WEST PALM BEAC, Fla. — Mental health training for local law enforcement officers is a topic becoming more popular as 1 in 4 Americans are clinically mentally ill, according to the National Alliance for Mental Illness.
Former secret service agent and police officer Timothy Miller said the nationally recognized crisis intervention program is a good response to the trend.
"The crisis intervention training program is designed to teach you how to identify what certain mental illness profiles look like," Miller said. "Whether it's bipolar or schizophrenia, anxiety disorder, depression but as a law enforcement officer that's huge."
Director of the criminal justice program at Palm Beach State College Vince Morton agreed.
Morton said over 80% of all law enforcement professionals in Palm Beach County graduated from the school's police academy.
"We now have our recruits get certified as crisis intervention officers prior to graduating from the academy," he said. "This has turned out to have many rewards from assisting smaller agencies, which could not afford to have a full week of training, as well as giving our recruits the best possibility of success on such a high liability call."
Those calls, he mentioned, are becoming more and more common. Miller said responding to individuals with illnesses like schizophrenia may present challenges to untrained officers.
"So, dealing with someone who is schizophrenic is really important, because it wouldn't take much to accelerate some of their false beliefs, if they believe someone is out to get them and you're barking orders, that could be a problem," he said. "So, in this case, I don't know what happened. I'm not judging the officer but it can easily lead to escalation versus what we're hoping will occur and that's de-escalation
Signed into law in 2022, HB 1421 among other things requires all school resource officers take crisis intervention training.
WPTV did reach out to the Riviera Beach Police Department Wednesday and asked if the officer who shot Delroy Thomas had crisis intervention training certification. They responded that they can't confirm that information.