1 in 5 U.S. adults will experience mental illness this year — NAMI

By Wayne E. Rivet

Staff Writer

7:55 p.m. Suicidal female transported willingly to Bridgton Hospital for evaluation. Referral made to our crisis liaison for follow up.

When a person experienced a mental health crisis in the past, Bridgton Police tried to de-escalate the situation and then look to transport the individual either in a cruiser or ambulance to the hospital for evaluation.

Today, Kortnie Sanchez is someone BPD officers can rely upon as a resource to evaluate a person in distress, determine the best approach to calm the situation, ultimately connect the individual with needed services, and follow up on their progress.

“Bridgton recognized the need in the community for more support around mental health specifically, law enforcement response,” Sanchez said. “We work through a safety plan for the person and come up with the least restrictive means to be able to help them resolve their crisis. Whether that’s in the moment or kind of a little bit more of a long-term plan, we can connect them with other providers, and find some resources. One of the biggest benefits to us being out there doing these crisis services is allowing people to have follow-ups. We’re able to go out and kind of continue to engage with the population who are struggling the most and provide them that support more frequently, which of course opens up more time for law enforcement to respond to other things, as well.”

Earlier this year, Bridgton Chief of Police Phil Jones discovered a mental health resource existed, but had been untapped. Michelle Hansen of Opportunity Alliance reached out to Chief Jones to say the organization could help with crisis evaluations — much like they do with the Portland Police Department.

“They have a whole behavioral health division. They actually, in Portland, have their own cars. They operate with and alongside the police department. So, she offered to staff a full-time crisis liaison to work here — to respond with us, and then do follow-ups. It sounded like a phenomenal idea,” Chief Jones said. “It’s a partnership. We have a memo of understanding with Opportunity Alliance and we all work together.”

The Crisis Police Liaison is Kortnie Sanchez. Chief Jones has found Sanchez to be a “great fit.”

“She comes with a great amount of experience, including serving in the U.S. Navy and law enforcement. After she was selected and brought on, we trained Kortnie as to what our policies are. I did a fair amount of research as to how Portland Police use their liaisons. She literally hit the ground running. The first few days, Kortnie was grabbing calls to follow up with individuals. She was responding with our officers. We’ve seen just an incredible use for the services that she can provide,” Chief Jones said.

Sanchez served as military police, and when her service was up, she went to college to study psychology. She also undertook social work, prior to her arrival in Bridgton.

“I just have a huge passion for helping other people. I love the mental health field. I am just really excited to be in a position where I can combine my experience with education,” she said. “It’s rewarding to hear from a client that after an intervention, there was a huge change in their life. Sometimes, just the moments that we go out and see a client and they’re just having a tough day and having that conversation with them and getting through our process with them and then leaving and they have a huge smile on their face or they’re like, you can notice that there’s a change, that’s always really rewarding.”

Last week’s tragic shooting in Lewiston, where 18 people were killed and 13 wounded, again brought into the spotlight the dangers of mental illness left uncheck and the need for more resources to serve those struggling with their mental health.

Chief Jones sees the new crisis police liaison position as valuable resource that can assist the Bridgton Police Department to help those in crisis.

When a mental health call is received, Sanchez either can head to the location with an officer or she can use her own vehicle. Upon arrival, officers first check to see if the individual “is safe and not a danger to themselves or anybody else.” If the person is deemed “safe,” then Kortnie joins the conversation.

“Kortnie will come alongside the officer and in a very gentle way, give us a tap and say, ‘I’ve got it from here.’ We let her do the rest of the work,” Chief Jones said. “What we’ve seen is she establishes relationships with these individuals and does follow-up regularly. She gets them plugged into other crisis services, sometimes substance abuse services. She can make referrals through calling their primary care doctors. She knows how to go about connecting the dots to help a person get the help they need. We’re hearing back from people thanking us for getting them services they need and what a positive influence Kortnie is.”

Sanchez has found working with BPD to be a “seamless transition.”

“I’m comfortable in this environment,” Sanchez said. “I did my training in Portland (a little more than a month) before coming here. There was some book training and then mainly hands-on. We would go out and respond to crisis calls with experienced workers and kind of shadow engage with the community until we were ready to be on our own.”

Sanchez says every client and their situations vary.

“There’s a lot of different situations for each client. What might be a crisis for one may be different for someone else. We engage the best that we can and work through that process with them,” she said. “We try to lean into people’s strengths. We try to highlight some of the skills that they already have and try to come up with plans to work with those skills. We try to keep people safe in their own home, in their community, and that means keeping themselves and others around them safe. So, using some of their own strengths and skills, we can start to talk about it from that perspective.”

For the past five years, the Bridgton Police Department has been part of the One Mind Campaign, which is a program through the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The program aims for departments to be trained in crisis intervention. Chief Jones said his officers are trained through NAMI (the National Alliance of Mental Illness, the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness).

“We’ve really done our best to prepare for helping people through their mental health struggles, but many times, all we can do is really use those skills to de-escalate somebody and then transport them to an Emergency Room,” Chief Jones said.

Sometimes, immediate crisis intervention is key.

“We voluntarily take them to the hospital, leave them there in the ER, and they wait for crisis staff to travel to Bridgton and then talk to these people. Between that point of contact and the time crisis staff are talking to them, maybe they’ve decided that they don’t want that help anymore. They’re not as amenable to that resource, and maybe they just sign themselves out and say, ‘I’m all done.’ So, what we’re doing is we’re really just cutting down the time between interaction and that crisis help with Kortnie,” Chief Jones noted. “We now can deploy Kortnie to do a crisis evaluation in the home in certain situations. We’re able to bring those resources to the front door. One of the benefits is she’s not a cop. She’s not dressed like a cop. Right. She’s a partner with us. She is able to many times give us information on what she’s doing with the consent of the people that she’s working with. At the end of the day, there is something about that plain-clothed person who’s not a cop, and there’s something immensely valuable about the public knowing that we’re working hand-in-hand with that plain-clothed person.”

Toll on Officers

Chief Jones says officers dealing with mental health incidents, especially those involving individuals doing personal harm, on a regular basis does take a toll.

“I know coming into this business (law enforcement), you were just told to rub some dirt on it. It’s how you dealt with things that the human mind shouldn’t have to see. We get called when people take their own lives or they’re seriously injured in a car crash or they’re talking about something unspeakable that’s happened to them. So, how do we look after the, the minds of our officers? We help each other. We watch out for each other,” Chief Jones said. “When I started, my sergeant did something that I’ve always appreciated. He would pull me aside and say, ‘How are you doing?’ ‘How is your family?’ ‘Do you need to take a break?’ I remember my first death scene. I was working overnight by myself, and so I called Sergeant Taft. I said, ‘Sarge, I’m going to this thing. I’ve never been there before.’ He says, ‘I’ll be right there.’ Don’t you know, Sergeant Taft shows up in his pajamas and made sure I was all set. And then, he later checked in with me again. So that checking in piece is huge.”

Another message Chief Jones heard and always remembers is a speech given during a police officer’s funeral. The message, “We need to stop pretending like we’ve got it all figured out. We need to remember to be human.”

“So that’s really the big message is reminding our officers like, ‘Hey, you’re human.’ Just because you have a badge on, just because you get all the specialized training, it doesn’t mean that the stuff doesn’t affect you. If it stops affecting you, that’s when you have a problem,” Chief Jones said.

Peer support, the chief says, is key to an officer’s mental health. Grace Pelletier, who serves as BPD’s administrative assistant and is a special duty officer, is trained in critical incident debriefing. BPD also will call in Police Chaplain, Pastor Mike Zullo of the Bridgton Alliance Church, for mental health support, as well.

Crisis on the Rise

The increase in mental health calls has been “staggering,” the chief said. Covid amplified numbers as people struggled with isolation as the result of social distancing forced by the pandemic. Those numbers, however, continue to spike upward.

“I think part of it now is there’s less of a stigma behind having a mental health crisis. You shouldn’t be ashamed if your knee is hurting to get it looked at. Right. So now, we’re realizing if a person is having trouble with their mental health, he or she needs to get help and not feel ashamed about it,” Chief Jones said. “I think society has finally been able to peel back the curtain a little bit to see what’s really going on with folks that are struggling with their mental health. There is a better understanding about mental health struggles.”

Sanchez agrees.

“I would say that de-stigmatizing anything related to mental health is really helpful. There’s lots of different ways that that can happen. Having me here in the community is a really good example of that because this is going to be different for people. This is a new thing. But in my opinion, as people realize that I’m here and what it is that I do, it’s a resource that can be kind of relied on in a different way than what they’ve been used to,” she said. “The more people see that, the more they’re going to be willing to reach out for help when they need it.”

She has been doing some community outreach, talking with different providers and resources to both introduce herself and explain what she does and how she can be utilized.

Sanchez, who can respond to mental health crisis within the Lake Region area, says Bridgton actually has a good network of support and providers dealing with mental health issues and substance abuse. Once an intervention occurs, Sanchez can assist individuals in finding services — such as Lake Region Recovery Center — to help achieve better mental health.

“We help people of all ages, children all the way up through the rest of their lives. I encourage people to reach out as needed and not to feel hesitant to do that,” she said. “I would say similarly to when people call 9-1-1 for an emergency, sometimes there’s that moment of like, ‘Is this really an emergency?’ Before they call, of course if they’re in an extreme emergency, they know there’s no question of that. Right. But some situations, people question that and we see the same thing with crisis sometimes where people will be like, ‘I’m not really sure if this is a crisis,’ but we still encourage people to reach out.”

Chief Jones sees the partnership between Bridgton Police and Opportunity Alliance in creating the crisis liaison position can achieve the ultimate goal to have a safer, healthier community.

“Mental health issues affect people of all walks of life — it doesn’t discriminate,” Chief Jones said. “We certainly are doing our best to grab on to these partners that can help us. This is the first time we’ve really had this level of civilian service related deployment with the police department on such a full-time basis. It is making a difference. It’s a win for the department, and a big win for the community.”

The public can access crisis services in the Lake Region by calling the Maine Crisis Line at 1-888-568-1112. If you have non-urgent questions about the service, you can also reach out to Kortnie Sanchez, Crisis Police Liaison, directly at kortnie.sanchez@opportunityalliance.org