My Letter To The Portland Police Dept.

Dear Portland Police Bureau,

Thank you for encouraging citizens to submit ideas for improving directive 850.20 (Police Response to Mental Health Crisis), and for being concerned with improving Portland Police interaction for people suffering with mental illness. I’ve included efficient, implementable initiatives that would help accomplish these goals.

• Establish a ‘Mental Health’ Police Unit

With Portland PD receiving an abundance of mental health crisis related calls, having a ECIT or CNT on-call poses a challenge to an officer responding to a call where seconds matter.

Designating a particular ‘Mental Health Unit’ would consist of not only a trained officer in mental health crisis situations, but include a ECIT or CNT.

This would reduce precious response time, give the officers professional assistance and show initiative on mental health protection while protecting Police Officers as well as Citizens.

• Expand Mental Health Crisis Training (Expanding on the R and O of “ROADMAP”)

Understanding a mental health crisis is just one part of the challenge. Having mental health crisis professionals assisting in training is well served in expanding on existing training as well as teaching new tools available to Police Officers during a mental health crisis situation.

Moving forward with these realistic approaches while increasing and expanding training for 2.1.3.1 and 2.1.3.2 (evaluation and request) would help reduce altercations and incidents during mental health crisis situations, as well as help police officers better understand mental health crisis situations, ensuring better protection of police officers themselves.

‘The Mental Health Unit’ would help reduce critical response time from a mental health professional. It also shows great initiative from The Portland Police Bureau taking mental illness seriously and helps instill confidence within the public while creating what could very well be an adaptable national model.

Enacting these life saving policies and procedures would not only help save lives, show initiative but can all be done without increasing cost and adding budgetary constraints.

Police Stations that take a pragmatic approach and use professional mental health assistance when responding to mental health crisis calls will not only help protect the citizens they are serving, but also protect the officers themselves.

I hope you seriously consider these measures.

Thank you for your concern,
Kevin McCloskey