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Columbus presenters outline CIT training, MCR teams and cross-agency partnerships
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Summary
Lieutenant Mike Voorhis and ADAMH Director Carly Tennant described Columbus and Franklin County Crisis Intervention Team training, the co-responder mobile crisis response model, and plans to expand partnerships and data-driven evaluation.
Columbus police and county mental-health partners briefed the civilian board on Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training and mobile crisis response models, highlighting a combination of classroom instruction, field experience and community partnerships intended to reduce trauma and improve outcomes for people in crisis.
"CIT is a whole system response," Carly Tennant, director of clinical services at the Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Board of Franklin County (ADAMH), told the board. "Its not just a training; its a crisis system response that starts with dispatch, includes trained officers and mental health professionals, and relies on people with lived experience and advocates."
Lieutenant Mike Voorhis, who identified himself as the CPD CIT coordinator and MCR supervisor, described local operations: CPD recorded 21,400 mental-health calls in 2023 and had about 11,000 calls through July 30, 2024. He said mobile crisis response (MCR) teams operate as co-responder pairs of an officer and a clinician and typically cover the period from about 10 a.m. until midnight. Voorhis said the unit aims to stay in high-volume areas identified on the presentation heat map and that the city will receive six unmarked cruisers funded through OMAS to reduce transport stigma.
Presenters outlined the mandatory 40-hour CIT curriculum (de-escalation, mental-illness identification, involuntary hospitalization criteria), OPATAs 24-hour academy exposure, optional advanced trainings (one-day, eight-hour topic-specific sessions), and field experiences where officers ride alongside mental-health workers. Voorhis and Tennant described partnerships with OSU, Riverside, NET Care, NEOMED and advocacy groups, and said ADAMH funds training capacity for five 40-hour classes a year.
The board probed how dispatch triage and radio-room clinicians (RRU) route calls to appropriate responders when MCR units arent available. Voorhis said the radio room airs for an MCR unit and, if none reply, dispatchers will seek a CIT officer; they can also request MCR availability on the radio. He described other response options including VMET (veterans mental evaluation team), MRSS (youth peer/clinician response from Nationwide Childrens), and NET Cares community mobile team.
Board members asked about program evaluation and data-collection; Tennant pointed to officer feedback collected after each class via QR code and a NEOMED peer-review process underway. The board discussed potential expansion of demographic and incident tracking; experts noted some system and technology limitations that make historic data retrieval challenging, and the board asked staff to propose optional demographic fields for the complaint form to improve future analytics.
The board thanked the presenters and said it would continue oversight of CIT implementation, data collection and coordination with CPD and county partners.
