Staff photos / Ed Runyan Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office deputy Giana Musolino, left, receives her Crisis Intervention Training certificate from Michelle Werth, CIT coordinator and clinical director at the Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board. Musolino was one of 21 officers who completed the training course this week.

YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown patrol officer Richard Warren graduated from the weeklong Crisis Intervention Training program Friday, but encountering people with mental health issues is nothing new to him.

From the time he was “Little Rick,” growing up with a mother who suffered from severe mental health issues, he has known first-hand what it’s like. Warren, who was sworn in as a Youngstown police officer in March, was one of 21 police officers from Mahoning County who completed the program.

Warren said his mother’s mental health issues were “very traumatic to me as a kid, but there were services like Children Services who in the event of a crisis situation came on scene, along with police officers, who came in and played a huge role.” He said those people “came in and took me out of that situation and placed me with my grandmother, and she raised me.”

He said as a child, it was tough to understand seeing “crazy things” at night, but the next morning, “she’s happy all of a sudden.” He worked 10 years at the Mahoning Valley Community School, where he worked with kids “with very similar backgrounds,” he said.

“When I was a kid, there were plenty of times I went to school hungry because of the neglect, because of the issues my mother was dealing with. I’ve been surrounded by this my whole life.”

Warren said the most impactful thing he learned in his CIT training was the need to deescalate the situation with a person in crisis, “going into a high-tense situation, approaching it from an unbiased approach, and a bigger component is listening to, understanding and acknowledging what they are going through.”

He said, “We all come from different backgrounds and situations, and they are unique to us, and it’s important that we stand there and listen and acknowledge it and empathize with them.” He said learning the warning signs of suicide also made a big impact on him.

He said the training “made me more aware of the signs of suicide,” like hopelessness and acquiring the means of committing suicide. He quoted from the Book of Jeremiah in the Bible, saying “With love and kindness have I drawn thee.” He said that verse “sits with me when I go out and I deal with people who deal with this kind of thing.”

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

The Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board in partnership with National Alliance on Mental Illness Mahoning Valley provided the training and hosted a graduation ceremony Friday at the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.

CIT training is a 40-hour program that aims to improve the connections between law enforcement officers and individuals with mental health disorders. It also draws in mental health providers and hospital emergency services personnel.

Andrew Monk, a police officer with the Milton Township Police Department, said he sometimes encounters homeless people with mental health issues passing through the township because of the natural resources at Lake Milton.

He said the training helped him learn better ways to handle situations involving people with mental health issues, but it also connected him to professionals in the field who he can contact if he has questions, even when it’s not during “normal business hours.”

“Sometimes people will be there a couple of days sleeping on a bench or something,” he said of the Lake Milton area. “In the past, I didn’t really know where to send them. It was just the hospital, but now I know more options.

He said he learned that some facilities won’t accept such a person if they are not using their medications, so it helps to know where they can go.

Youngstown police detective Jerry Fulmer, a coordinator of the CIT training, said the program came to Ohio in 2000, and Mahoning County has been providing it since 2007.

All 88 counties in Ohio have a CIT program, but Mahoning County is one of relatively few in which every law enforcement agency in the county has sent at least one officer through CIT training, said Michelle Werth, clinical director at the Mental Health and Recovery Board and a CIT director.

“It’s tremendously important that every department in our community sees how important this kind of training is,” Werth said.

“They learn about the signs of mental illness to recognize what they may encounter in the community. They learn deescalation techniques,” she said.

“From a law enforcement perspective, they learn how to handle individuals in crisis,” Fulmer said. “They learn avenues, tools, to get the individuals mental health treatment and health, versus incarceration. To rectify the problem long term, we are going to see better results if we get them treatment for minor crimes.”

Fulmer teaches the deescalation parts of the training. Werth obtains the providers to present the training.

The officers who completed the training this week were officers Ramsay Bagheri and Jamil Maali-Gentile of the Beaver Township Police Department; officers Cameron Bednar and Kyler Freeland of the Boardman Police Department; Sgt. Richard McCullough and deputies James Metzinger, Giana Musolino, Sandra Torres and Harry Wolfe of the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office; Michael Schiavi of the Mill Creek MetroParks Police Department; Monk of the Milton Township Police Department; Samuel Horton and Marc Peluso of the Poland Township Police Department; Niko Milano and Michael Zannetakis of the Struthers Police Department; and officers Josh Hinkle, Kennedy Kelly, Sean McKim, Dontre Mastronarde, Ian Rudolph and Warren of the Youngstown Police Department.