The Tippecanoe County Crisis Intervention Team is a community partnership of law enforcement officials, mental health professionals, mental health consumers and their family members. Four area police departments currently participate on the team: Lafayette, West Lafayette, Purdue, and the Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Department.

The Crisis Intervention Team helps those with mental illness through a crisis by de-escalating the situation, then accessing appropriate medical treatment rather than arresting them for illness-related behaviors.Law enforcement officers serving on the Crisis Intervention Team have been specially trained to work with those who have a mental illness. Their training consists of a full 40 hours and covers mental illnesses, development disorders and treatments, psychotropic medications, methods of approaching a crisis situation, suicide prevention, techniques for de-escalating the crisis and available community resources.

The Crisis Intervention Team model was developed in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1988 following the tragicdeath of a person with mental illness in crisis. The model has since been adopted by communities across theUnited States.

With facilitation assistance from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill West Central Indianaand a $134,000 grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a community wide working group spent all of 2003 planning forsuch a team in Tippecanoe County. After its first training in February 2004 and implementation of the team, subsequent training sessions areexpected to prepare about 20 percent of local law enforcement officers for Crisis Intervention Team service.