Roles for mental health professionals in critical law enforcement incidents: An overview.

Law enforcement personnel routinely face various critical incidents in the course of their workday including confrontations with irate, violent, and/or mentally challenged individuals. While less frequent, law enforcement personnel also are called in response to hostage incidents, barricaded subject incidents, and attempted suicide/suicide by cop incidents. Over the past 30 years, response strategies utilized by law enforcement personnel have been evolving and have been influenced by mental health professionals. This article briefly reviews the histories of Critical Incident Teams (CITs) and Crisis Negotiation Teams (CNTs), discusses the roles of mental health professionals in the development and continuing evolution of CITs and CNTs, presents some of the obstacles to mental health involvement with law enforcement, and highlights areas in need of more empirical research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)