Mobile County Law Enforcement Attend Crises Intervention Training

By Dale Hines
Blue RAM Media/Gulf Coast News

June 17, 2025

MOBILE, Ala. Emergency responders, including law enforcement, frequently respond to mental health emergencies, suicide threats, and chaotic crises. They’re almost always the first to arrive at such emergencies and need the skills to keep the situation calm and under control.

A 40-hour course was taught to Mobile police officers, Mobile County Sheriff Deputies, and jail corrections officers.

Crises Intervention Training helps law enforcement officers learn how to approach the many different situations that they face and to understand and better engage with people struggling with mental illness to ensure a better outcome for all involved.

CIT training, as it is often called, gives emergency personnel the tools they need to better under the situation and the type of emergency that the person is going through.

“This goes beyond just a tool for the tool belt, but more so the knowledge and the skills to try to identify what’s going on with that individual, so that the officer or officers can mitigate what they can to make it safe, not only for the officers, but for the community as well,” said Mobile Deputy Chief Melvin Jones.

“We’re not going to teach them how to diagnose. We can’t do that in 40 hours. We are going to teach them how to spot behavior that can be associated with different disorders. So that’s what they can lean into and understand certain skills and certain strategies, depending on which disorder they’re recognizing,” said John Hollingsworth, CIT Director for NAMI Alabama.

Police must try to diffuse situations without using force and that begins with dialogue and with assessing the situation at hand.

AltaPointe Mental Health counselors are often called in to assist the officers called to a mental health emergencies but officers and medical responders must be able to begin the initial triage, assessment and conversation with the person in distress.

“We’re seeing officers recognize quickly that this is a mental health crisis, and they’re able to use these tools that we’re giving them to reduce the number of use of force incidents, to reduce any negative outcomes, and they’re calling on mental health to come out with them, and you know that partnership really goes a long way towards responding to the community in an appropriate way,” said Dr. Cindy Gipson with AltaPointe Health.

Gipson says AltaPointe health is seeing a decrease in the number of individuals who are arrested and brought in for treatment. When Mobile police officers use their iPads to virtually connect individuals in crisis with mental health help, 70% of them are diverted to the crisis center and only 2% wind up being incarcerated, according to Gipson.

“The goal is for them to always leave with knowledge that they didn’t have coming in, to not just keep it to themselves, but to also share insight with others and not be afraid of having a conversation about what a mental health crisis may look like, or what a situational crisis may look like, to take that knowledge and to apply so that they can improve how they manage those situations as they come across those situations,” said Mobile Deputy Public safety director Curtis Graves.

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