First responders get special training for crisis calls

Suicide: the silent crisis
Three-part series - Part 3

GIBSONBURG - Paul Whitaker vividly remembers the call.

“We arrived. A man was sitting in his vehicle with a rifle, and we started to approach his truck and he shot himself while we were approaching the vehicle,” Whitaker said.

The police chief of Gibsonburg — population 2,587 — said that while his department does not get the same volume of suicide-related calls as larger cities, there were 32 suicide-related calls from 2013 to 2016.

And many of those crisis intervention calls put both the suicidal subject and Gibsonburg police officers in dangerous situations, Whitaker said.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter of Sandusky, Seneca and Wyandot counties has been holding Crisis Intervention Team training sessions since 2012.

The 40-hour CIT course is designed to teach first responders and police to have empathy for people with mental illness and to help them recognize mental health-related illnesses and learn crisis de-escalation techniques.

Melanie White, executive director of the local NAMI chapter, has pushed CIT as a way to improve the safety of everyone —individuals with mental health issues, officers and EMS — and reduce the possibility of violent outcomes.

”We can teach them that not all situations need to escalate to a level of violence,” White said.

Small-town suicides

Gibsonburg has had three suicides take place in the last two years while police were on the scene, including two in 2015.

One was a domestic violence call and when officers arrived, there was a man with a gun, Whitaker said.

Officers tried to talk to the man, but he shot himself at the top of the stairs and died in a Life Flight helicopter en route to a Toledo hospital.

In Ottawa County, there were four suicides in 2015, with one person harming themselves in the county and dying in Lucas County.

Oak Harbor is a village of about 2,600 where police respond to two, maybe three suicide calls a year. An actual suicide takes place about once every five to six years, said Robert Paulsen, an Oak Harbor Police Department sergeant.

He described most calls as a cry for help, with people wanting to get attention.

”A lot of stuff you can’t prepare for,” Paulsen said.

On one freezing cold night, Paulsen said he talked to a suicidal subject, who held a shotgun, for about an hour and 45 minutes. The man put the barrel to his mouth twice while Paulsen tried to calm him down.

"I talked about anything,” Paulsen said.

When the man mentioned a friend’s name, a dispatcher was able to get that friend to the scene. The call ended without a tragedy.

“It worked that night,” Paulsen said.

'One's too many'

In 2013 and 2015, the Fremont Police Department responded to more than one suicide-related call a week, with that trend continuing this year.

The public isn’t aware of how many suicide calls police take, said Fremont Police Chief Dean Bliss.

“One’s too many,” Bliss said.

A tense suicide call that stood out to Bliss involved a person who barricaded himself in his bedroom right before Christmas 2015 and threatened to kill himself and any officers at the scene.

The subject said he had an automatic weapon, Bliss said, It turned to be an air gun.

That standoff resulted in no injuries, Bliss said.

There are people who have tried "suicide by cop," Bliss said, trying to provoke officers to shoot them.

“Unfortunately, you can’t just take away that call when you go home at the end of the shift,” Bliss said.

For many years, suicide had been on the back burner as a public health issue, said Sandusky County EMS Chief Jeff Jackson.

But he noted that the county is still dealing with large-scale mental health issues, something EMS personnel come face-to-face with on a near-daily basis.

EMS averages 10 to 15 behavioral emergency calls a month, Jackson said. Of those emergencies, on average there are 5 to 10 suicide attempts a month.

The number one cause of suicide attempt calls in the county involves prescription drug overdoses, Jackson said, followed by suicidal thoughts.

Entire departments trained

In 2016, Sandusky County EMS became the first county emergency service in the state to provide CIT training to its entire department, according to Jackson.

White said that 80 percent of all first responders in the three counties served by the local NAMI chapter had been trained in CIT.

Training sessions deal with topics that include psychiatric illnesses, suicides among first responders and law enforcement, respecting cultural differences, special addictions, and de-escalation techniques.

In addition to the county's EMS and paramedics, White said almost 100 percent of the Clyde and Fremont police officers and Sandusky County sheriff's deputies had completed CIT training.

With their CIT training, officers and emergency personnel are using their de-escalation in new situations all the time, White said, including situations with autistic children, Alzhiemer’s patients or seniors with dementia.

Some key concepts in crisis intervention include going “low and slow” and recognizing as a first responder what you’re dealing with, she said.

Within the first 5 to 10 minutes of a call, an officer can usually find out if a subject is suicidal, said Capt. Ty Conger of the Fremont Police Department.

He said officers try to build rapport with suicidal subjects and gather information on them and their mental state before entering a residence.

Conger, who has been with the department for 13 years, said it’s not uncommon to deal with the same suicidal person over and over again, Conger said.

He said every once in a while, he has gone on suicide-related call. Sometimes, the suicidal subject calls. Sometimes the family calls on subject’s behalf.

”It’s a steady problem we deal with,” Conger said.

dacarson@gannett.com
419-334-1046
Twitter:@DanielCarson7

mcorfman@gannett.com
419-334-1052
mcorfman@gannett.com

Part 1
Suicide: a grim reality
What drives a person to suicide?

Part 2
Loved ones left with questions
More children trying to take their own lives

Part 3
Suicide: The Silent Crisis - Crushing the stigma
First responders get special training for crisis calls

Video documentary
Suicide: surviving crisis

ABOUT THE SERIES

Although many people don't want to talk about it, suicides and attempted suicides are a grim reality and a growing problem in Sandusky and Ottawa counties. Hotlines receive desperate calls for help every day, and emergency responders are dealing with increasing numbers of people on the verge of taking their own lives.

For this three-part series, The News-Messenger spoke to dozens of residents, mental health officials and police officers to shine a light on the dark and often overlooked crisis of suicide.

WHERE TO CALL FOR HELP

NAMI crisis hotline: 800-826-1306

Mental Health and Recovery Board of Erie and Ottawa Counties: 419-627-1908 or 800-627-4999

Mental Health& Recovery Services Board of Seneca, Sandusky and Wyandot Counties: 419-448-0640