Riley Heart for Growth

09/01/2026

08/29/2026

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08/29/2026

There is an old saying about not being able to see the forest for the trees.

Sometimes we become so focused on what is immediately in front of us that we lose sight of the larger picture.

I think that is happening in some of our conversations about Elkhart.

Open Facebook on almost any given day and there will be something new to argue about. A controversy. An arrest. A political disagreement. A police incident. Something somebody said. Something somebody posted. Something that becomes the issue of the day.

Some of those things deserve attention.
But while we are looking at the trees, I am concerned that we are missing part of the forest.

There is another crisis happening underneath many of the things we see on the surface.

Mental health.

Substance use disorder.

Synthetic drugs.

And the increasing complexity that occurs when all of those things begin intersecting with homelessness, emergency rooms, law enforcement, the courts, jails, families, neighborhoods, and community services.
This is not as easy to reduce to a Facebook post.

It is not as sensational.

But it is something we need to talk about.

What I See Through CIT

Part of my perspective comes from serving as a Crisis Intervention Team coordinator.
CIT helps law enforcement officers and other first responders better recognize and respond to people experiencing behavioral health crises. It is important work, but CIT is only one piece of a much larger system.

That larger picture is one reason I have been involved in working through what is called the Sequential Intercept Model, or SIM.

The Sequential Intercept Model looks at what happens when someone with a mental health condition or substance use disorder begins interacting with different systems in the community.

It begins before the person ever enters the criminal justice system.

Then it examines crisis services, law enforcement contact, detention, courts, jail, reentry, community corrections, and ultimately whether that person can successfully reconnect with treatment and community support.

SAMHSA describes the model as a way for communities to identify resources and gaps throughout those different points of contact. Policy Research Associates, which helped develop the model, describes SIM as a community planning tool for determining where people can be connected with the right resources before they move deeper into the criminal justice system.

That is an important distinction.
The goal cannot simply be figuring out what police should do after the crisis has already arrived.

We should also be asking what happened before the police were called.

Police Cannot Be the Entire Behavioral Health System

Whenever someone suffering from a mental health crisis or substance use disorder becomes disruptive, dangerous, homeless, or involved in criminal behavior, attention naturally turns toward law enforcement.
People ask what the police are doing about it.

That is a legitimate question when public safety is involved.

But we have to understand the limits of the answer.

Police officers are not licensed therapists.

They are not addiction counselors.

They are not psychiatrists.

They are not long term treatment providers.

First responders can protect life, restore immediate safety, deescalate situations, administer emergency aid, make arrests when necessary, and connect people with services when those services are available.

CIT can make officers much better prepared to recognize what they are encountering and respond appropriately. SAMHSA specifically identifies specialized law enforcement training such as CIT and partnerships between police and behavioral health professionals as important components of the Sequential Intercept Model.

But an officer cannot provide months of addiction treatment on the side of the road.

A firefighter cannot provide ongoing psychiatric care.

A paramedic cannot create a long term recovery plan during an emergency call.

We have to stop expecting emergency responders to permanently solve problems that require an entire behavioral health system.

The Real Question Comes Before 911

Read the full article: https://substack.com//note/p-213273573?r=3jbf54

08/26/2026

08/22/2026

Learning From the Emergency

What a Midnight Drive Through Northwest Indiana Taught Me About Preparedness at Home

This week, I traveled to Chicago to pick up my daughter from the airport. On the way back, sometime around midnight, I drove through portions of Northwest Indiana that were still without power following last week's devastating storms. During the daytime, you can see what is around you.
At night, it was an entirely different experience.

It was pitch black!

No streetlights. Traffic signals were completely dark. At some intersections, there was nothing warning drivers that they were approaching a traffic signal that was not operating. If I had not been using GPS, there were intersections I might not have realized were there until I was almost in them.

That experience raised a question for me that goes beyond this particular storm.
What does emergency preparedness look like when the emergency lasts for days instead of hours?

But it also caused me to think about something I learned years ago as an instructor.

You learn by watching what happens elsewhere.

Learning From What Others Experience
When I was an instructor, one of the things we regularly did was study.

You might watch videos involving uses of force, training exercises or different techniques. You studied what happened. You looked at what worked well. You looked at what did not work well. You considered what could have been done differently.
The purpose was not necessarily to criticize the people involved.

The purpose was to learn.
That same principle applies far beyond law enforcement.

One of the reasons I value conferences, training opportunities, networking and visiting other cities is because no city or organization has to learn every lesson by experiencing it firsthand.

We can learn from each other.
We can look at something another community handled exceptionally well and ask whether we should adopt something similar.

We can see something that created problems somewhere else and ask whether we are prepared if the same thing happens here.

Sometimes you come home with an idea for improvement.

Sometimes you come home realizing your community is already doing something very well.

Both are valuable.

That is how I viewed my drive through Northwest Indiana.

Thinking About Elkhart.

As I drove through those communities, observed what was happening and later did some research, I naturally started thinking about my own city.

Read the full article: https://substack.com//note/p-212233750?r=3jbf54