Memphis Collaborative Crisis Response Training Program

The Center for Community Research and Evaluation received $225k as a sub-recipient from the City of Memphis Police Department

In 2024, The Center for Community Research and Evaluation (CCRE) received a $225,000 award as a sub-recipient from the City of Memphis Police Department’s grant “Collaborative Crisis Response Training Program”. The grant is funded by the U.S Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) to support local police jurisdictions, community partners, and other stakeholders to promote public safety for those involved in mental and behavioral health crisis situations.

The Memphis Police Department (MPD) has 30+ years of experience facilitating a trained Crisis Intervention Team (CIT), which is known internationally as the “The Memphis Model”. Since 1988, MPD’s CIT consists of officers with 40 hours of training in mental health diagnoses, psychiatric interventions, substance use and dependence, and verbal de-escalation responding to individuals experiencing mental health crises and connecting them with needed services. As a third-party evaluator, CCRE will capture the current outcomes of the CIT program ecosystem from the citizen, officer, and community perspective to complete a “Evaluation of Memphis Police Department Crisis Intervention Programs” over a span of three years.

During the first year, CCRE is gathering existing quantitative data from the MPD and other community partners to evaluate the current outcomes of the CIT training program. Qualitative data will also be gathered through interviews and focus groups with community partners and police personnel involved with CIT. The results from the baseline evaluation will inform an Implementation Plan to provide recommendations to the MPD to further enrich the CIT training program and provide strategies to align with the CRIT curriculum developed by BJA if needed.

CCRE’s goal is to strengthen MPD’s CIT collaborative effort towards public safety by facilitating an iterative continuous improvement process with consistent data analysis and evaluation. This grant award is the latest addition to CCRE’s public health and criminal justice evaluation projects which include partnerships with Delta Health Alliance, Shelby County Health Department, UofM’s Public Safety Institute (PSI) Domestic Violence Task Force, and UofM’s School of Public Health.

For more information, contact Dr. Wesley James at wljames1@memphis.edu.