Counterpoint: It’s not true that crisis intervention training and regulation haven’t improved

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I found Jeremy Norton’s commentary on public safety response to mental health crises from the perspective of a firefighter to be insightful (“A mental health crisis should not be a death sentence,” Sept. 1). I do take issue with a single line — “there has not been improved training or regulation to prevent these avoidable deaths.” There have been both.

The Minnesota Crisis Intervention Team (MNCIT) has been training first responders in mental health crisis response for 18 years. I have served on the board of directors for six years. CIT came to Minnesota after an 11-month period in 2000 during which Minneapolis police shot and killed three people in mental health crisis: Rocco D’Andrea, Alfred Sanders and Barbara Schneider.

I was directed by then Minneapolis Police Chief Robert Olson to investigate the CIT approach developed by the Memphis Police Department. the Minneapolis Police Department adopted CIT, began providing training and established policies.

Briefly, CIT is a 40-hour curriculum that includes classroom training in the major mental illnesses, medications, potential behaviors of a person in crisis and best de-escalation practices. Our trainers are clinical practitioners and experienced first responders.

We do not train the discredited diagnosis of “excited delirium.”

In addition, the training includes simulated interventions by the students. Consistently, course evaluations credit these role-plays as the most impactful part of the training. We have professional actors who can authentically portray persons suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depressive episodes, PTSD and more. If students come in with a command-and-control approach, the actors will escalate. If students are calm, persistent and empathetic, and use the knowledge and skills they have been provided, the actors allow them to have success.

The Minnesota Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (POST) has also mandated mental health, de-escalation and related training. For example, POST now mandates training about autism. MNCIT has also added training about traumatic brain injury. While often not thought of as a mental illness, TBI can very much affect behaviors that might result in an emergency response. In Minneapolis we expect to see much of this training required in the upcoming state and federal consent decrees.

We have provided CIT training to nearly all the Minneapolis police officers, including incoming recruits. We have provided training across Minnesota. Initially focused on police officers, we have expanded training to EMS, fire, 911 and security personnel, and public safety professionals who are often the first point of contact for a mental health crisis.

It has been pointed out that former MPD officer Derek Chauvin was CIT-trained. This is where supervision and leadership are critical. Once given the knowledge and skills, the expectation that they are consistently applied, whenever possible, first and not last, must be reinforced.

Gregory Hestness is a retired chief of the University of Minnesota Police Department and a retired deputy chief of the Minneapolis Police Department.