Allan Baltazar
McNair Scholar 2022
Allan Baltazar is a criminal justice and psychology major in the College of Education and Social Sciences at West Texas A&M University. He is a senior anticipating graduation in Spring 2023. After attaining a bachelor’s degree, Allan intends to continue his education and receive a masters and/or doctoral degree. Additionally, he plans on participating in research that matches his interests in the criminal justice and psychology fields.
“My favorite parts of the McNair experience were the different times I got the chance to hear my peers’ updates on their research. Listening to how they are doing and learning about similar challenges we each had relieved much of the stress over my own research at the time, allowing us to connect with each other. Although quite challenging, I also enjoyed the experience I had learning about the process of research. I am certain that the skills I developed throughout this process will be useful during my time in graduate school and beyond." - Allan Baltazar
"Crisis Intervention Teams in Police Departments: An Aid to Mental Health Crisis"
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Brandon Bang
The history of mental health in the United States has guided officers to become the first-line response to mental health-related crisis calls. However, although officers’ interactions with individuals with mental illness began to increase, there continued to be a limited amount of training that involved how to handle mental health-related issues. Consequently, this left officers unprepared to handle mental health-related situations and often led to negative ending interactions. As a result, Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs) were created and implemented in various police departments across the United States. Crisis Intervention Teams are community-based programs between local police officers, mental health professionals, and other individuals within their community. Crisis Intervention Teams aim to improve officers’ interactions with people suffering from a mental illness or episode. This essay provides the findings from currently published professional, peer-reviewed research articles on the effectiveness of Crisis Intervention Teams. Among the research studies used, the findings on Crisis Intervention Teams’ effectiveness displayed positive effects on officers’ mental health-related crisis readiness and arrest rates for individuals with a mental illness. However, null effects were found for the level of force officers used during their interaction(s) with individuals with mental illness. Additionally, the results also suggest officers may decide to join their police department’s Crisis Intervention Team if they know at least two or more individuals with some form of mental illness. Nevertheless, although current research has displayed positive findings, the overall effectiveness of crisis intervention teams may not be completely determined, as more exhaustive research is still needed.