Six members of the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office completed a 40-hour Crisis Intervention Team training session Oct. 27-31 at the Harry Lundeberg School of Seamanship, gaining skills to handle behavioral health crises with de-escalation and resource connections.
The graduates include Correctional Officer First Class John Edelen, Correctional Officer Branden Mills, Deputy Joseph Senatore, Captain Stephen Simonds, Deputy Phillip Davis and Deputy First Class Alexander Tasciotti. This certification equips them to identify mental health indicators during calls, apply verbal techniques to calm situations and link individuals to local services, reducing risks of escalation or arrest.
The CIT model, developed in Memphis in 1988, trains officers in a community-oriented approach to crises involving mental illness, substance use or developmental disabilities. In Maryland, the program aligns with state mandates from the Police and Correctional Training Commissions, emphasizing multidisciplinary responses to divert people from jails to treatment. Participants covered topics such as mental health laws, including involuntary commitment processes under Maryland’s emergency petition statute, and recognition of traumatic brain injuries that mimic psychiatric symptoms. Sessions featured guest speakers from affected families sharing experiences with addiction and loss, alongside role-play exercises simulating encounters like suicide attempts or hallucinations during traffic stops.
These drills teach officers to assess threats, use open-ended questions for rapport and coordinate with mobile units, ensuring responses prioritize safety for all involved. The training concludes with evaluations on scenario handling, where officers demonstrate choices like calling a peer support specialist over force.
In Southern Maryland, CIT operates through a regional network linking the sheriff’s offices in St. Mary’s, Charles and Calvert counties with their health departments, the Maryland State Police and groups like the Santé Group. Captain Sarah Smith leads as CIT commander, with Alexis Higdon, a licensed clinical professional counselor, serving as coordinator and Sergeant Anthony Whipkey handling law enforcement logistics for the St. Mary’s office. This setup facilitates shared resources, such as joint simulations at facilities like the Island Creek K9 Training Center in Calvert County, where past sessions have built cross-county protocols for rural response times.
The collaboration extends to advocacy, pushing for expanded access to behavioral health beds at facilities like the MedStar St. Mary’s Hospital in Leonardtown. Recent additions include the Santé Southern Maryland Crisis Response mobile team, launched March 1, 2025, which deploys clinicians and peers to 988 calls from 8 a.m. to midnight weekdays, covering St. Mary’s and Charles counties. Officers trained in CIT often serve as first contacts, relaying details to these teams for follow-up visits within hours, streamlining handoffs in areas from Great Mills to Charlotte Hall.
Such integrations address rising demands, as Maryland’s behavioral health system handles over 100,000 crisis contacts annually statewide, with Southern Maryland seeing proportional increases tied to post-pandemic isolation and opioid trends. CIT-trained deputies in St. Mary’s have responded to hundreds of mental health calls yearly, using the program to connect callers to walk-in hubs at the county Health Hub on Great Mills Road, where services run daily for evaluations and medication adjustments.
Benefits include lower use-of-force incidents and higher diversion rates, with national studies showing CIT officers 25 percent more likely to refer to treatment over custody. Locally, the model fosters trust in communities like Lexington Park, where patrol deputies collaborate with advocates to host awareness events at the Pax River Naval Air Station gates. For corrections staff like Edelen and Mills, the skills apply in jail settings, aiding intakes for those with schizophrenia or PTSD from military service.
The St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office, founded in 1672 as one of Maryland’s oldest, has integrated CIT since 2017, training dozens amid a push for de-escalation following national reforms. This latest class builds on prior graduations, such as the four officers certified in November 2024, enhancing a roster now exceeding 20 percent of sworn personnel. Ongoing in-services, required annually, cover updates like co-responder models pairing deputies with counselors on patrols.
By embedding empathy into protocols, these graduates support a framework where crises become entry points to recovery, aligning with county goals in the Healthy St. Mary’s 2026 plan for behavioral health equity. The sheriff’s office reports no formal metrics yet for this group, but program coordinators track outcomes through follow-up logs, noting quicker resolutions in simulated high-stress calls.
