The first group of participants in Montgomery County’s Crisis Intervention Team program graduated Friday at the Montgomery County Boys and Girls Club after completing a week-long 40-hour training.
Mayor Todd Barton told participants the additional training comes at a critical time for the community.
“I want to personally thank each and every one of you for stepping forward and giving your time to complete this additional training,” Barton said. “For a multitude of reasons, the number of mental health crisis situations is rising in our community. The complexity of those crisis situations has increased as well. But so has our understanding for them. And so has our ability to appropriately respond to those situations when they occur.”
Barton said when he worked in public safety, mental health crises were not treated as a priority.
“Simply put, it just wasn’t considered a high priority issue and was put on the side burner as something we just have to tolerate and get by as best as we could,” he said. “That’s very unfortunate for those in crisis. But today, that has changed. You are each the forefront of the new approach.”
He said the new approach prioritizes mental health crises and acknowledges that traditional responses are not always the best option.
“An approach that will produce much better outcomes for not only those in crisis, but first responders, mental health workers and ultimately our community as a whole,” Barton said. “We have a strong network of programs and professionals working to make a difference in the lives of others and to address mental health issues directly, and you are all a crucial part of that effort.”
Barton also thanked Macy Simmons for her work bringing the program to Montgomery County and Crawfordsville Police Chief Aaron Mattingly for supporting the effort and helping to make it a reality.
Mattingly praised the first class of graduates.
“The open-mindedness for everybody involved in the class I think was inspirational because everybody came in with a clear mind, left biases at the door, left stigma at the door, and really wanted to learn as much as they possibly could,” Mattingly said.
He said public safety officials regularly encounter individuals with neurological conditions and mental illness.
“Traumatic brain injury, autism spectrum, and a lot of the other types of neurological conditions that a lot of times police, fire and other public safety people encounter needs to be more understood,” he said. “Substance-use disorder, mental illness in general, is something that law enforcement, specifically, and fire need to be more versed in. No matter the type of community or the demographic, it’s going to surface in the community.”
Mattingly said the goal is to ensure people in crisis receive appropriate help.
“Just ensuring that everybody can be as safe as they possibly can. Get help to those, the appropriate help to those that need it, I think is the goal and something that we need to get better at respectively and then continue to just be better,” he said.
Nearly half of the Crawfordsville Police Department has completed some form of CIT training, Mattingly said, but the goal is to have 100% of officers certified.
The week-long 40 hour training was open to anyone working in public safety or behavioral health, including police officers, firefighters, paramedics, behavioral health professionals and Department of Child Services staff. The training was free to attend.
Participants received instruction from subject matter experts, instructors and guest speakers and will serve as part of a specialized response team prepared to assist individuals experiencing mental health crises. Topics included legal issues, mental illness in adults and children, recovery principles, active listening skills, autism spectrum disorders, developmental delays, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and substance use, de-escalation tactics, suicide awareness and response, traumatic brain injuries, dementia and available community resources.
The Montgomery County CIT training is modeled after the Crisis Intervention Team program that began in Memphis, Tennessee in 1988. Known as the Memphis Model, the 40 hour in-person training was developed by retired Memphis Police Major Sam Cochran to improve outcomes when law enforcement and first responders encounter individuals with behavioral health challenges.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, more than 2,700 communities nationwide use CIT programs. The programs focus on collaboration between law enforcement, mental health providers, hospital emergency services and individuals with mental illness and their families. Through training and community partnerships, CIT programs aim to improve communication, connect individuals to mental health resources and ensure safety for officers and the community.
Montgomery County’s CIT was established in January 2025 through a collaborative effort led by Integrative Wellness of Crawfordsville, local law enforcement agencies and other public safety and behavioral health partners. The program is designed to improve responses to mental health crises by bringing together professionals from across the county who regularly encounter individuals experiencing serious mental illness.
“This has been a long time goal to create a CIT for Montgomery County,” said Macy Simmons, director of addictions and recovery support services at Integrative Wellness. Simmons said the effort was inspired in part by Lynette Clark, managing member of Integrative Wellness, who also serves as a CIT coordinator in Boone County and works closely with law enforcement and Mobile Integrated Health.
