GRANT-2024-8 : Requesting the Acceptance of a Grant in the Amount of $66,000 to fund the cost of crisis intervention and mental health first aid trainings for the Melrose Police Department

Transcript (~13 min @ 50:53)

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▶ 50:41 Maya Jamaleddine: now Grant 2024 dash eight requesting the acceptance of a grant in the amount of 66, uh, thousand to fund the cost of crisis intervention and mental health First aid trainings for the, uh, Meadows Police Department. Um, good evening, chief Holier.

▶ 51:00 Speaker 10: Good evening, everybody. And, uh, welcome and congratulations to the new councilors. Looking forward to working with all of you. Um, so I'll be brief. Um, this is a $66,000, uh, grant awarded, uh, by the Department of Mental Health. It's a non-matching grant. Doesn't require any, uh, city money to be matched. And I will, I find it easier probably to just read the description of the two different types of training that we will be sending our offices to. And the first is a 40 hour, um, crisis Intervention Team training. Um, and this description is taken right directly from Metro Boston Crisis Intervention Team Training and Technical Assistance Center. So CIT training is what it's known as. It's 40 hour course. It's comprised around five key themes, increased understanding of behavioral health, effective communication and engagement skills, verbal and tactical deescalation, navigating community resources and risk assessment tools. Offices who have completed this training will learn to understand common signs and symptoms of mental illness and recognize them in crisis situations. And they're also equipped with the knowledge and skills to guess to guide best practices when responding to individuals impacted by psychiatric illness. Developmental disorders in co-occurring substance abuse, substance use disorders. Additionally, CIT training is tactically sound police training related to officer and public safety is always paramount. And officers who have attended this training have shared how they utilize these skills learned CIT training on the job daily. So this 40 hour courses designed for patrol officers who, uh, who have regular interactions with the community members experiencing a crisis. Um, the second training that we're gonna send, uh, our offices to is Mental Health First Aid. That's a one day training. And this description is taken directly from MPTC, which is, um, where we would be sending our offices to. So, mental Health First Aid training is to train and prepare officers to recognize and respond to mental health challenges. And crisis offices will receive instruction on identifying mental health disorders and recognizing their symptoms, understanding the impact of mental health disorders, developing engagement plans, excuse me, in managing crisis situations. So, Madam Chair, so these two trainings, the whole department, eight to 10 offices will be trained in the 40 hour course, 14 supervisors in a 16 hour crisis inter entry course, and the whole department. And the One Day Mental Health First Aid, to me, it's very important. Uh, obviously it's grant, so it's a win-win for everybody. Uh, but mental health is, is huge. And not only policing, um, I'm sure there's probably everyone here can, has been touched by it. So the training is not only for the community, but for our police officers, which is very vital because I think they're gonna take something professionally and they're certainly gonna take something, uh, personally back with them, uh, to their own house, uh, themselves. So we're very excited and, uh, we're looking ready and we're ready to get going. We got, uh, registrations all signed up, and there's plenty of courses to get this done in the next three, four months.

▶ 54:13 Speaker 9: Awesome. Uh, Councillor Stewart.

▶ 54:17 Robb Stewart: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you Chief Fowler for being here this evening. This sounds, uh, very exciting. Uh, congratulations on winning this grant. I think it's a, a great, uh, forward step for the community. Um, how many officers will be going to the training?

▶ 54:28 Speaker 10: So the entire department, um, we right now are budgeted for 50, I believe we have 47 sworn actively working. So all 47 will go to Mental Health First Aid, approximately eight or nine will go to the 40 hour CIT training. And then I want to get all my supervisors in the 16 hour CIT training.

▶ 54:47 Robb Stewart: Great. Great. And that includes, uh, non-English, non-English speaking officers, ones that can handle a situation where they may not be English involved.

▶ 54:57 Speaker 10: Um, I don't know. Okay. Uh, as far as the training, uh, I'm sorry, I may, I may have misunderstood

▶ 55:04 Robb Stewart: You. It's gonna be in English, but what I'm saying is, do you have officers that have non-English speaking capability Oh, correct. That are gonna be going to this training, correct?

▶ 55:10 Speaker 2: Yes, sir. Great. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. Madam Chair. Welcome.

▶ 55:13 Maya Jamaleddine: Uh, counselor Che. And then I have Counselor Ram after.

▶ 55:18 Manjula Karamcheti: First I just wanted to say thank you for pursuing this grant in regards to crisis intervention and Mental Health First Aid. I think you and I have had conversations around a lot of calls that officers go on Sure. Actually involve mental health more than anything. So the proactiveness about bringing this to the department and getting everyone trained is important, and I appreciate it so much. And also that the Mental Health First Aid, uh, aligns obviously with some of the things the Health Department has been doing to bring, uh, mental Health First Aid to the community. So people getting the same training, I think makes a lot of sense since we, so we have the same language around how we, how we deal with mental health. I'm just wondering one about like the timeline for folks being trained.

▶ 56:12 Speaker 10: Yes. So you, you saw that it's good until the end of June that this fiscal year, but there, there, there's plenty of training. We already have people signed up for it. Okay. I think we have 20 in the next Mental Health for aid class, which only leaves us, you know, we're already 50% already registered in this classes in April, may, and June for the Mental Health First Aid. The CIT training is a little, uh, not as, uh, common, but we've already looked into it and we will, we will get it as best as we can in that next three months. Part of that is, is, um, I, I wish I had done this earlier, quite frankly. Um, and there were some issues with the application process, so it got delayed to no fault of DMH. There was some issues on either and I getting the paperwork again, but we'll, we'll get it done.

▶ 56:53 Manjula Karamcheti: Great. And I guess just commentary, um, I used to be the Crisis Intervention coordinator for the Lexington Public Schools and worked very closely with the Lexington Police Department and went through the Mental Health First Aid training myself. I will never forget my A CT Act Care Tell. And so just in terms of the quality of the training, it's really good. And so, again, just really excited that our police department will, will get that training. So thank you. You're Welcome.

▶ 57:22 Speaker 9: Um, counselor Armano,

▶ 57:24 Devin Romanul: Uh, thank you so much for coming down and Sure. Uh, congratulations on the grant. I'm, uh, incredibly appreciative of the pursuit of the, uh, money and, uh, and of the training. Um, I, I'm all for it. I'm really excited for it. I was wondering if you might be able to speak to how this might be folded into longitudinal, um, you know, long-term training for the officers for new recruits. Um, you know, how this might be folded into sort of an ongoing, uh, support in this 'cause I, um, fully supportive and would love to see, you know, more of a

▶ 57:53 Speaker 10: Yeah, absolutely. And, and thank you. Um, the recruit aspect of it, um, they do a lot of this in, in, uh, recruit Academy training as part of the, uh, six months of training that they do. But certainly when they come out, we wanna expand on that and to follow up on that, this isn't just gonna be a one time, uh, training, especially if we can reapply in a timely fashion next year. Um, what I failed to mention too, those are the two trainings that I had put down specifically on the grant. But the scope and the contract and all that stuff says if there's any other mental health training that I see the department sees that we think we may need, can be also utilized with that money, uh, pending DMH approval. So if I see a course that's not specifically CIT or Mental Health First Aid, we can get that all reimbursed back too with their Approval. That's Terrific. Yeah. So we're constantly, um, looking for training, and this is just one aspect of what my, our goals are, right. As far as training, but mental health between the hospital and, uh, daily calls and, and the schools. And I mean, it, it, our hats have changed over the years. Yeah. I think, you know that. So it takes up, um, a significant portion of our job where 20 years ago it didn't.

▶ 59:03 Devin Romanul: Great. Well, thank you so much and let us know how we can support you in that, in that goal. Thank you.

▶ 59:08 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Anyone else, um, who would like to ask any question? Okay. I do also have questions. So I would like, if there is no objection, I would, uh, entertain motion, um, uh, with unanimous consent, uh, to suspend the rule to be able to ask a question. Uh, seeing no

▶ 59:30 Robb Stewart: And chair point of order. I think we're, we still have, uh, under suspension for Rule 21 C, so I think you're okay.

▶ 59:37 Maya Jamaleddine: Okay. So seeing, um, no objection, I'm, I'm gonna, um, ask the question. Thank you so much, um, counselor Stewart. Um, and thank you for being with us. I also wanted to, uh, name, um, you know, um, how much we've seen, um, you focusing on securing, um, every grant or every opportunity, uh, to provide those trainings for, um, merose police officers. And, um, that is something that, uh, we appreciate, I appreciate personally. And, um, it's, um, you know, it's greatly,

▶ 1:00:14 Maya Jamaleddine: um, it's, you know, noticed and acknowledged. Uh, so thank you so much for that. Um, I do agree with you on how the mental health crisis has been impacting almost every single person, um, um, in our communities. And how important is those trainings are? Um, do you, um, have any idea of how many

▶ 1:00:38 Maya Jamaleddine: trainings our, um, um, uh, police officers, um, you know, will be able to, to take this year? Or you, it's just as it comes?

▶ 1:00:49 Speaker 10: Um, we, I'm not sure if I, I, I heard you, I may have misheard you, but, uh, so as far as other training, is that what you're asking?

▶ 1:00:58 Maya Jamaleddine: Any Yes. Like a year, what are you, um, envisioning that you would hope, uh, to see your department or your, the police officers take? Understood,

▶ 1:01:09 Speaker 10: Understood. Um, yes. So obviously we, this training and then we do, we, as you may know, we do, um, upwards of 56 hours, uh, mandatory training, uh, that comes down from the MPTC that we have to do. But the, the good thing now in today's day and age, obviously with social media and MPTC, which is the Municipal Police Training Committee, very, very proactive and very, um, forward thinking about training and also with getting the message out. So, I mean, we get emails weekly of new trainings that are there. Most of them, fortunately, are free. The only thing that would cost us would be backfill of overtime, which is that happens Mm-Hmm. Uh, but the Commonwealth puts on a ton of free training for police officers. So between myself and Lieutenant Barr is in charge of training and any other officers, even the patrol officers who don't have rank will often email me if I miss something or I email the lieutenant, can I go to this training? Do we have the funding? Et cetera, et cetera. So, um, there's nothing specific right now in my head that we're looking for, but there's other people doing that as well, which is great. And they're just throwing it all at us and we try to pick and choose what we think fits for, for Merose especially.

▶ 1:02:17 Maya Jamaleddine: Yeah. And as much as it is important to train our officers to be able to, you know, face those, um, mental health challenges with, uh, the people that they serve, but also I just don't wanna dismiss how, um, the burnout and the pressure that, um, our, uh, policy officers also get from dealing with these things. So I'm not sure if there is any kind of training or support that they are receiving or any grant that we can secure to support, to be able to provide that support for our police officers. And I hope I we will be able to see that coming as well, um, if you know, if possible. Yep. Absolutely. But I'm sure, I, I trust that you will, um, uh, secure every grant and every penny to, to get all those trainings to our police officers. So thank you so much for everything that you are doing. Um, and now I would like to ask my colleagues, what's the will of the committee

▶ 1:03:15 Speaker 5: Motion to recommend?

▶ 1:03:17 Maya Jamaleddine: We have a motion to recommend made by Councilor Che, seconded by Councilor Pen Chiro. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. This motion carries. It will be, uh, sent to the full council and, um, thank you so much again. Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you.