The Crisis Cops - When They Closed Norwich Hospital, New London Police Faced A Whole New Challenge. So They Learned How Not To Shoot. (Hartford Courant)

This is a great article about a woman (Louise Pyers) who has started an organization focused on working with Police to help them understand the mentally ill - and to get them to be better able to deal with the mentally ill when they are behaving differently. When you read this - I hope you'll join in the effort to educate your local police force to address this great need for education.

"She formed an organization called the Connecticut Alliance to Benefit Law Enforcement, with the intention of educating as many people as possible about suicide-by-cop. An article she posted on her newly created site, http://www.cableweb.org, led dozens of officers, students and family members to her. Several called just to tell their stories to a sympathetic listener.

And one day, she got an e-mail from a man she didn't know - Capt. Ken Edwards at the New London Police Department. He was researching suicide-by-cop as a component of study for his newly minted CIT team.

"Where have you been?" she remembers reading on her computer screen. "I've been looking for an organization that believes in what I'm doing."

For More information see:

http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/northeast/hccopcrisis.artfeb22,0,3034596.story?coll=hc-utility-home