Mental Illness: Organizational Changes In The Police System

As though police have increasingly interacted with people who have a mental illness, a number of problems have become easily noticeable; despite these problems, changes to police training and procedures seem to follow several circumstances. They are having an incident where someone dies, which is the most frequent preceding to change. An officer taking a personal interest in making change, having the support and mandates from the police infrastructure and implementing a problem solving community policing model that identifies the problem through an examination of police data (Adelman, 2003). For instance, being aware of factors that lead to organizational changes in police systems can allow proponents to make use of their community resources and become aware of opportunities that happen to create change. It would be important for supporters and family members to find an officer who has an interest in better serving people who have a mental illness and who are prepared to work towards creating changes. If there is serious incident, it can become an opportunity to …show more content…
Some cases this involves having specialized police units, and others it involves developing a collaborative relationship with mental health programs to provide a custom made response calls from people who are experiencing mental health symptoms. The range of prototypes includes mobile teams that involve the joining of police and mental health systems such as Vancouver’s Car 87 model, which is based within the mental health system. Or a police force based model like the Birmingham, Alabama model. In addition it also includes programs that are primarily police driven such as the police “reception center” model as well the program that has been widely replicated, the Memphis Crisis Intervention Team (CIT)