The man hears voices, dozens of them.

But now, the voices he hears are those of an officer, giving him instructions: “You have to leave here. Now.”

The man stands still.

To an onlooker, the man may seem disobedient, disgruntled, flatly ignoring an officer’s orders. The officer must quickly decide: Is the man ignoring him, or is he battling mental illness – maybe an auditory hallucination – and can’t help but not respond?

Police officers “expect and demand pretty rapid compliance,” said Susan Crain Lewis, CEO of the Mental Health Association of the Heartland. “People who are in the midst of a psychiatric crisis aren’t always able to do that.”

Now the association – with help from Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center and the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center – will give local law enforcement and corrections personnel the tools they need to better work with the mentally ill where they most often encounter them – on the streets and in jails or prisons.

The Sept. 21 training in Lawrence will last eight hours and instruct about 50 law enforcement officers from local police, sheriff departments and state and private prisons.

The training, Lewis said, is intended to show officers how to better interact with those who suffer mental illness, and where to look for community assistance to help keep them out of the criminal justice system.

For the second year now, the seminar is at full capacity, with every available seat reserved for police officers, corrections officers and others.

“We’re over the top,” Lewis said. “There is obviously a tremendous need.”

For officers, the training will help to understand a segment of society that presents a different set of challenges, Lawrence Police Capt. David Cobb said.

“Officers want to fill the tool bag up with the best tools you can come up with,” Cobb said.

On the street, officers need to know different ways to approach subjects, he said. There are people who don’t want to be approached quickly, talked loudly to or touched.

Officers need to know how to recognize those signs, he said.

“It’s a perishable skill like everything out there,” Cobb said. “But at least you have something to fall back on.”

And in Douglas County and area jails, where a segment of the area’s mentally ill often find themselves, corrections officers need to know how to quickly recognize what illnesses an inmate may have – and how to direct them to help quickly when they get out, rather than have people wait weeks for mental health assistance.

Lt. Kari Wempe, a Douglas County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman and member of the Kansas Jail Assn., has helped conduct mental health training seminars here and in other small towns across the state.

The results so far, she said, have been positive.

“There’s a patience level you need to have,” Wempe explained. “We make sure they get the appropriate care.”

Police training

The relationships between law enforcement and mental health providers in the area are already in place. Both the police and sheriff departments have contracts with Bert Nash to provide varying kinds of mental heath evaluations and training.

But the seminar is intended to give officers a wide overview of mental health symptoms, drugs and resources. In essence, Wempe said, it provides officers “tools” to use to ensure both a patient’s rights and public safety.

Apparently, officers found tools they could use at last year’s seminar.

According to data collected by the Midwest Health Association of the Heartland, at least 90 percent of officers statewide responding last year thought the training would help them in the field by providing new ideas and work habits when working with people suffering from mental illness.

Last year, 54 officers from the Lawrence area attended the training.

At the seminar, Bert Nash staff will explain how officers should handle involuntary commitment – taking a mentally ill patient into custody if they appear dangerous to themselves or others.

State law permits the practice, instructing officers to take the patient to a local treatment facility for examination.

Screening

Officers typically use Bert Nash or Lawrence Memorial Hospital, where the patients or prisoners are screened for mental health issues and to see how dangerous they may actually be, said Eunice Ruttinger, director of adult services at Bert Nash.

If they can’t be admitted, state law dictates the treatment facility find them a place to stay – provided it’s not a prison cell or another criminal detention facility.

“They are very careful,” Ruttinger said. “There are civil rights involved for people.”

But these rules only apply if a person appears dangerous and hasn’t committed a major crime.

“Some who commit a dangerous, felonious act while in their mental state have to go to jail,” Wempe said. “We don’t have a choice with that.”

If not dangerous, they can get arrested and booked into jail like anyone else, Lewis said – typically for lesser crimes such as disturbing the peace or vagrancy.

This year, the majority of those planning to attend the seminar come from either county sheriff departments who operate jails or from nearby state and private prisons, Lewis said.

A Bureau of Justice Statistics report shows that the rate of mental illness in state prisons and jails in the United States, 16 percent, is more than three times the rate in the general population – only 5 percent.

Of those with mental illness in state and federal prisons, nearly half are there for committing a nonviolent crime, the report shows.

Mental illness rate

Officials from the Douglas County Jail reported previously that at any given time, 15 percent of the jail’s 192 beds are filled by people suffering mental illness. The national average is close to 30 percent.

In April, Douglas County Jail staff and Bert Nash officials convened the first meeting of a re-entry committee to help put mentally ill inmates in contact with mental health professionals as quickly as possible.

At the meeting, officials shaped a new plan that would see released inmates dropped off at Bert Nash rather than the Law Enforcement Center at 11th and Massachusetts streets, assessing inmates while they are in jail and ensuring access to any needed medications upon release.