In 1987, Memphis police shot and killed a young man with schizophrenia who was holding a knife. The community response to that death produced the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model — a partnership between police, mental-health providers, families, and people with lived experience designed to change how officers respond to behavioral-health crises. Nearly forty years later, CIT is the most widely adopted police mental-health training in the United States, with documented programs in more than 2,700 communities.
Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) is a 40-hour, community-based police training and response model that prepares a self-selected subset of officers to recognize and de-escalate mental-health crises and to divert people to treatment rather than jail.
The Memphis Model
The original "Memphis Model," developed by the Memphis Police Department, NAMI Memphis, and the University of Memphis, has three core elements:
- Specialized officers — a self-selected, volunteer subset of patrol officers who complete 40 hours of CIT training. They remain on regular patrol but are dispatched as primary responders to behavioral-health calls.
- A no-refusal psychiatric drop-off — a designated psychiatric facility that accepts people brought by CIT officers within minutes, freeing the officer to return to patrol.
- Community partnership — ongoing involvement of mental-health providers, families, advocates, and people with lived experience in training, oversight, and quality improvement.
The CIT International organization stewards the model and publishes core elements that distinguish "true" CIT from look-alike trainings.
What CIT training covers
The 40-hour curriculum typically includes:
- Symptoms of major mental illnesses (schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, PTSD)
- Substance use disorders and intoxication
- Developmental and intellectual disabilities
- Verbal de-escalation skills
- Site visits to psychiatric facilities and meetings with peers
- Role-play scenarios with actors playing people in crisis
- Local civil commitment law and procedures
- Community resources and referral pathways
What changes when CIT is in place
Research is mixed but generally favorable on several outcomes:
- Reduced use of force — multiple studies show CIT-trained officers use force less often in mental-health calls than non-trained peers.
- Increased treatment referrals — CIT officers are more likely to take people to a treatment facility than to jail.
- Improved officer confidence and knowledge — consistently demonstrated in pre/post training studies.
What CIT has not reliably shown is a reduction in officer-involved shootings of people with mental illness at the population level. The reasons are complex — CIT is voluntary, only a fraction of patrol is trained, and the deepest changes require system-level investments in psychiatric facilities, dispatch protocols, and follow-up care. The Council of State Governments Justice Center has published frameworks for evaluating police-mental health collaborations more rigorously.
How to know if your area has CIT
Most major US cities now have CIT programs. To check:
- Call your local NAMI affiliate — most are involved in CIT training and can tell you what's available.
- Check the CIT International directory or your state's CIT coordinator.
- When calling 911, you can ask the dispatcher to send a CIT-trained officer if one is available.
What CIT is not
Several common misconceptions are worth clearing up:
- CIT is not the same as a co-responder team. CIT trains police; co-responder teams pair an officer with a clinician. Some cities run both.
- CIT is not 100% of officers. The Memphis Model intentionally trains 20–25% of patrol — enough to ensure coverage, but with self-selected officers who genuinely want the role.
- CIT does not replace mobile crisis teams. The two are complementary. Many communities have both.
- CIT does not prevent all bad outcomes. A CIT officer is still an armed officer. The model reduces but does not eliminate risk.
Criticisms and ongoing debates
Some advocates argue that mental-health crises should be removed from police response altogether — that a clinician-led model like CAHOOTS is structurally safer. Others argue CIT is a useful but incomplete reform, and that the community-side investments (psychiatric drop-offs, follow-up care) matter more than the training itself. Researchers like Amy Watson and Michael Compton have published extensively on the limits and strengths of CIT.
Calling 911 with a CIT request
If you must call 911 for a loved one's mental-health crisis, here is what tends to help:
- Tell the dispatcher clearly that this is a mental-health crisis, not a criminal matter.
- Ask explicitly for a CIT-trained officer, or for a co-responder team if your city has one.
- Describe known triggers — uniforms, raised voices, lights and sirens — so the dispatcher can pass that on.
- If safe, meet officers outside the home so they can be briefed before approaching.
- Provide the diagnosis, current medications, and any known weapons in the home.
Even with CIT, calling 911 introduces risk for people with serious mental illness, especially Black and brown community members. Where available, mobile crisis teams or non-police crisis lines are usually the safer first call. See our guide on when to call 911.
The bigger picture
CIT was a landmark reform when it was introduced — the first systematic attempt to teach police that a person with schizophrenia in crisis is not a criminal. It remains an important part of the US crisis system. But the most realistic way to think about CIT is as one piece of a larger ecosystem that should also include 988, mobile crisis teams, crisis stabilization units, and peer respites. The communities with the best outcomes for people in psychiatric crisis are the ones investing in all of them.
This article is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified mental health professional. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 in the US, or your local emergency number.