The first cohort of first responders graduated from Crisis Intervention Team training on Friday. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — Eighteen people from within the Kosciusko County first responder community graduated the first local Crisis Intervention Team training Friday, May 10.

A brief ceremony took place at the Warsaw Police Department training facility, where many of the 40 hours of training over the past week took place.

Chris Francis, WPD officer and coordinator on the law enforcement side for the Kosciusko County CIT stakeholder group, said, “The overall goal of the training is to equip the first responders with the tools necessary to respond to a mental health crisis.”

Mikaela Bixler, Community Assistance Resources & Emergency Services community health coordinator, said, “We had a lot of people from various nonprofits and community resources come talk to educate about mental health disorders and symptoms, various resources that they could utilize for mental health symptoms, to get mental health care.”

Bixler said the class also did some scenarios to practice de-escalating and building a rapport with someone in a crisis.
One important aspect of the class, Francis said, “is the sharing of the information, especially with some of the statute changes that have occurred over the last couple of years that enable us to do more with the mental health crisis than what we could do in the past. So the officers now have the tools and deeper knowledge of the resources that are available in the community that may not necessarily involve an immediate detention, but maybe some services that are needed or offered subsequent to our contact.”

This first class was open to law enforcement, dispatch and corrections. In September, Bixler said, a class will be opened up to first responders, including fire and EMS, and to those first responders outside of the immediate area. Francis said they will fine tune the class based on how this first class went.

“We also just wanted to get law enforcement trained because this centers around law enforcement CIT officers responding to mental health crises. So we wanted to get a core group of CIT officers trained to be able to respond before we opened it up to other first responders, too,” Bixler said.

Francis said that with the class, there were some mandatory requirements through CIT International that had to be satisfied.

“And, in fact, included within this 40-hour course are a lot of our individual mandates as law enforcement officers anyway,” Francis said. “So not only did the officers walk out of here with their CIT officer certification, but they also got some of the mandatory training that’s required annually.”

The training is really what the community needs right now, he said. “Throughout years we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t work when it pertains to law enforcement and mental health. And I can say throughout the 20 years that I’ve been doing this that this is the direction that we’re being driven into because it’s the right thing to do. I think that we can all say that mental health emergencies are on the rise and we’re seeing not only the after-effects of substance abuse and so forth throughout our community, but just as time has gone on, we’ve seen a more acceptable approach to mental health and it’s OK to not be OK, more today than it was several years ago and we’re very blessed in our community to have a multitude of resources that are available that not everyone is going to have.”

Speaking at the CIT graduation ceremony Friday, Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory EMS Chief Chris Fancil said he and former chief Mike Wilson started the C.A.R.E.S. program a while ago and that was his introduction to mental health care.

“What I figured out when we first started this was how important it was to have all these resources, and to look at things from someone else’s point of view,” he said.

Fancil stated he thinks it should be pretty obvious after the week long training that those taking the classes probably know someone with a mental health illness trait, or maybe even a trait within themselves.

“… The biggest thing that I found is that we have to look at each other — and I know they talked a little about CISM (Critical Incident Stress Management) and peer support. That is essential, when we’re talking about taking care of ourselves and keep going forward.”

He told the class that as they go out and are trying to help people with CIT-type of responses, “It’s about understanding, or trying to be empathetic, to those people who are probably having one of the worst days of their life, because that’s the reality of it. I don’t have to be sympathetic, I need to be empathetic, meaning I need to let them tell me how they feel and kind of relate to that understanding.”

Those in the CIT training heard from many different resources over the past week.

“This county, and I’ve said it publicly and I’ll say it again, we have a lot of resources, whether it’s Bowen Center, Beaman Home, Fellowship Missions, Parkview Behavioral folks. We have a ton of people who want to help,” Fancil said. “We’ve tried to give you access to those people so that you can identify them, so you know what those resources are, so that you can help people when they need access to them.”

He told them that about 80% of the people they will deal with have some type of mental illness factor. For those incarcerated, it’s over 90%.

“So we see a lot of this. This is the world we live in,” Fancil said.

Bixler thanked everyone who took the 40-hour class and all the organizations that were a part of the committee and stakeholder group that helped make the training possible in support of the CIT process.

She talked about someone she cared about, who she met through CARES, who died this past week.

“We genuinely care about everyone we meet through the CARES program,” she said. “I walked with them. Heard some of their struggles for a while. I tried connecting them to resources and getting them the help that they needed, but they lost the battle that they had with their addiction and their mental health struggles.”

Bixler said she hoped the class learned how they can try to help others.

“I couldn’t change the end of their story, but I hope I made a few of their days a little brighter,” she said.

A Fort Wayne police sergeant talked to the class on Monday and told them that they couldn’t save everyone but they can help someone. “And that’s what CIT is about,” Bixler said.

After a short video, Francis said, “I thought to myself, what is an adjective that would describe where we are today, compared to what Chief Wilson and Chief Fancil started. That adjective is transformative, which is defined as causing a change in someone or something, and here we are today, not only as what we are able to offer the community as a whole, but the brother and sisterhood that we all have here today that we share within the law enforcement community,” he said.

Graduates from the training represented the Jail Chemical Addiction Program, Kosciusko County Probation Department, Warsaw Police Department, Central Dispatch, Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office, CARES, Winona Lake Police Department, Pierceton Police Department and the Kosciusko County Jail.

Donations for the weeklong training came from Bowen Center, a large sponsor; Hogs R Wild, The Cake Lady, Rise N Roll, Dunkin Donuts, Charcuterie by the Lakes, Fellowship Missions’ food truck It’s All Good, and Parkview Kosciusko Hospital. Today’s Champions, advocates for those with autism, donated sensory bags to officers. Kosciusko County Veterans Service helped with acquiring gunlocks for all of the participants as a suicide prevention tool.