When someone in a mental health crisis needs help, the person who shows up is still usually a police officer. In New York City, 86% of 911 mental health calls in the first half of fiscal 2026 drew a police response, a review by THE CITY found. Crisis Intervention Team programs, known as CIT, are the most widespread effort to make those encounters safer. This guide covers what CIT is, how the training works, how it compares with co-responder and mobile crisis teams, and what the research shows.

A crisis intervention team is a partnership between a police department, mental health and addiction providers, and people with lived experience of mental illness and their families. Specially trained officers respond to calls involving someone in a mental health crisis, work to de-escalate, and connect the person to treatment instead of jail when that is appropriate.

CIT International, the organization that supports CIT programs, describes CIT as "a community partnership of law enforcement, mental health and addiction professionals". It sets two basic goals: a compassionate crisis response that is as unintrusive as possible, and getting people with mental illness or addiction into treatment and out of the criminal justice system. NAMI counts more than 2,700 CIT community partnerships nationwide, according to a Tennessee CIT annual report.

CIT started in Memphis. In 1987, Memphis police shot and killed a young man with a history of mental illness during a crisis call at a public housing development, and the shooting set off protests across the city. The mayor turned to local NAMI advocates, who brought in police, community mental health professionals, university leaders, hospital administrators and church leaders to design a better way to respond, according to the University of Memphis CIT Center. The first program was developed in 1988 and became known as the Memphis Model. Its founders, Major Sam Cochran and Dr. Randy Dupont, later helped launch CIT International.

The center of every CIT program is a 40-hour course, taught over a single week or spread across several weeks. One Ohio training center lists what a certified CIT officer covers in those 40 hours (Northwest Ohio CIT Program):

The same program lists the core elements of the Memphis Model, and most of them happen outside the classroom: a practicum, community partnerships, data collection, advanced training and recognition for CIT officers. The training is usually open to dispatchers, corrections officers and probation officers as well as patrol officers. For people outside law enforcement, some NAMI affiliates offer a 16-hour Crisis Intervention Partner (CIP) course built on the CIT curriculum for hospital staff, teachers, social workers and other emergency personnel (NAMI Dane County).

Programs keep adding specialty tracks. Chester County, Pennsylvania, now in the ninth year of its 40-hour program, has graduated more than 400 people from 31 police departments and other agencies. This year it piloted a youth track as one of six counties NAMI chose nationwide, and it added a Veterans Response Team track for officers with military experience (Chester County). Some states run CIT at scale: Ohio's program has trained more than 25,000 sworn officers and other professionals across all 88 counties since 2000 (Newswise).

These three models often get lumped together, and local programs blur the lines. The Congressional Research Service separates them by who responds (CRS, 2022):

The lines keep shifting. SAMHSA's 2025 national crisis care guidelines list co-responder teams as one model of mobile crisis service, which the 2020 guidelines did not (Crisis Now). Many communities run all three at once: CIT-trained officers on patrol, a co-responder unit for the calls police still take, and a mobile crisis team for calls that don't need an officer.

The evidence is strongest on what CIT changes in officers. A 2019 review in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law found that "studies generally support that CIT has beneficial officer-level outcomes", including better attitudes and less stigma toward people with mental illness. The review also found that CIT likely increases diversion to psychiatric care before booking.

The evidence is weaker on outcomes people care most about. The same review found no study showing CIT reduced use of force, no consistent drop in official arrest numbers, and weak evidence on injuries to officers or the public. CIT-trained officers report arresting people with mental illness less often, but that finding rests mostly on what officers say about themselves.

Local results depend on how a program is run. In El Paso, where the police CIT has partnered with Emergence Health Network since 2019, the provider's chief operating officer said 98% of the people seen across 3,809 interventions were kept out of jail and the emergency room (KFOX14). New York shows the limits of training alone. THE CITY found eight incidents since 2019 in which CIT-trained NYPD officers shot or tased the subject of a 911 mental health call, and six of those people died (THE CITY).

Most CIT programs run on local budgets plus grants. Recent examples from our tracker:

See what's open now on our Co-Responder Grants and Opioid Settlement Funds Tracker.

The standard Memphis Model course is 40 hours, usually taught over one week. Many programs add shorter refresher and specialty courses, and some NAMI affiliates offer a 16-hour Crisis Intervention Partner course for people outside law enforcement.

They are different models. CIT trains police officers to handle mental health calls themselves. A co-responder program pairs an officer with a mental health clinician who goes on the call with them or is called in after officers arrive. Many departments run both.

CIT is built for law enforcement, and many programs also open the course to dispatchers, corrections officers, probation officers and other first responders.

CIT-trained officers report arresting people with mental illness less often, and CIT likely increases diversion to psychiatric care before booking. Official arrest data has not shown a consistent effect, according to a 2019 review in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

The Memphis Model is the original CIT program, developed in Memphis, Tennessee in 1988 after a 1987 police shooting of a man in a mental health crisis. It pairs 40 hours of officer training with partnerships between police, mental health providers and people with lived experience.

Badges and Behavioral Health covers CIT, co-responder and crisis response programs every week. Subscribe to get the stories in your inbox.