“Nope,” he said, “not going to happen.”
Johnston recalled his lack of interest Friday afternoon inside a conference room in Allegheny College’s Pelletier Library, where he was one of 14 law enforcement officers and emergency responders recognized upon completion of a 40-hour course designed to improve outcomes when calls involve people experiencing a behavioral health crisis.
His skepticism related to the typical form of such training, Johnston explained.
“I’m not a big proponent of scenario-based training,” he said, “because you cannot re-create real-life situations in the scenario.”
But after a week spent working closely with his fellow trainees from around the county, the team from Crawford County Human Services and a variety of other partner agencies, Johnston sounded like a convert. The actors involved in a variety of simulations over the last two days of training were highly effective, he said.
“All of the actors did an excellent job actually putting the scenarios into real life,” Johnston added. “It actually gave everybody a good example of a real-life experience that they’re going to deal with.”
Other participants agreed, lauding the impact of the week-long training during an informal debriefing before receiving certificates that were presented by President Judge John Spataro of Crawford County Court of Common Pleas.
Exercises that contrasted the negative stigma often associated with those experiencing mental health concerns with the the positive framing often used to describe people battling cancer made an impact, according to Troy Frazier, assistant chief of Titusville Fire Department, as did reminders that people don’t choose to experience mental health crises any more than they choose to endure cancer.
“It gave me a broader understanding, more compassion, a different perspective,” Frazier said, “just to realize that if our attitudes change, it will change our actions.”
The 14 program participants last week were the third cohort of law enforcement officers and emergency responders in the county to complete the training, bringing the total to about 35, according to Joe Barnhart, the Crawford County Human Services staff member who coordinates the program. In addition to Linesville Police Department and Titusville Fire Department, the most recent group included security officers from Allegheny College and Meadville Medical Center, officers from Conneaut Lake Regional Police Department, Cochranton and Meadville police departments, and Crawford County Correctional Facility.
Plans call to expand future versions to include more emergency responders, according to Krysta Simons, associate director of Crawford County Human Services, so that potentially dangerous situations can be de-escalated and efforts to “get people to the right places” continue to improve. Where taking people to jail was typically the default response to mental health crises in the past, Simons said three rounds of training have given responders more — and better — options.
“Being able to keep an awareness of yourself and keep yourself safe while being able to tune into somebody else who might be having a mental health experience is challenging,” Simons said. “We’re getting positive feedback from the community that people are seeing our CIT-trained officers are better able to respond.”
In the long run, such efforts will likely be seen in the courthouse as well, according to Spataro, where it can be disheartening to see defendants who have been incarcerated for long periods when in-patient treatment would likely have been more beneficial for both the individual and the community.
“At the end of the day what we all strive for is the safety, and the protection and the harmony in our community. That’s what we work for. That’s what we strive for,” Spataro told the group. “Learning the tools that you have learned … Now you know enough when you are actually at the scene to take a broader and wider understanding of the circumstances and in doing so, when you have that understanding, when you have that insight, you can make better decisions which in turn is protective of our community.”
© 2025 The Meadville Tribune (Meadville, Pa.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
