the Department has deemed that Officers don't need any additional training in their apparent refusal to provide us with new and improved procedures, guidelines, and resources.
Graphic taken from USA Today; full article here:
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.usatoday.com/story/101238906/
Make no mistake about it, mental health has become an American urban crisis. City hospitals are unequipped and underfunded, and are quite simply incapable of dealing with the growing percentage of the public afflicted by mental illness. In my experience, more often than not, we'd escort an emotionally disturbed person to the hospital for psychiatric treatment, only to see the same individual back on the street the next day, medicated and released as quickly as possible; and that's AFTER waiting 30 minutes to an hour for an ambulance (EMS) to respond. If you live in NYC, there is a likelihood that you have first hand experience with what I'm talking about. For the vast majority of those individuals afflicted, there is no long term treatment and there is no psychiatric facility for involuntary care. Unless his or her circumstance is amongst the very worst of cases, there is simply no place for them to go.
Training?
So, considering all of this, why doesn't the Department step up and improve our street-level ability to deal with this growing crisis, perhaps with enhanced psychiatric training and additional resources? I wish I had an actual answer, but I can give you my opinion: the bureaucracy will simply not commit to amending the guidelines because law makers and Department officials do not want to be held liable for a program that may or may not succeed. By blatantly refusing to issue additional guidelines (other than to "isolate and contain"), the Department has made this quite clear. To make matters worse, emotionally disturbed persons are not even classified as a priority for EMS (Emergency Medical Services), which leaves the Police Department as the City's primary point of contact with the mentally ill. Therefore, the City's favored policy is to deal with these calls by sending poorly trained, underprepared, armed officers as first responders to incidents involving mental illness. It is, and always has been, a recipe for disaster.
What to do?
We could start by offering enhanced psychological education to officers in the academy; this should be a must. Then we could go a step further by hiring actual psychiatrists or psychologists to respond to these situations in the field (with a police escort in case of violence), as to prevent escalation and avoid involuntary hospitalization, if possible. I can tell you that most Officers would jump at the opportunity for more training; it is now the Department's responsibility to provide it. To be sure, something needs to be done because our current system is just not working.
More on education standards in future articles.
What do you think?
The author of this article is an active New York City Police Officer, currently serving the City in an investigative capacity.
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