During their careers, most law enforcement officers will have multiple contacts with individuals with behavioral health conditions (including mental health conditions and sub-stance use disorders) or intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).

Officers may experience various challenges when responding to situations involving individuals with these conditions or disabilities. Crisis Response and Intervention Training (CRIT) enhances the ability of officers to effectively address these challenges.

CRIT is a 40-hour training curriculum, including 10 hours of hands-on, scenario-based skills training, that prepares police officers to respond to people in crisis related to behavioral health conditions or IDD. CRIT is based upon the Memphis Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training and is designed to complement the development and delivery of crisis response programs planned by law enforcement agencies, behavioral health service providers, and disability service providers in the community. CRIT is also designed to support law enforcement agencies’ implementation of various types of crisis response models, which may or may not include CIT programs. Model examples include mobile response, co-responder teams, and community response.