Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies, who encounter mentally ill people more than most residents, are taking classes to learn more about those individuals, with the hopes of defusing incidents before they turn violent.
More than 900 of the sheriff’s 2,400 law enforcement and corrections deputies have taken a 40-hour Crisis Intervention Training course. But freeing personnel for a full week is difficult, sheriff’s leaders say, so groups of deputies are being enrolled in an eight-hour crash course called Mental Health First Aid.
