About the Team

What is CIT?

The Lancaster County Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) is a collaborative effort of local agencies, law enforcement, and the mental health community to ensure through consistent and astute training that mental health crisis situations are responded to with respect for the person and proper consideration of mental illness.

CIT is the first intercept  for people with mental illness before getting involved in the criminal justice system.

CIT Explained

• CIT is police-based Crisis Intervention Team training.
• CIT is community collaboration between mental health professionals, law enforcement, family, and consumer advocates.
• CIT teams are a pre-booking, jail diversion program designed to improve outcomes of police interactions with individuals with mental illness.
• CIT is ideal for patrol officers who are first line responders involving individuals in a mental health crisis.
• CIT provides 40 hours of voluntary, specialized training to first line responders and law enforcement officers.
• CIT is now approved for 40 MPOETC CLEE hours.

Benefits of CIT

• Decreases officer injury rates
• Decreases number of arrests of individuals with mental illness
• Connects individuals in mental health crisis to appropriate mental health services
• Decreases use of force occurrences
• Decreases consumer injury rates