BROOKINGS – It’s more complicated to be a law enforcement officer these days, especially when drug abuse and mental illness overlap and both are on the rise. 

Sorting out the tangle between the two takes patience and can be dangerous, said Bart Sweebe, jail administrator for the Brookings County Sheriff’s Office.

“It’s hard,” Sweebe acknowledged.

That’s why a group of first responders just went through Crisis Intervention Team training, graduating Jan. 14. The 40-hour course will help them recognize the signs of mental illness and drug abuse, how to differentiate between the two and help the person in crisis while keeping the first responder safe, Sweebe said.

CIT training

The CIT training is informational and interactive, combining classroom learning with practical application, Sweebe said.

Participants learn what resources are available locally, including contacts and mental health community professionals. They also learn the different symptoms associated with various mental illnesses so they can identify them and deal more effectively with each.

They are taught de-escalation skills and “how to take a situation that could be very volatile, the person could be very irate, and get the situation calmed down to where it’s more manageable,” Sweebe said.

They were taught LEAP skills, which stands for Listen, Empathize, Agree and Partner, Sweebe said.

“There’s been times I’ve had to talk to somebody 2 1/2 hours to get to the core of the problem of what exactly is going on,” Sweebe said.

Participants in the course worked with actors who modeled the behavior of mental illness so officers were able to hone their skills.

“Gives the officer more confidence in their skills, gives them more tools in their toolkit to use on the street,” Sweebe said.

The training is considered so helpful that the state coordinator will be working with every law enforcement agency in the state to get officers CIT trained, he added.

“It’s a help with decreasing officer injury, how to respond quickly to mental health issues. We also want to help decrease injury to those in the public that are dealing with mental health issues,” he said.

“The ultimate goal at the end of all of this is to get them the right help,” Sweebe said.

Wearing many hats

Law officers need to know the law, but do they need to know medicine and psychology?

Yes, because of what they see on the job and how much more they are seeing it, Sweebe said.

“We’re the first responders,” he said. “Medical may be responding, as well, but it’s gonna be law enforcement that will be first on the scene and dealing with that crisis.”

Officers are asked to respond to everything from a welfare check, where loved ones haven’t heard from a person for a time and they want someone to see if they are sick or injured, all the way to a situation where someone is trying to harm themselves or others. 

When they are called out, officers could be dealing with someone who’s under the influence, having a mental episode or just plain angry. Knowing the root of the problem can change how they handle it, Sweebe said.

The whole point of CIT training is to keep things from escalating.

“Because sometimes when a person is into a really bad crisis, things may not end well. And that’s the situations we want to avoid,” Sweebe said. 

Growing need

These behaviors are coming up in their work more often and there’s a couple of reasons for it, he said.

“It’s no secret that we’re dealing more with drug issues these days and more harder drugs,” Sweebe said.

And more mental health issues, too. Unfortunately, some people with mental health issues turn to drugs to cope with the medical issues. 

Some people may be able to control their mental health issue with legitimate medications and counseling, “but then when you start getting addicted to the drugs, sometimes that will intensify the mental health issues,” Sweebe said.

“One thing I learned when we were going through mental health training, somebody that may not have a mental health issue, but they’re heavy into illegal drugs, can develop mental health issues. And then vice versa, somebody that only has mental health issues may end up becoming dependent on illegal drugs. So the illegal drugs and the mental health issues are running hand-in-hand a lot of time,” Sweebe said.

Not only do the drugs and mental health issues travel together, but officers are seeing people using harder drugs: methamphetamines, heroin, fentanyl and the opioids – what Sweebe calls “the felony side” of drugs. 

“As we’re seeing that increase and those problems, we’re seeing the mental health (problems) increasing right along with it,” he said.

The statistics

The numbers bear out what he’s saying.

“Our total for the year 2017, we were in the 50s for actual committals. That’s people where we had to do an involuntary committal and send them down to an in-patient treatment facility, to a lock-down facility,” Sweebe said.

He didn’t have the final number for 2018, but knew it was more than 2017s total.

“September/October of 2018 and we already hit that number (from 2017),” Sweebe said.

Reaching the same number one-third faster the next year “wasn’t a good stat that we’d like to see,” he acknowledged.

He figures his officers are encountering someone with drugs and/or mental issues at least weekly.

The national average from a couple of years ago for all jail settings from Los Angeles County to one the size of Brookings County, runs “around 60-65 percent of your inmate population having mental illness of some sort,” Sweebe said. “That’s a huge percentage of your population.”

After care

Sometimes, officers can turn a person over to family or medical professionals for further treatment. If the person has committed a crime, that needs to be dealt with on the legal side, but they can’t neglect the medical needs.

That’s why they work closely with local mental health professionals to make the best decisions. 

If the person is brought to the jail and they stay a while, it can allow them to sober up “but then we start to see more of the mental health issues they may be experiencing, if they are going to be experiencing any,” Sweebe said.

Sometimes specialized care is called for, and that’s when he can call medical professionals into the jail.

“We’ve got two part-time nurses that work here at the jail and we do see that they are here more often,” Sweebe said, adding their main duty is administration of medications, such as insulin for diabetics.

Mental health services can also be called in, as needed.

Recognizing the problem

Usually by the time law enforcement becomes involved, there have been signs of trouble in a person’s life. Many times, intervention could have prevented a trip to jail or a lock-down facility, but people don’t ask for help.

Part of the problem is the misinformation and confusion over what is a mental health problem, he thinks.

“It could be anything from anxiety, which is a mental illness, to depression to bipolar to schizophrenia,” he said. “A lot of times, they’ll mention some of the big things – schizophrenia or bipolar – but there’s so many different spectrums of what mental illness is.”

The stigma that still exists around mental illness can keep people from seeking the help that’s needed.

“People can be embarrassed,” Sweebe said. “They don’t want to let others know they’re having an issue (and say) ‘I’m fine, I can handle it myself’ or even for like a family, ‘It’s fine, we’ll take care of it. We don’t need any intervention, we’ll be fine.’”

Often, they don’t have the understanding or skills to handle it on their own and that’s where “things could end up into a crisis situation,” Sweebe said.

“It’s all that thing of recognizing that there’s a problem and instead of just being quiet about it, doing something with it,” he said.

Getting ahead of the problem

Getting information out to the public is key, Sweebe said, and he’s working with the Brookings County Mental Health Coalition to gather together the agencies and all people with an interest in it.

“We’re starting to work on what the needs are, what needs we see in our communities, to start coming up with plans on how to tackle this,” Sweebe said.

He wants to get factual information to the public about mental illness and available resources. 

“There’s a lot of times where we can get this handled from the start, the people are recognizing that there is a problem but then the questions come up, what resources do I have here?” Sweebe said.

Talking to your personal doctor is one option, and people or their families can also reach out to East Central Behavioral Health, 211 Fourth St. in Brookings or call 697-2850. 

“That’s our community mental health here. They’ve got counselors, they’ve got the experts,” Sweebe said.

There’s always hope, he added.

“There can be good solutions. Just because a person has a mental illness doesn’t mean they can’t lead a good life, but they may need help leading that good life,” Sweebe said.

Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.