Keyport Officers Honored For Crisis Intervention: Prosecutor

KEYPORT, NJ - Four Keyport Police Department officers were recently honored for their swift actions handling a distress call “that could have easily gone quickly and badly wrong,” according to the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office.

The officers, Keyport Police Department Patrolmen Elijah Smith, Nicholas Massaro, Vito Koempel and Christopher DeGroat, were dispatched recently to a call for an individual in crisis in a residential neighborhood, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

During the police call, the person in crisis was armed and initially described as upset and confused. However, within minutes, Koempel and his partners managed to calm the situation and convince the person to discard their weapon, Monmouth County Acting Prosecutor Lori Linskey said.

From there, the officers established a rapport with the individual, who ultimately insisted that they - not EMTs - be the ones to transport them to get medical attention.

“This is what [crisis intervention training] is all about,” Linskey said. “Infusing a police response to a volatile situation such as this with understanding, compassion, and a willingness to listen is inevitably going to lead to a hugely improved outcome, and these officers’ actions stand as a powerful testament to that. I’m grateful that our police departments are embracing CIT, and that we are seeing such positive results in the field.”

DeGroat has been with Keyport police since 2014, but the other three responding officers have fewer than two years on the job: Koempel earned his badge in January 2021, Massaro joined last July, and Smith just this past December, the prosecutor’s office said.

In fact, Koempel was one of about two dozen sworn officers in Monmouth County to participate in the prosecutor’s office’s third round of CIT training in May 2022, Linskey said. The 40-hour sessions provided an in-depth look at mental illness, behavioral health and developmental disabilities with a focus on de-escalation.

“Just sitting there talking to someone, and really listening, goes a long way,” Koempel said in a statement.

Instructors for the training include behavioral and mental health professionals from Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, the Monmouth County Mental Health Association, the Monmouth County Mental Health Board and CPC Behavioral Healthcare, as well as crisis resolution experts.

Law-enforcement officers learn to apply the strategies they learn in real-life situations in order to minimize the potential for injury or violence.

Mental and behavioral health practitioners also sit in as students in the class in order to build relationships with the police officers, and to better understand the issues they face while often serving as the initial responders to such calls for service.

About half of the law enforcement agencies in Monmouth County have now had at least one CIT training participant to date. Keyport will be adding two more when the fourth round of training kicks off in October, the prosecutor's office said.

“Everyone in our ranks now wants to go get trained,” Keyport Chief Shannon Torres added.