Linda Mims

Never in my life when I was young and naive in grad school would ever think that this was happening in our country because it is not just it's not right.

And it's a violation of people's human right to have health care, basic health care.

We get treatment for those people, ASAP, with whatever tools we have.

And if we don't have the tools, we make them make the tools.

Not right.

Well, in California, they don't have to do CIT training.

In our county, San Diego County, they do some other kind of training.

Usually, NAMI will go in.

They have some people that will go in and help with the training and talk about the symptoms, talk about if somebody doesn't appear to be following your direction, it's because they might be listening to voices in their head.

Basically, don't take it personally.

Don't think they're trying to defy you, etc., etc.,

But I'm telling you, I don't think for many of these officers, it is really settled in.

And I was talking to one officer and they said, if you are not open to learning about this, you're not going to take it to heart.

So we really need only officers who want to do this kind of thing and that can learn about it and really internalize it so that they can do a really good job with it.

I mean, we shouldn't have to rely on officers, but we do right now.

Again, the doctors need to come out.

The doctors need to be talking.

They need to be saying, this is not acceptable.

This is a neurological disease.

This is not acceptable because they don't listen to parents.