CANANDAIGUA, N.Y. — To better serve the people they will encounter, police recruits in the Finger Lakes went through real-life mental health scenarios on Wednesday.

News10NBC Investigative Reporter Jennifer Lewke was there to watch and learn why this training is crucial in reducing the number of times police use force.

In one scenario, a social worker acted as if she was experiencing a mental health crisis to see how police recruits would handle it.

“I need to be at the doctor’s office,” the woman said.
“What doctor’s office do you need to go to?” the recruit asked.
“I don’t know his name,” she responded.

In another scenario, an intoxicated woman who just got dumped by her boyfriend wouldn’t leave the laundry room of her apartment complex.

“What do you like to do for fun?” the recruit asked.
“What do you care?” the woman responded.
“Cause I’m just trying to talk to you, I just want to make sure that you’re okay, just trying to figure out what’s going on,” the recruit said.

As he keeps her talking, the recruit learns more about the situation.

“He left his pills?” the recruit asked.
“Yeah, he told me to kill myself,” the woman said.
“Do you know what pills he left you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you take any of them?”
“No, but I should,” she responded.

These are just a few examples of what these recruits will face when they hit the streets. The hope is if they use empathy and offer help, they can diffuse the situation, reducing the likelihood of things escalating.

“No one wants anything to happen to you, I’m really sorry that your boyfriend left you but we really want to get you some help,” the recruit said.

The Finger Lakes Law Enforcement Academy has been training the recruits in crisis intervention for weeks. On Wednesday, they put the classroom work into action.

“If you think about it, people don’t call the police because life is going well, they call the police because they have a problem or a crisis that they can’t fix themselves. So, literally every time we get called to a complaint, someone is in crisis,” said Sgt. Mark Taylor of the Finger Lakes Law Enforcement Training Academy.

The recruits were being observed by licensed clinical social workers, and teams from Clifton Springs Psychiatric Unit, who will be available to them when they’re deputies and officers responding to these calls in real life.

“How do we teach these new recruits, how do we teach them to recognize it, in the crisis moment, and then we can take over,” said Beverly Prince, a licensed clinical social worker at Clifton Springs Hospital.

For recruits like Nate Jacon, who will join the Geneva Police Department, it’s about doing things differently.

“It’s not always making arrests, it’s not always hands-on, it’s trying to be out there and having a positive influence on people from the age of 5 to 65,” Jacon said.

While there has been mental health classroom training in police academies for decades, real-world scenarios have been added in recent years as the number of calls for mental health issues has skyrocketed.

Most agencies locally say at least half of their calls are now mental health or domestic related.

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