International CIT conference comes to Monterey

This week, about 1,000 people from all over the world are in Monterey to discuss crisis intervention strategies.

For the first time, the International Crisis Intervention Team Conference is being held on the West Coast.

The first conference was held in 2005, and since then, attendance numbers have continued to grow.

“What we have found is our conferences, and this is our 9th one and we’ve always had it in a different state each year… when we leave that state, wonderful things happen to the CIT program,” CIT International President Michael Woody said.

CIT teams are community partnerships that advocate for effective and compassionate crisis response for people with mental illness.

While the conference aims to help first responders better their communication, it also aims to heal those first responders who often take work home with them.

“I’ve been in law enforcement for just short of 16 years, and there’s certain incidents I can recall all the way back from my first days on the job,” Carmel Police Officer Chris Johnson said. Officer Johnson is also Monterey County’s 2014 CIT officer of the year.

Of the 97 workshops during the conference, a significant portion focuses on helping first responders find long-term solutions for grief.

“We have several different workshops that are dealing specifically with first responders that can suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or anxiety or depression or the work that they do.”

Tragedy is no stranger to the Central Coast. Just this weekend, there were two fatal shootings. One in Greenfield, and a double homicide in Watsonville. In the Watsonville shooting, a four-year-old girl was killed by a stray bullet.

Monterey Police Chief Phil Penko says in stressful situations, support spans different departments. Even though he didn’t respond, he said he felt deeply for Watsonville police.

“In fact, I sent Chief Solano a text message, telling him my thoughts are with him and his staff, obviously the family of the folks, but he and his staff, having to deal with that,” Chief Penko said.

Chief Penko hopes the conference brings a renewed sense of that support.

“We spend all this time practicing our defensive tactics, we practice with our firearms, and only very recently have agencies started to realize we have to practice with those too.”

The conference runs through Wednesday. Clint Eastwood is a big donor.

One of the key note speakers is Sergeant Troy Anderson, a responder in the Sandy Hook tragedy, in Newtown, Connecticut.

He’ll discuss long-term support strategies for officers and their families during a workshop Wednesday.