But the training became a topic for discussion again earlier this month, when a mentally challenged young man named Patrick Johnson died after he was zapped twice with a Taser by a cop in Northeast Philly - a cop who had received the crisis-intervention training.
An unavoidable line of questions arose:
What exactly do cops learn from crisis-intervention training, and what kind of difference does it make out there in the real world?
The short answer, said Lt. Francis Healy, who oversees the program, is that the training teaches officers "to switch from cop mode to social-worker mode, and hopefully avoid violent encounters."
There is a great need for cops to wear both hats.
According to the city's Department of Behavioral Health & Mental Retardation Services, one in 10 people encountered by police on the streets struggle with some kind of mental illness.
Most basic forms of police training teach cops to be aggressive and authoritative, Healy noted.
"You know, staring somebody down, getting close to them, that kind of stuff in reality can actually escalate a situation if you're dealing with a person in crisis," he said.
The weeklong training session, developed by the Department of Behavioral Health and the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania, teaches cops to recognize the hallmarks of a person in "crisis" - that is, someone who could be having hallucinations or hearing a chorus of twisted voices in his head.
As part of the training, the cops who were at the academy on Oct. 20 spent more than 30 minutes listening to MP3 players that had recordings of voices.
Some heard indecipherable chanting; others heard angry threats and insults.
All the while, the cops were performing exercises - filling out paperwork, answering questions from people posing as doctors and trying to get information from one another.
