Mental Health: Law Enforcement

• The International Association of Chiefs of Police's “One Mind Campaign” promotes successful interactions between police officers and persons affected by mental illness.
• To identify best practices, the COPS Office provided funding to the Park Ridge (Illinois) Police Department to pilot a whole-community approach to mental health that extends efforts beyond crisis intervention team training.
• Cara Altimus, a former AAAS Fellow with NIJ, discusses the importance of law enforcement and first responders understanding mental illness, its causes, and how it affects the brain.
• Law enforcement agencies have used police-mental health collaboration (PMHC) programs to help officers safely and effectively respond to calls for service involving people with mental illnesses for decades. 
• To help the Newtown (Connecticut) Police Department cope with the murder of 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the COPS Office reached out to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to provide guidance. “Preparing for the Unimaginable” is the result of NAMI's work with Newtown's police chief, Michael Kehoe. 
• The goal of the Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program (JMHCP) is to improve responses to and outcomes for individuals with mental illnesses or co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders who come into contact with the justice system.

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Last updated: January 2019.