The Carroll County Sheriff's Office has added four deputies to its Crisis Intervention Team, bringing the total number of countywide personnel trained to respond to emergency situations involving people with behavioral or mental health disorders to 90.
Correctional Cpl. Brittaney Williams, Master Deputy Sarah Vanik, Master Deputy Kevin Schue and Cpl. Doug Reese are the first responders who were most recently trained as members of the CIT. They completed 40 hours of training over a week's span with members of the Carroll County Health Department, according to a Nov. 1 post on the sheriff's office's Facebook page.
"The Carroll County Sheriff's Office recognized several years ago that this is such a prevalent need within the community, especially the communities that we're interacting with more regularly," said Lt. Mark Devilbiss, one of three coordinators for the team. "So it's been our goal to get everybody trained."
By "everybody," Devilbiss means deputies in the Carroll County Sheriff's Office as well as personnel across other county agencies. Every police department in the county has CIT trained officers, plus there are five trained 911 dispatchers in the Emergency Communications Center, seven trained special police officers at Carroll Community College and McDaniel College, and nine trained correctional officers.
Devilbiss said CIT is derived from a nationwide first responder model known as the "Memphis Model." It was founded in Memphis, Tennessee in 1988 in the wake of officers improperly handling crises involving people with mental health and substance abuse issues. Carroll County began training its first responders for the CIT in November 2014.
The Carroll County Sheriff's Office offers CIT training twice per year, with classroom and practical training administered over five days by health department staff. Once on the team, CIT members must attend a refresher course each year, Devilbiss said.
During the training, first responders are taught what they may see when engaging individuals who are in crisis and suffering from an unstable or untreated behavioral health issue, as well as how to approach individuals with autism or intellectual disabilities, according to Maggie Kunz, health planner for the Carroll County Health Department.
During the training local experts teach about a variety of mental disorders, the science of addiction in the brain, and how to use de-escalation skills, Kunz said. The training features panel discussions with members of the public who have intellectual disabilities, or their family members, along with people in recovery from substance use disorders.
"We facilitate that discussion between them and the people that we're training to understand how to better respond and better help those people through certain situations, and hopefully to get them some sort of long-term recovery," Lt. Devilbiss said.
When a CIT-trained officer responds to a call for someone experiencing a mental or behavioral health crisis, afterward they send a referral to the county health department which connects the individual with community-based support programs and resources.
Westminster Police Department has just over half of its officers trained as CIT members, according to Deputy Chief Christian Price. The department expects to send eight more officers through the next round of training, tentatively scheduled for April 2025.