By Amy Flowers Umble
Deputy George LaMont answered one last call before preparing to spend a week learning about mental illnesses.
As fate would have it, he responded to a call and ended up committing a man in the midst of an emotional crisis.
That meant four hours of waiting through the commitment process and a scene at the hospital when the man "blew up."
Last week, the Spotsylvania County Sheriff's deputy learned techniques that might have prevented that episode.
"All week long, I've been thinking of things I could've done differently," the deputy said.
For five days last week, instructors from the New River Valley Crisis Intervention Team trained officers from Stafford and Spotsylvania counties, the city of Fredericksburg and the University of Mary Washington.
They taught LaMont and 22 other officers the skills to avoid involuntary commitments, to find area resources and to keep crisis situations from getting worse.
The local classes are part of a growing national effort to improve the interaction between police and those with mental illnesses. A state grant provided money for the local training and to set up a regional CIT with the trained officers.
Those officers learned how to recognize mental illnesses, how to talk to somebody in the middle of a crisis and what community resources can help.
"I've been here 191/2 years, and I didn't know some of these resources existed," said Sgt. Elizabeth Enslen, who leads the Crisis Negotiation Team in Spotsylvania County.
Instructors taught that an even voice can calm just about anyone. And that below the surface, there's always something deeper going on.
Deputy Dan Purcell wished he'd learned those lessons a few weeks ago, before he faced a mentally ill man wielding a knife.
The Stafford County deputy grabbed the weapon and no one was hurt.
"But now I think it would have been safer to talk him down," Purcell said.
Calls involving people with mental illness are fairly common, law enforcement officers said.
And, lately, more calls involve people in desperate situations as residents try to cope with foreclosures, layoffs and bullying in the schools, said Chris Staple, with the Stafford County Sheriff's Office.
The techniques learned in the crisis intervention training can help in many situations, officers said.
"Every call we go on, someone is in crisis," said Fredericksburg Deputy Julie Keene. "You don't call the police if you don't have a crisis."
After four days of training, the students spent the final day role playing. They pretended to answer calls involving a man holding both a baby and a knife, a woman threatening to jump off a bridge and a veteran having flashbacks.
They responded to a man eating plants and screaming, "Bust me in the head" and talked with a man who wanted to call the devil.
The scenarios were based on actual calls the New River Valley CIT members have responded to.
"Some of this role playing is funny," said Danny Ratcliffe. "But they're not situations that we've made up."
Ratcliffe is part of the New River Valley CIT, based in Harrisonburg and Virginia's first such team.
Local law enforcement departments, the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board and the Rappahannock Regional Jail came together to create the local CIT. Last week's training is the first step.
The trained officers will then respond to calls involving mental illnesses.
This fall, the RACSB hopes to open a crisis stabilization center, where officers will be able to drop off mentally ill people instead of the hospital or jail.
Organizers hope the CIT will lead to fewer mentally ill patients in the regional jail and fewer high-stress situations.
Enslen, of the Spotsylvania Crisis Negotiation Team, said her group gets called out to hostage or barricade situations just a few times each year.
But she hopes to get even fewer calls.
"Generally, the guys do a good job of de-escalating the situation," Enslen said. "And this training is going to help a great deal."