Police Subspecialty and Emergency Response Teams
The law enforcement agencies such as the Psychiatric Emergency Response Teams (PERT) have a responsibility to critical incidents such as attempted suicides, violent issues, and confrontations with mentally challenged individuals. The response strategies have evolved for many years to enable the police enforcement collaborate with intelligence psychologists in crime related incidents. Prior to this, the law enforcement officials addressed the hostage incidents with difficulties by following any of the three ways. One they could surround a suspect and order them to surrender. Alternatively, they could approach a suspect and apply chemical agents to force the crime suspect to surrender, and lastly they could benefit from a sniper team that could come to end the incident. The Emergency Response Teams in this decade bring a lot of specialties that can assist the law enforcement to respond to calls quickly and efficiently. For instance, the PERT is a collaboration of San Diego County Law Enforcement, San Diego County Health and Human Service, San Diego Community Research Foundation, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness of San Diego. The agency bases on the premise that one should handle mental illness with respect since they are unique and have personal needs. PERT seeks to provide Behavioral Health Emergency Response Plan in the form of a form filled out in advance. The form has special instructions such as medications, therapist, preference crisis house, contact information, mental health, preference hospital, and substance use. In addition to that, the form has some of the police service calls and some of the queries that the emergency operator will ask as well as information to cite once the police come on the site. The PERT is a shift of policing from the enforcement and response model to community-based model. Additional funding in research and development will result in increased contact between the community and the police that can lead to increased police contact with the citizens.
References
Day, A. (2014). Competing ethical paradigms in forensic psychiatry and forensic psychology: Commentary for a special section of legal and criminological psychology. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 19(1), 16-18.
Martire, K. (2010). An Examination of the Implications of Financial Strain for Forensic Psychology. Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice, 10(3), 159-176.
Young, S. (2010). Learning Forensic Assessment. Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, 19(4), 643-644.
