MADISON, Wis. — The demand for police reform and transparency is one of the nation’s most pressing demands. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of Dane County recognizes that and helps train local police departments to better respond to mental health crises. NAMI’s Executive Director Anna Moffit let News 3 Now’s Jamie Perez inside one of the trainings for an exclusive look.
The training offered at the Attic Correctional Services in Madison Wednesday was the first day of a two-day training called Crisis Intervention Partners (CIP) training. The people attending this training were not police officers, but Moffit said many of the courses taught to these participants will also be taught to police this summer.
“That is a 40-hour training that law enforcement training can opt into. CIP is a 16-hour training,” Moffit said.
NAMI has trained law enforcement officers in CIP and Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) for more than a decade but Moffit said what goes into the training changes with the times.
“The person who is going to respond is going to be law enforcement and so they need to be equipped to deal with that situation with compassion, empathy and care,” she said.
The two-day CIP training covers topics including trauma-informed care, delirium, veterans and PTSD, hearing voices simulation, mental illnesses and medication, autism spectrum, de-escalation, suicide prevention, implicit bias, cultural competency and a lived experience panel.
NAMI’s Critical Incident Training Coordinator Wayne Strong will help lead the five-day CIT for law enforcement this summer.
“Officers are dealing with situations they really don’t have the training for,” Strong said. “If we can help people dealing with mental health crises, that’s going to help keep our communities safer.”
With the demand for change in the policing industry, NAMI staff said they’re confident their partnership and hours of training will help prevent police-involved tragedies from happening in the future.
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