GREENE COUNTY — Crisis intervention training proved to be a success Friday night when Greene County deputies stopped a man in a mental health crisis from jumping off the U.S. 35 bridge in Xenia.
News Center 7′s Taylor Robertson spoke to Greene County Sheriff Scott Anger about why this training is crucial these days.
There is no routine stop when it comes to policing, so it’s important that they lean on their training, which is exactly what deputies in Greene County did when they talked a man off the U.S. 35 bridge.
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“I saw a man sitting on the edge of the overpass right there with kinda one leg hanging over and one not,” a 911 caller told dispatchers.
Body camera video shows the man straddling the ledge as deputies approached him a little after 10:30 p.m. Friday night.
“What we found was an emotionally disturbed person that was having some mental illness issues that was going to hurt themselves and jump from the bridge,” Greene County Sheriff Scott Anger said.
The hostage negotiation team spent an hour and 40 minutes talking to the man before they were able to get him to safety.
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The female deputy talking to him has only been with the sheriff’s office for a year, and on the force for two.
Body camera footage shows the moment he got off the ledge.
“All of our officers more than our detectives and our agents and our deputies there, they go through crisis intervention training, which is an extra 40 hours of training,” Anger said. “That’s something that more than 80 percent of our patrol deputies have had, so they just go through a series of de-escalation.”
The training is on top of the tactics they learn in the police academy and they use those skills every day.
“That’s really good for them to get after they’ve had some experience on the road,” Anger said. “They learn all the different things about different types of mental illness. They learn how to handle people with dementia, the elderly, autism, there’s even a part in there for wellness for themselves.”
Those calls happen more often than Anger would like them to.
Crisis intervention situations are on the rise,” he said. “People that are suicidal, people that have mental illness issues, people that have substance abuse disorder, or they have a combination of both. They encounter people that are in crisis way more.”
Anger said he’s proud they were able to talk him off the ledge before anyone was hurt.
“He could have fallen in, it would have caused serious injuries or death if he had fallen off there,” Anger said. “So again, best case scenario for the situation. Everybody was ok after it and we ended up having him get treatment which is what he needed at that time.”
The man was taken to Miami Valley Hospital for treatment.
The next training session will be held by the Mental Health Recovery Board of Clark, Greene & Madison Counties during the last week of August in Springfield.
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