The Bell County Sheriff’s Department is developing a Mental Health Training Center from the ground up — a program that is already educating law enforcement and military personnel about how to handle unique crisis situations.
Sgt. Teresa Phelps, who serves as the liaison and training coordinator for the center, said the program currently covers a number of topics.
“The class starts off talking about how the Memphis Police Department had the first (crisis intervention team) to start putting a model together in 1987,” she said. “Through that training there’s a lot on how to recognize that somebody may have a mental health issue or an (intellectual and developmental disability) issue, how to build rapport when somebody is actively in crisis as officers show up, and how to deescalate. It’s a lot about changing the traditional mindset of cops.”
That, Phelps emphasized, includes diverting individuals away from a criminal record.
“The biggest part of this is not creating a criminal record for these people that don’t need one. It’s simple,” she said. “What can we do other than throw them in jail, when they’re not going to get the kind of help they need that they otherwise would have gotten?”
Simulation exercises therefore have become an essential tool for the Mental Health Training Center.
“I bring people in from other counties who are good partners with us, and they help us role-play scenarios to make it as realistic as possible,” Phelps said. “Those partners are sometimes actors that are going through theatrics school.”
However, Phelps wants to expand her courses further by involving more outside voices.
“I bring in actual advocates, so anybody that’s involved with mental health on a city level or a regional level are welcome to start making contact,” she said. “I’m about bringing everybody to the group so that we can just put it all on the table. So I want hospital people there and people like Anne Jackson.”
Autism awareness
Jackson, a Bell County prosecutor, has a 22-year-old son with autism who is a graduate from Belton New Tech High School @ Waskow.
On Tuesday, she and her son Michael “Tres” Jackson led a two-hour training course on autism awareness at the Mental Health Training Center.
“What’s so scary about these kids, who have high-functioning autism, is that you’re gonna think they’re normal,” the prosecutor said. “But there’s a developmental difference … and it’s our job to make sure that they’re ready for the world and y’all are ready for them.”
During the course, Tres discussed how certain situations can impact his conversations.
“With me, it’s sound. I can pick up pretty minor things out in the background, so I’m going to be agitated and anxious in a place like a football game or a concert,” he said. “I’m not going to be paying attention when someone’s talking to me. So a lot of times I have ear buds or headphones in to dampen the noise. It lets me get to the point where I’m able to calm down, relax and pay attention to what’s going on around me.”
However, lights can be triggering for others.
“My therapist covered the lights in her office with some paper so whenever she has a session with a kid who is sensitive to light, it’s dampened enough for the kid to be able to pay attention,” Tres said.
Officer-involved visits can sometimes induce triggers such as these, and Phelps highlighted how officers can request specialized kits for easing those situations.
“If they’re out with a person — whether it’s high anxiety, crisis, autism or whatever — they can use whatever is in that bag to calm them down,” she said. “There’s different items in it like fidget spinners, whiteboards, earmuffs, hats, sunglasses, beanies and toys in there.”
Program progress
Although the program, which currently operates out of the Belton Police Shooting Range, only recently has gotten up and running, it already has made an impact in Bell County.
“One guy I had was your traditional hard-nosed cop. It was jail this or jail that for him,” Phelps said. “But he ended up having somebody come up to him who said, ‘I’m just different.’ That was enough for him to think about the training he went through. So there’s a lot of impact in just getting officers to understand that we don’t have to be traditional thinkers.”
T.J. Cruz, chief deputy of the Sheriff’s Department, said Fort Hood also has benefitted from the Mental Health Training Center’s installment.
“(Fort Hood) is actually trying to get a mental health unit started and they’ve already had some success stories they’ve shared with us … where they approached situations differently than they normally would have,” he said. “That makes us feel really good because all we’re trying to do here at the Sheriff’s Department is offer training for everybody in the area — something that Sheriff Eddy Lange has wanted to make happen for a while.”
Fort Hood involvement
Cpt. Kristian Hill, the commander of the 178th Law and Order Detachment at Fort Hood, has enjoyed the welcoming arms.
“It was two to three weeks after the Fort Hood independent review was released on the tragedy of Vanessa Guillen when my unit started reaching out to a couple of different law enforcement departments,” he said. “We wanted to make connections and build relationships that we didn’t have previously on Fort Hood, and Chief Deputy Cruz was one of the ones that took this relationship and took it beyond our expectations.”
Since his detachment has partnered with the Bell County Sheriff’s Department, Fort Hood soldiers have participated in both SWAT and crisis intervention team training, and conducted ride-alongs with several of the deputies.
Hill is hopeful that a similar team can now blossom at Fort Hood.
“Most police departments have crisis response teams but it’s something that the Military Police Corps has not established,” he said. “So Fort Hood has established a program — that we’re just in the initial stages of — where soldiers are dedicated to going out and responding to incidents where soldiers and family members are in crisis. We’ve seen success … and that’s just a direct result of the training opportunities and techniques that Bell County has offered to teach our soldiers.”
So far 25 soldiers have graduated from the course.
“And we have another six that are in the class now,” Hill said. “So that’s over 30 soldiers that we have on the road that are specially trained for this type of interaction with the community and making for a safer place.”
Individuals can register for training classes online at ctcog.org/emergency-services/criminal-justice/training/.
“All the classes that I have going on will always be posted there on our website … and we’re by no means going to be just a one-stop shop,” Phelps said. “We’re going to be all things mental health.”