Johnson County crisis intervention deputies Jim Engemark, Shannon Chambers and Chad Poytner pose for a photo inside the Indiana Statehouse in 2023. The deputies were at the Statehouse as part of legislator meet and greet for National Alliance for Mental Illness Indiana. Submitted photo
Two members of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office Crisis Intervention Team, or CIT, were recently honored for their work.
Crisis Intervention Deputies Jim Engmark and Shannon Chambers both recently received accolades from CIT Indiana and National Alliance of Mental Health Indiana. Engmark was recognized as CIT First Responder of the Year, while Chambers was named CIT Coordinator of the Year.
“It is definitely an honor,” Engmark said. “I know there are a lot of first responders in the state of Indiana that work very hard in crisis intervention and so to be able to get that award was very humbling.”
Johnson County Sheriff Duane Burgess commended the team during a recent Johnson County Commissioner’s meeting, an announcement the attendees answered with applause.
“We kind of swept it this year,” he said. “We are leading by example. We have a full-time therapist right now that is calling and checking in on our folks that we deal with. I think they have just taken it to the next level. I simply can’t praise them enough.”
The CIT has three full-time deputies including Engmark, Chambers and Chad Poynter and one full-time therapist. The team responds to mental health crisis calls, oversees annual CIT trainings for public safety officials and uses community resources to support those struggling with their mental health, Engmark said.
The team has responded to over 240 calls in 2023 and has responded more than 60 times since January. They respond to calls all over the county with the goal of keeping people out of the justice system, especially if the root cause of the call is a mental health crisis, Engmark said.
CIT officers help people having a mental health crisis get access to the services they need. In the past, if there was a person with a mental health issue and officers didn’t know what to do, jail was typically the answer. With CIT that’s no longer the case.
“We respond on any behavior health crisis calls,” he said. “It could be a mental health call, attempted suicide, suicide or any type of substance abuse like an overdose. We assist officers who are on the scene. It frees them up to continue taking the other emergency calls that need to be taken.”
Engmark and Chambers also provide comprehensive training sessions certified by NAMI and CIT International and have spoken at national conferences. They’ve trained over 250 officers from all over Indiana since 2022, Engmark said.
The idea for the CIT program came up in 2019, when Sheriff Duane Burgess and Court Services Director and Chief Probation Officer Angela Morris met and discussed creating a program, with the goal of having all law enforcement officers in the county trained.
The CIT officially started in 2021, but became a full time entity in August 2022.
In the short time since local CIT officers have become leaders in their field.
The CIT team and under-construction mental health building at Johnson Memorial Hospital show the county’s commitment to strengthening mental health offerings, said Brian Baird, commissioner.
“They’re doing a wonderful job,” Baird said. “We get a lot of comments on what we are doing with mental health and being leaders in that [field] with the CIT and with our mental health building. We are definitely leading by example.”
