Officer Dave Stiak didn't know what to expect when he got the call that someone was hanging over the railing of a bridge in Lemont, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Stiak, a police officer for the Cook County Sheriff's Office, was on patrol with his partner in February when the calls started to come in. 'He was standing outside of the safety railing, people were calling out to him,' Stiak said. 'He wasn't responding. He was looking off into the sunset.
These are just some of the examples that highlight the complex mental health crises police encounter on a daily basis across the country. 'Police are not the experts'In some alternate programs, dispatchers have to screen 911 calls to ensure clinicians are not going into dangerous situations. Even then, the circumstances described by a 911 caller can be drastically different from the scenarios officers experience when they arrive.