Late one night in Pulaski County, a man with a history of resisting arrest was about to go to blows with Lt. Ted Haase's deputies.
The man was upset, Haase learned, because he wanted to sit at his father's gravestone until the sun rose. The man's family had called him "crazy" and phoned police, Haase said.
The lieutenant spoke with the man for 45 minutes, using body language and manners of speech he'd learned in behavioral health training courses.
"He went from, 'I hate the police; I want to kill you all,' to, 'Man, I'm sorry I acted like that. I'm having a really bad night," Haase said.
He told the story to a room of about 30 law enforcement officers, and a few mental health specialists, in Jonesboro on Thursday.
In a conference room at Mid-South Health Systems, attendees of a weeklong course learned how to interact with people in the throes of a mental health crisis.
People with mental illnesses frequently end up in jail or prison, often because of how their symptoms manifest, studies show. With certain tools, police can connect those people with treatment instead, Haase said.
He noted that much of the week's training had been taught in Arkansas before, but never in such a concentrated way.
The impetus for "crisis intervention training," the term for these types of classes, came decades ago.
In 1987, Memphis police officers fatally shot a knife-wielding young black man who had a mental illness.
The killing, which set off protests, also spurred talks about the Police Department's responsibility to serve the mentally ill.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness got involved. What emerged was the Memphis Police Department Crisis Intervention Team -- now known as the "Memphis Model" -- which has been duplicated across the country.
A few crisis intervention training sessions were held in Arkansas in 2015. But Act 423 of 2017 galvanized that effort, requiring recruits enrolled at police academies to complete at least 16 hours of behavioral health crisis training.
To be a certified crisis intervention officer, 40 hours of training is required, the law says.
As of Friday, about 150 officers had taken the 40-hour course, said Charles Ellis, a training supervisor with the Arkansas Law Enforcement Training Academy. That includes the 30 officers in last week's course.
The academy will hold three more sessions this spring and is developing a curriculum for the 16-hour program, to be completed in April or sooner, Ellis said.
Once certified, an officer can transport, or approve the transport, of a person to one of four planned crisis intervention units authorized under Act 423.
Pulaski, Sebastian, Craighead and Washington counties will oversee the units.
The facilities are developing at different paces. Only Sebastian County has announced a ribbon-cutting ceremony, set for Feb. 28.
While the centers will be a resource, the majority of crisis intervention calls won't result in taking the person anywhere, Haase told those attending the course Thursday.
Rather, an officer's duty is to de-escalate the situation and point the person toward community resources, he said. The man who wanted to sit in the graveyard took Haase's card and later sought help, he said.
Haase, along with Paragould police officer Blake Williams, instructed the class on the "12 Guardrails" for intervention officers.
This education will be "one of the most common tools that you'll use in law enforcement, if you're a regular patrol officer," Williams said.
About one in five U.S. adults, or 43 million people, will experience mental illness in any given year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
And about one in 25, or 9.8 million people, will experience a "serious mental illness" in a given year that substantially interferes with the person's life.
A serious mental illness is generally thought of as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression and borderline personality disorder, though that categorization can shift.
Both Haase and Williams emphasized the importance of an officer's demeanor when interacting with someone who has a serious mental illness.
Stay away from "the cop voice" and "the knife hand," Williams said, demonstrating an authoritative hand gesture with his fingers pressed together.
Be sensitive when people disclose their personal struggles, he said.
"We're police officers. We're callous to this stuff," he said.
But an officer doesn't need to be "smoking a pipe and wearing an ascot" while saying, "'Tell me about your feelings,'" Williams later said, jokingly.
Williams emphasized that police need to recognize the intense fear someone might be feeling, regardless of whether they are facing an actual threat.
He remembered a maintenance worker who locked himself in a shed, fearing his life was in danger.
"He didn't have any grounds or basis for it that we could establish. But to him, it was real," Williams said.
Haase and Williams also explained how crisis intervention officers can distinguish themselves from other officers at a scene, especially if the person with whom they are dealing has had negative interactions with police before.
Look for common ground, and always ask permission before touching the person, Haase said. If he puts someone in handcuffs, Haase explains the process in detail, he said.
"Sometimes the first touch is the worst touch," he said.
The course also allowed officers to ask practical questions.
Which hand position is best, one officer asked.
Open and nonaggressive, Haase answered.
Is there an advantage to wearing plain clothes when called to a scene after hours?
That depends on each department's policy, Haase said, but street clothes are often "less intimidating" than a uniform.
At any scene, an intervention officer will also have to handle all the people nearby. There might be a nagging neighbor or mother-in-law, or people who are going through trauma of their own.
Haase reflected on a 2007 call when he was a sergeant.
A college student with no known history of mental illness or drug or alcohol abuse was at home visiting her parents.
Seemingly out of nowhere, she experienced a psychotic break and went after her mother with a knife, Haase said.
Not only was the sheriff's office responding to the young woman's crisis, but also to the parents', who were understandably upset, he said.
"You have raised this child for 20 years. There is no indication of a problem. Everything looks like the world's brightest future.
And now she's coming at you with a knife and hearing God talk to her through the TV."
"Would you imagine that the father and mother are in crisis then?" Haase asked the room.
After a week of instruction, questions and demonstrations, law enforcement officials who attended the training will take what they learned back to their jurisdictions.
Carl Dyer, a law enforcement instructor at Black River Technical College who attended the course, summed up what he'd gleaned about crisis intervention:
"You basically treat people like people."
A Section on 02/12/2018