SRSO CISM Team Recieves National Registraton

Sheriff Wendell Hall has recently obtained national registration of his agency's "Critical Incident Stress Management or CISM" team. His team is accredited through the ICISF organization (International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, Inc.), which requires a certain level of training for each member of the team in order to qualify. Sheriff Hall took a proactive stance in establishing his team in 2005 following a series of traumatic incidents including the wounding of one of his officers. He immediately established policies to assure that his agency provided any and all assistance available for his staff should any become involved in a critical incident. Other measures were taken to assure that once a critical incident was experienced that processes were in place to allow the agency, the individual(s) affected, and all other agency members to effectively cope with the normal aftermath of such an incident. Sheriff Hall and his administrative staff recognized that there are times when personal problems can be experienced by members within a law enforcement agency as the result of unresolved issues arising from the inherent dangers of the job. With this in mind, Sheriff Hall established policy and procedures to address the trauma from any critical incident that arises from a response to a crisis situation. His team is made up of civilians, detention personnel, and law enforcement officers. These officers will respond upon request to such incidents as death of a fellow officer, death or serious injury to a civilian caused by any action of a sheriff's office member, any loss of life following extraordinary or prolonged expenditures of physical or emotional energy during a rescue attempt, any incident which is considered a serious physical or psychological threat, shooting situations involving agency members, the taking of a hostage involving agency members, or any high-publicity event. Each member of his team has received training in the dynamics of line of duty death and critical incident trauma, crisis intervention and resolution, causes and symptoms of stress, stress reduction methods, post-shooting and critical incident trauma, coping mechanisms, and individual and group intervention techniques. Hopefully these teams will never have to be activated but given the nature of law enforcement in America today Sheriff Hall wishes for his agency to be prepared should the need arise.