For too long, police officers have felt perplexed in dealing with mentally ill people who crowd jails and prisons.Now, Berrien County officials are pursuing a different approach to address the problem.
On Friday, 71 police officers, firefighters, school officials and mental health professionals met at Lake Michigan College's Mendel Center to discuss steps to break the cycle that shuffles mentally ill people from hospitals to lockups and back again.
In October the county received a $50,000 federal planning grant "to look at how we create better collaboration between the entities of justice and mental health (agencies)," said Terrie Mattes, intake manager for the Berrien County Trial Court Family Division.
"Out of that (money) we've done a variety of training events and developed a three-year strategic plan," she said.
The grant was awarded by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Administration. The project is an effort of the courts, the county prosecutor's office, the county Juvenile Center, which is operated by the Family Division, and mental health agencies.
"We're targeting Benton Harbor and Niles, because 70 percent of all juveniles on probation reside in those communities," Matthes said. "If we can reduce the number of kids that are entering the criminal justice system from those two communities, we will reduce the probation caseloads, costs to the courts, things like that."
The next step is training police officers and first responders in dealing with the mentally ill's behavior while helping families get the services they need, Matthes said.
www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2011/06/12/local_news/5186752.txt
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