By GRAHAM JAEHNIG

Daily Mining Gazette

HOUGHTON — In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, Lt. Nick Roberts said the City of Houghton Police Department is giving away bracelets that will raise awareness of the month while continuing to advocate for the reduction of stigma by in increasing public education.

Roberts said the department wants the community to know that all of its personnel care about the people in the community who have mental health issues.

“We want them to know that we are a safe place for them to come,” he said. “We want people to know that we are educating our police officers in mental health crises and behavioral health.”

In fact, said Roberts, the department personnel have a two-day training scheduled in late June to instruct its officers on how to better respond to people who are in crisis and how to de-escalate potential critical situations and to assist them in receiving any help they may need.

“It’s a lengthy, two-day course that we take them through,” Roberts said, who is one of the three instructors of the course. “The first day is instruction; the second day we will go into scenarios.”

The scenarios are based on factual events, he added.

The training supports many different aspects of law enforcement. It does not limit training to just assisting people in crisis, he said, many of the elements of the training, as an instructor, he said he uses every day, sometimes even with traffic stops.

“It reminds police officers that sometimes they have slow down, take there time and that not everything is always ‘rush,'” said Roberts, “and we have to remind ourselves of that when we deal with a mental health crisis.”

Roberts said that when he assists someone in crisis, it is not a “two-minute fix.” It takes hours, he said, sometimes requiring 12 hours assisting someone.

“So, it’s not a race,” he said.

Police departments are not what they were in past decades, he said. Departments are ever-changing, getting better and improving public service and it is important that the community knows that the departments are there to help however they can.