The woman thought she’d had enough.

Agitated, she clambered to a precarious perch on the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge.

After being called to the scene, Sgt. Paul Edwards of the Bangor Police Department walked slowly toward her, spoke in a friendly manner and asked questions to make her comfortable.

Edwards, one of a growing number of area police and emergency responders to have received Crisis Intervention Training, said later that he felt “empathy, sympathy, and I really wanted to help her.”

After speaking with Edwards, the woman, who the officer later learned was autistic, came down from her perch on the bridge and was referred to a mental health professional who could help her.

“We became friends, somewhat friends, after that,” Edwards said.

Not too long ago, people in some sort of mental health crisis usually wound up in jail if they encountered police.

It was a common and easy solution, but it didn’t address the core problem: The person needed help.

“Someone in crisis is really looking, more often than not, for help,” Brewer Police Chief Perry Antone said last week. “The goal with this [CIT program] is to get this person services so they’re no longer in crisis – mentally and emotionally – so they can be part of the community.”

Antone acknowledged that, years ago, “you waited for the person to violate the law and then arrested them.” It doesn’t work anymore, he said.

“Jails need to be for people that are dangerous – criminals – and for people who have been sentenced by the courts. Jails are not mental health institutes,” he said.

Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross couldn’t agree more. He asked for assistance two years ago specifically to address issues of suicide among inmates.

“We were experiencing deaths within the jail,” he said. “We were facing a crisis.”

The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Maine, an agency that has provided tremendous support for the CIT program, estimates 51 percent of inmates in the state’s county jail system have a mental illness.

“There is a lot to be done on a statewide basis,” Ross said. “Basically, we’re chipping away at it.”

Penobscot County Jail is the second in the nation to adopt the crisis training, which has improved the abilities of officers to neutralize hostile situations and to recognize inmates with suicidal tendencies.

“Our officers are taught to de-escalate,” Ross said. “If we don’t, the only option we have is the use of force. We’ve always instilled that it’s better to work with people … instead of going to the next step.”

The training has reduced the number of officers injured on the job and the number of inmates who reach the crisis point, he said.

“It’s a very valuable tool,” Ross said.

A committee that formed in 2004 to address the regional mental health issue, composed of members from the Sheriff’s Department, NAMI, Bangor mental health providers, Penquis Community Action Program, the state Department of Health and Human Services and corrections officers, still meets monthly.

There is now a full-time person at the Penobscot County Jail to help coordinate an inmate’s return to the community, Ross said.

“The crisis intervention training is just another piece in that wheel to help,” he said.

The training has had a four-pronged effect with the Bangor Police Department, Edwards said.

“Use of force reports went down, injuries went down, arrests went down, and referrals went up,” he said. “All the numbers work for everybody involved.”

In the Bangor-Brewer region, law enforcement agencies began CIT classes in 2005. The intensive 40-hour program is taught by mental health and law enforcement officials. Edwards received his training with Portland police in 2004.

He now helps to coordinate the program, which has helped train 15 officers in Bangor, five in Brewer (a third of that city’s police force) and numerous corrections officers for the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department. Officers in Veazie, Orono, Old Town and Hampden and with the University of Maine Department of Public Safety and Maine State Police also are CIT-certified, along with firefighters and paramedics in Bangor and Brewer, and some area nurses.

“We’re looking to expand that even more,” Edwards said.

At least one sheriff’s deputy is being trained during each local class, and the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department is interested in offering the training, Ross said.

Connecting those in crisis with the available community resources is key to the program’s success, said Mike Wentworth, Community Health and Counseling Services’ adult crisis team member who also is involved in the local classes.

Each CIT officer carries laminated cards that list area resources available for people in crisis. The list includes social workers, drug and alcohol programs, and outreach and other listings.

When the training started two year ago, “it was like pulling teeth,” Wentworth said. “The benefits have spilled over and it’s grown.”

Some of the skills taught may seem obvious, but they aren’t. An officer encountering a person in a crisis should use a lower voice, approach the person in a nonthreatening way – and listen.

“It gives me a few new tools to use,” said Officer Jeremy Upham of Brewer CIT. He has been an officer for three years and worked at Community Health and Counseling Services for nine years before that.

Edwards said his CIT officers are not “touchy-feely tree-huggers” but have the skills to make people feel comfortable enough to neutralize stressful and tense situations.

“When you’re a cop with a badge and you approach somebody … their stress level increases,” he said.

By providing residents with other options besides being arrested and thrown into jail, “it makes it all worthwhile,” Edwards said. “It does take a little more time.”

Sgt. Jim Owens was hired by Bangor police on Feb. 22, 1971. Over the years he has patrolled the city, the emergency calls have changed considerably.

“We spend a large amount of time dealing with people that are confused,” he said. In effect, he said, police officers are now part social worker.

One reason for the increased need for crisis intervention training in the area is changes at Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center, until 2005 known as Bangor Mental Health Institute.

“They’ve gone from over 1,200 beds to … 86,” Wentworth said. “The number of people with mental health [issues] on the streets is much greater” since the change.

Cpl. Roger Hershey of the Brewer Police Department said it another way: “We have a huge mental health issue in this area.”

Taking an active approach to dealing with people in crisis helps in the long run, Hershey said.

“It lets you deal with it the right way the first time and it helps everybody,” he said.

Hershey thinks the training should be mandatory for all new officers.

The Maine Criminal Justice Academy holds a day of crisis intervention training for new officers during the 18-week police cadet school.

Upham and Hershey can share plenty of stories about how the specialized training has helped to defuse harsh situations and to get a person appropriate help.

Many of the CIT officers have people they check on regularly, which makes the person involved more comfortable with the officer. When a crisis occurs that person is more likely to seek out the officer’s help, Edwards said.

“If they realize you’re just a person and that you care about them, it goes a long way with people,” Upham said. “It’s a new way of thinking. It’s great training.”

CIT officers take the time to get to know the person, and in doing so they are able to comfort and console the individual. This sometimes put officers in a position that does not fit the picture of hard-nosed police, Edwards said.

He recalled a recent incident in which one Bangor CIT officer was hugged just before leaving the home of a woman she had just helped.

“Cops don’t get hugs,” he said. “That’s not tough.”