I love people. It’s hard to be a police officer if you don’t.
Three colleagues from the Chapel Hill Police Department and I recently completed a 40-hour training that improved our ability to work with people with special needs. Coordinated by the OPC Area Program, the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training taught us about the dynamics of mental illness, substance abuse and developmental disabilities. We learned that there are alternatives to incarceration, that we can steer people to the treatment they need.
