School Resource Officers attend crisis intervention training
COLUMBIA SC (WOLO)–The Richland County Sheriff’s Department held its annual crisis intervention training for Richland County’s school resource officers. The annual event is sponsored by the South Carolina Department of Mental Health and certified through the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, three to five million children in the United States have a mental illness, and one out of five people in the United States has a mental illness.
Instructor Fred Riddle says when School Resource Officers can better recognize mental illnesses and respond appropriately, tense situations play out with better results. “If you can get them to start answering questions, they de-escalate down. Which is a good point for them. And there again, they make friends with these officers in schools and places like that so it’s a great resource for us to have them in schools at a young age,” says Riddle.
The two-hour crisis intervention training provided resource officers with ways of identifying behaviors and symptoms of mental illness.
Training also provided ways to de-escalate or altogether avoid disturbances in schools. “When these officers are in the school, and they find out a young man or young lady has some kind of mental illness, we’ve got resources that we can give them and help them out, and also how to deal with (students) when they’re having a manic situation–which is kind of tough sometimes,” says Riddle.
How to address mental health conditions like bipolar disorder, paranoia, hallucinations, and post-traumatic stress disorder were also discussed in today’s meeting.
Lieutenant Verlon Rhodes of Richland County Sheriff’s Department’s School Resource Officer Division, believes when resource officers get to know students at school and build a relationship with them, that relationship carries a positive impact. “That helps us to build that relationship with them, and hopefully if they do have some type of mental breakdown, they’ll be able to relate to us by seeing us everyday, and talking to them in a calm manner. If they’re getting excited, there’s no need for us to get excited. It helps us to bring the situation back down,” says Lt. Rhodes.
Lt. Rhodes says School Resource Officers are there to help all students in many other areas like bullying as well. He believes social media plays a significant role in bullying online. “Social media does play a big part as far as the mental status of some of our kids,” says Lt. Rhodes.
As summer comes to an end the School Resource Officer Division finds that students need a little encouragement to reset for the new school year. “We hope they come with the right frame of mind, but if not, that’s one thing we need to focus on and concentrate on is to help them to become grounded once again and let them know, hey, it’s time to be focused once again and think about academics from this point on,” says Lt. Rhodes.
