Bennett also addressed the issue of police officers not knowing how to properly handle persons living with mental illness or those who are a danger to themselves and others - if they commit a crime, the police just see and treat them as a nuisance and law breakers who need to be detained. Yes, while the police have a duty to detain anyone if they break the law, no matter their history or mental state, there are certain practices and approaches the police can use when dealing with such persons. Bennett says the Mental Health Unit offers training to police but they are not so receptive of it.
Eleanor Bennett, Head of the Mental Health Unit
"We have a system of training police officers and whenever we do the training we always tell them it is not to make you mental health professionals but you guys are dealing with the public, you can't tell what conditions you are going to meet and you will not have the luxury of saying you will have the diagnoses so I will not intervene so because of that we have an on going program of training of police officers in mental health to teach them how to recognize issues, how to recognize potential violence and how to deescalate without violence so that training is on going."
Courtney Weatherburne:
"How often do you have that training?"
Eleanor Bennett
"It is an operational plan every year I must say that in some areas we have had resistance from the police in accepting this training because various things, there is a big stigma attached to mental illness some police might believe it is not their purview so they don't want to deal with this population but really they themselves like us are in constant contact with the population and there is no telling who the next person is going to be so they have to prepare themselves so we have tried to help them in this area and we do hope that there are some changes and I do agree with Jules there are a lot of changes that need to be made in terms of how people approach people with mental illness especially the authorities and the assumptions that they make about people with mental health issues so I guess in a nut shell what I am trying to say is that when the police come in contact with someone who has mental health issues, they can bring them to us so they can intervene as best as they can but once somebody with a mental health illness commits a crime that person then under the law has mechanisms or there are mechanisms under the law to address certain situations meaning that they have to take them to the magistrate, the magistrate has to determine if the person needs an evaluation."
Courtney Weatherburne:
"It still has to go through the court process?"
Eleanor Bennett
"Once the person is in police custody for a crime and I want to re-iterate here that there is no such thing as people having papers that is something that is a myth in the Belizean society that if you have mental illness you have papers number 1 I don't know where they get it from."
Bennett says she will engage the Commissioner of Police to try and get more officers to attend these trainings.
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