A number of high-profile police shootings, including that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., last month, have led to increased scrutiny of police interactions with civilians.
One group that is disproportionately subject to police uses of force is people with mental illness. Many local departments hold special sessions to train officers about mental illness and how to help the people they interact with.
Walking up and down the aisle of a police academy classroom in downtown St. Louis, Lt. Perri Johnson tells the officers here that responding to calls where a person is in mental distress is never easy.
"You're going to get plenty of opportunity to utilize some of the things that you learn," Johnson says.
The "tactical communications" lecture is part of a weeklong Crisis Intervention Training, or CIT. Officers are taught to recognize different types of mental illness and to calm situations where someone feels threatened or may react violently.
[For more of this story, written by Durrie Bouscaren, go to http://www.npr.org/2014/09/23/...andling-mentally-ill]
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