By Paige Gurgainers
Mental health was the forefront of conversation during the 2nd Annual Minster’s Breakfast held yesterday morning, Aug. 13 at the Community House in Minden.
The City of Minden hosted this event to give local ministers and city officials including Chief of Police Jared McIver, an opportunity to address current issues facing the city, one of those being the “mental health crisis.”
“It’s a revolving door at the police department. It is almost every day we are dealing with committals,” said McIver. “The coroner comes in, signs a committal, we take the person, and they get evaluated. They get their medication and then they are right back out. A lot of the time they go out and sell the medication or sometimes they just don’t take it, because of their mental status they believe they don’t need it, and they are right back in the same situation.”
One local minister asked whether the police department offered a ride-along program.
“The ride-along program would be beneficial not only to our community, but it would be beneficial to our officers,” said T.A. Knapp of Mt. Calm Baptist Church. “Officers go through things just like everyone else. Just in case there is an officer having a bad day, if there is a pastor there it can be a deterrent. The ride-along thing would be a blessing to our community.”
While the City of Minden Police Department does not currently offer this program, McIver is open to implementing one.
“Officers are human beings. They can have trouble at home just like anyone else. They can have financial problems. They can have spousal problems. They can have kid troubles. They can have mental troubles,” said McIver. “Officers encounter stuff day in and day out. They see gruesome things. The hard thing about that is; your mind is almost like a filing cabinet. We are supposed to take every one of those situations and just file them in the back and act like they never happened, but it’s not always that easy.”
McIver agreed that the program would be a great way to offer some form of counseling to the on-duty officers. He said, “A lot of the training doesn’t deal with the aftermath, the post-part and how to deal with things. Having that is a great idea. I am one hundred percent for it.”
Other topics discussed included ambulance response times, church security, racial profiling, roads, parks and the new animal shelter.
According to Building Official Brent Cooley the job will go out for bid at the end of this month and they are expected to break ground by mid-September.