Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
With 18 participants graduating Friday from Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training, the program now has had 106 officers, EMTs, firefighters, dispatchers and teachers go through the 40-hour one-week program.
The graduation ceremony for the fifth class began with CIT Coordinator Mikaela Bixler showing a video explaining what CIT is really all about - being there for each other. The CIT program is about training, but also systemic change and looking at protocols and working together. The training helps people understand mental health diagnoses and other related diagnoses and how to better respond to those.
“So, being there for each other. It’s really what CIT is all about and what we pretty much talked about,” she said after the video.
She then presented the Distinguished Service Award to Winona Lake Police Department officer David Swain.
“It’s to one of the individuals that just sat on this panel and told you a story about how they responded to an individual who was having a mental health crisis. It was the middle of winter, it was freezing outside, they had already been talking to this individual for a while, and they called CARES out,” Bixler told the CIT class.
Swain asked CARES (Community Assistance/Resources/Emergency Services) if they had anything the person could put on their feet because it was freezing and the individual had been walking in the snow and he didn’t want them to be uncomfortable or cold. Bixler said CARES tried to find something for the person but was unable to come up with anything.
Swain called Bixler and told her if they couldn’t find anything for the individual’s feet, to go to the police department and get his boots out of his locker. Bixler did, but the individual declined Swain’s boots.
“But, he was willing to let a stranger in a mental health crisis wear his own shoes to get out of the snow,” Bixler recalled.
WLPD Chief Joe Hawn said when Swain first started out with CIT, “he was apprehensive about the whole thing. He didn’t realize that we could give them help. When I asked him to come to CIT, he was like, ‘Eh, OK, I’ll go.’ And then he has turned into the officer that he is today because of that. He has helped many people ... through his CIT training.”
He said when Bixler called him about presenting the award to Swain, Hawn said “absolutely.”
“It was really cool that he did that. That’s the above-and-beyond kind of officer that Dave is, that he will go above and beyond. He’ll ask for his own boots to be taken to the scene to be able to use. That just tells you a lot about a person, and I was really glad to be able see that Dave was going to be recognized with the Distinguished Service Award,” Hawn stated.
After the ceremony, Bixler said last year they gave the CIT Officer of the Year Award to Warsaw Police Department School Resource Officer Kelly Bradley. This year, they changed the name of the award because “we really want to prioritize recognition and we want to do it at each graduation.”
The Distinguished Service Award recognizes someone that really shows what CIT is all about. It may not always be a police officer, Bixler said, as it could be a firefighter, EMT or dispatcher. She said experiencing that situation with Swain and seeing him offer someone else his shoes really stuck out and they felt they needed to recognize him for that and “show people what CIT is about.”
CIT Coordinator Tanya Jackson presented a video of Jail Chemical Addiction Program (JCAP) graduate Michael Jordan meeting the officer who arrested him - WPD officer Alvaro Aguillon - because Jordan attributed Aguillon doing his job and arresting Jordan to saving Jordan’s life. The video was shot a couple weeks ago when the two met.
At the Feb. 6 JCAP graduation, Jordan had mentioned he would like to thank Aguillon for what he did. The two had not seen each other since Jordan’s sentencing. Jordan is a mentor for JCAP now.
Kelli Jensen, justice director at National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Indiana, told the graduates, “NAMI Indiana is the grassroots organization that helps people provide support, advocacy and education for those affected by mental illness.” She said part of what’s under her umbrella are the Crisis Intervention Teams and she provides technical assistance to everyone across the state.
“CIT is not about being soft, it’s about being skilled. It’s about understanding what that person” is going through, she said. “It’s about listening and seeing and understanding that humanity behind those behaviors that are so often misunderstood.”
She told the trainees what they learned through the program will help them help others in ways they don’t even know.
Before presenting the graduation certificates, CIT Coordinator Chris Francis said he did some searching to come up with a noun for the class, as he does for every class, and he came up with the word “cohesion.”
“Which is the degree to which parts of something stick together or work well together as a unified whole. The secondary definition to that is unity or togetherness within a group, idea or system, which is what we’re here for. And that system, that idea, that group are the folks we deal with out on the streets, in the jail, on the phone. That’s our mission,” he stated.
He thanked WPD Chief Deputy Bryan Sherwin to allow the CIT course to be held at the WPD Training Center; Kosciusko County Sheriff Jim Smith for providing backgrounds for the staff; and all the participants’ chiefs, sheriffs and bosses for letting the participants attend. Bixler thanked the sponsors for their assistance earlier in the graduation ceremony and mentioned Smith is a big supporter of CIT.
Jackson said CIT participants have come from beyond Kosciusko County. They’ve had them from Bluffton, Columbia City, Allen County, Carmel and other places. Bixler said they’ve trained a lot of police officers, and are starting to break into EMS.
“We’ve trained probably every dispatcher we have, so we’re trying to get into other areas. Get more individuals from the jail here. We do have a lot from the jail, but just getting as many as possible. Getting more firefighters involved. We’ve had a couple teachers, we’d love to get more teachers involved just so we can all work together better. Chris used the word ‘cohesion’ during the graduation, and that’s one of my favorite parts of the training, is everyone coming together,” Bixler stated.
Francis, a WPD officer, said he’s seen other officers, who have taken the CIT training, approach things differently after the training.
“Absolutely. Kelly Bradley, who was CIT Officer of the Year last year, the next day after she graduated, her and I were on a domestic together and the way that she approached that, all the way through the conclusion, was entirely different than the way it would have been prior to class,” he stated.
Jackson said over the five sessions they’ve had so far, they’ve done some fine tuning of the program. “We’ve gotten to a space, I think, where we’re happy with our speakers, the flow and the community resources that come in and help educate the CIT students. We’re in a really good space now after the fifth time. We have a good dynamic with all of our partners and who comes to speak. So it’s much smoother,” she stated.
Having surpassed 100 CIT training graduates, Bixler said that’s really exciting.
“We had a CIT officer panel before graduation. We had some officers and a paramedic on the panel, they’ve all gone through CIT. And they talked about how they’ve seen something that kind of started as an idea - talking about both CARES and CIT - and how over the past 2-1/2 years, it’s just flourished,” she said. “If you think about, we have 100 graduates, how many people then have those graduates helped in the community? We don’t even know that number. So, it’s just really exciting to see.”
The next CIT training is Sept. 21-25. Bixler said if anyone wants to reach out about it, they can send a message through the CARES Facebook page or contact CARES at cares@warsaw.in.gov
“I just appreciate all the support we have for the program,” Francis concluded.
