Niemiec, who joined the department in 2004, recalled a story from his rookie days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A father dialed 911 because he could no longer handle his son \u2014 a towering 20-year-old whose developmental disability left him with the temperament of a 9-year-old. Niemiec, who had no crisis intervention training, strode into the home and told the son he needed to listen. He threw a tantrum, Niemiec said, and the pair fought.<\/p>\n
If he could redo the interaction today, Niemiec would step back, be patient and recognize the man had a disability.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNAMI is helping us prevent \u2026 those mistakes,\u201d he said, \u201cwhich inevitably saves lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Members with the National Alliance on Mental Illness help train officers with the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office in 2017.<\/p>\n
File\/Grace Beahm Alford\/Staff<\/p>\n
Expanding crisis training across SC<\/p>\n
Some South Carolina law enforcement agencies have dedicated crisis intervention teams. The city of Greenville\u2019s police department created one in 2010 after a 39-year-old man with schizophrenia died in its custody.<\/p>\n
Andrew Torres\u2019 family members requested that he be taken to a hospital for involuntary commitment by plainclothes officers trained in dealing with the mentally ill. None was available, according to court documents. A struggle ensued between Torres and officers when they arrived at his house. Torres went into cardiac arrest and soon died.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors didn\u2019t bring charges against the officers, and the police department\u2019s investigators determined they didn\u2019t violate any policies or procedures. But Torres\u2019 death made the top brass take a hard look at how they could improve encounters with people experiencing a mental health crisis, said Stacey Owens, a former Greenville police captain.<\/p>\n
Owens\u2019 chief asked him to head up the effort. He worked with the local NAMI chapter to organize the department\u2019s first training, which hosted about 25 officers. The program grew from there.<\/p>\n
Officers become certified members of the crisis intervention team after completing the training, a Greenville police spokesperson said. The goal is to send every patrol officer, and new employees must attend within their first year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Niemiec, who joined the department in 2004, recalled a story from his rookie days.\u00a0 A father dialed 911…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[276],"tags":[99739,213369,213368,18,213365,135,19,17,213371,213364,167,502,213370,92619,213367,213366],"class_list":["post-489028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-charleston-news","tag-cit-training","tag-crisis-intervention-team","tag-eire","tag-greenville-news","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jason-jepson","tag-jermaine-massey","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-myrtle-beach-news","tag-nami","tag-north-charleston-police","tag-sc-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116589338623682353","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}