Model law enforcement program offers ways to work with mentally ill suspected offenders

Law enforcement personnel in Fairfax County, Va., are receiving specialized training giving them tools to defuse potentially violent situations involving mentally ill citizens, before force becomes necessary, county law enforcement leaders told a Newsmaker at the National Press Club on Thursday.

The “Diversion First” program, which county officials see as a national model, is designed to change the way that officers on the street and deputies in the jail interact with suspected offenders who have mental health and emotional issues.

“We call it de-escalation through tactical procedures,” said Fairfax County Police Chief Ed Roessler, noting that in his department’s experience, the bulk of violent encounters on the street involve individuals with some type of mental health issue.

“Through crisis intervention skills, you can hold, mitigate and contain the situation,” Roessler said. The ultimate goal is for officers to instinctively use their Diversion First training before “reverting to the tools on their tool belt, meaning their weapons,” he added.

Trainees at the Fairfax County Police Academy are now taught crisis intervention skills in their first days as recruits, according to Roessler, and about half of currently serving officers have been through the course, with the number rising steadily.

Training methods include training with interactive screens that mimic real-life confrontational or perceived confrontational situations, as well as graded role-playing judged by both law enforcement and certified mental health professionals. The Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office, responsible for the operations of the Fairfax County Jail, prisoner transport as well as issuing summons and eviction orders, also fully participates in the program.

Sheriff’s Office Lt. Derrick Ledford said crisis intervention training in the Fairfax County Jail includes the use of “Telepsychiatry,” where mental health professionals interview and evaluate inmates remotely, as well as simple procedural shifts like changing the time inmates are released back on to the street from midnight, to the current time of 8 a.m., when outside mental health services are available to newly freed individuals.

Deputies charged with transporting prisoners, as well as court officers, are also trained to interact in a way that serves as another mental health evaluation.

“What we’re asking deputies and officers to do is essentially a mental health investigation,” Ledford said.

He noted that eligibility for the process is still at the discretion of the Sheriff’s department, mostly depending on the crime charged.

Since January, the Diversion First program in Fairfax County has sent over 100 individuals -- who otherwise would have been incarcerated -- into the county mental health system, said Fairfax County Supervisor John Cook, Chair of the Board of Supervisors Public Safety Committee. He noted that it costs taxpayers $64,000 a year to jail someone, as opposed to $7,500 a year for mental health treatment.

“They are off the track to incarceration and on to the track of treatment,” Ledford said.

Fairfax County Supervisor John Cook, also speaking at the event, outlined the department's crisis intervention training program's goals to instruct officers how to respond to individuals suffering a mental health episode.