Police Crisis Intervention and the Prevention of Violence

Admidst our current social changes and recent waves of violence, experimental approaches to community mental health and crime prevention are rapidly emerging. To help alleviate the current manpower shortage in the mental health area, the Joint Commission on Mental Health and Illness strongly recommended the effective utilization of paraprofessional personnel. Several investigators have emphasized the training of paraprofessional mental health aides as a community action strategy. However, despite the growing importance of paraprofessional mental health services, relatively little has been done to include the urban policeman in such training. Proponents of the community mental health movement cannot afford this oversight.

The police are in an unusual position within the community in which they are frequently called upon to perform a variety of therapeutic and interpersonal services. In many instances they serve as the urban psychiatric G.P., becoming the poor man's Freud, and having direct contact with all forms of behavioral pathology. The police often do our dirty work without receiving our support or recognition. They are indeed an invaluable psychiatric manpower supply. However, there is considerable evidence that insensitive, untrained and inept police handling of human problems is a potential breeding ground for violence.

The “long hot summers” of recent years have made us more cognizant that in almost every urban riot, police crisis