EDITOR’S NOTE: With our Opinion page series, A NEWSROOM VIEW, we hope provides readers with a window into what we do, why we do it and our connections to the community we serve. This week’s column is by news reporter Whitney Downard.

As my grandmother’s dementia and mental illness worsen, so do her verbal and physical assaults.

She tries to escape her living facility in New York, searching for a long-gone home. 

She once accused my sleeping sisters of kidnapping my grandfather and used a broom to toss them, shoeless, into the street.

As a family, we’ve learned ways to deal with her behavior. We’ve called her facility’s security before but, fortunately, we’ve never called law enforcement. Not every family has that luxury.

Last week, I shadowed one of the Meridian Police Department’s newest officers, Royric Benamon, and his trainer, Bud May.

In the patrol car, we laughed as May told Benamon about trouble spots, past calls and the characters he would meet on his patrols through the city.

Then we got a 10-92, a type of call that May described as more stressful than an armed robbery.

10-92: Mental Subject.

When we pulled up to the house, I stayed in the yard, watching the man’s shaking hands and wide eyes from a distance.

He clung to a damp scratch-off advertisement. He spoke of attacking robots, gesturing to cement buckets in the yard, an invisible neck wound and blood on the porch.

He saw me but never registered my camera or notebook. I never photographed his face or wrote down his name but I don’t think I could ever forget him.

May, a veteran officer, had two advantages over me and Benamon when it came to that call: his nearly 20 years of experience and his Crisis Intervention Team training.

The Crisis Intervention Team program was started in early 2009 by the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Department and the Meridian Police Department in the cooperation with Weems Community Mental Health and the Meridian office of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Others include the Clarke County Sheriff’s Department, DeKalb Police Department, Kemper County Sheriff’s Department, Meridian Public School District Campus Police, Newton Police Department and Quitman Police Department. Mental health partners include Alliance Health Center, Central Mississippi Residential Center and Weems Community Mental Health.

It gives police the tools to assess an individual dealing with a mental health crisis, with an emphasis on getting the person appropriate services and keeping them out of jail.

When May spoke to the man, he used the man’s first name and called himself ‘Bud,’ not ‘Officer May.’ A small knife found on the man didn’t make May jumpy or nervous like it did for Benamon and me. May knew he couldn’t roughly take it away, he had to ask politely.

The man voluntarily committed himself to the Crisis Stabilization Unit in Newton, the only of its kind in the state. The 16-bed unit faces constant budget cut threats and serves as law enforcement’s only immediate resource, giving people in crisis a safe place to receive care and see a doctor.

I, and countless others, have addressed Mississippi’s broken mental health care system before.

Mississippians in crisis face a shortage of beds, lapses in insurance that make their medication prices soar and countless other problems associated with their mental illness. Additionally, very few agencies in Mississippi know how to deal with someone suffering a mental health crisis, though many local agencies have the training.

I can’t imagine being Benamon, responding to that call on his first day, or May, having such control, care and patience that the man’s fears took precedence over his own.

For the state to progress, lawmakers need to have the same concern that officers May and Benamon showed that man on a hot August morning.

Law enforcement bears the burden of mental health care after repeated, bone-deep cuts to mental health from state officials.

This training, however vital, cannot work alone. The state should invest more in community services to supplement the service of officers and deputies, rather than ignoring the thousands of Mississippians who need help.