It seems the best ideas often are born from tragedy. Smoke detectors, the Amber Alert, Mother’s Against Drunk Driving and the Civil Rights Act to name a few.

So that’s why Bangor’s population of people living with mental illness, and their families, can thank Joseph Dewayne Robinson of Memphis, Tenn., for a new program that just might help keep them alive and out of jail.

In 1987, Robinson, a 27-year-old black man in the midst of a mental-health crisis, was cutting himself with a knife and threatening suicide. Several white police officers surrounded him, shouting at him to drop the weapon. Robinson’s temper exploded, and he darted at the officers with the knife. He was shot and killed instantly.

It was the issue of race that first fed the ensuing community storm, but what emerged six years later was an idea that has built bridges between police officers and people with mental illness across the country.

Next month the program comes to Bangor.

A few officers from the Bangor Police Department and the Penobscot County Jail will undergo 40 hours of Crisis Intervention Training, and will become certified CIT officers. They’ll even get a special pin.

There was a day when cops needed to know how to slap on a pair of handcuffs, shoot relatively straight, break up a bar fight and duck when necessary. Those days are long gone, and Bangor is definitely going to be better off for the emergence of its new, specialty CIT officers.

The officers will have their normal duties, but will be available to respond to calls involving people with mental illness. On the scene, the CIT officer will be in charge. Their mission? To de-escalate and to resolve the situation by seeking help for the person, not throwing him in jail.

They will learn how to speak to a person with mental illness at times when they are in crisis, and at the times when they are not. They will learn the dynamics of the different forms of mental illness and the reactions to the drugs used to treat them.

They will be armed with a list of service providers for the mentally ill throughout the region, and their phone numbers. They will seek to help them within the provider network, not the Penobscot County Jail.

“This truly is a diversion program,” said Bangor police Sgt. Paul Edwards, who already received training through the Portland Police Department, which has had a program for several years. Edwards and Sgt. Jeff Bierman of PCJ are overseeing the implementation of the programs in their agencies.

“At first I was a bit skeptical. It seemed it was a bit touchy-feely, and to be perfectly honest, most police officers go from one situation to another and your attitude tends to become something like ‘Look buddy, either you’re going to stop this and I’m going to leave or you’re going to jail.’ This teaches us a whole new approach and we are armed with so much more knowledge than we ever had before.”

Edwards said he is sure during his lengthy career he has put countless people behind bars who should never have been there.

“By doing that we’ve only made that person’s situation so much worse,” he said this week.

The CIT officers will be identifiable by a quarter-sized pin, probably light blue, which they will wear pinned on their chests.

If what happened in Portland and other cities around the nation happens in Bangor, those in the grips of a mental-health crisis will soon be asking to speak to an officer with a pin. And they’ll come.