Albemarle Police go through de-escalation lessons

ALBEMARLE COUNTY, Va. (WVIR) - The Albemarle County Police Department wants its officers to be able to de-escalate situations without having to use deadly force.

This year, all officers will go through a new training program to teach them how to do just that.

“We want them to be thinking about okay, well, this person may have a knife but are they threatening me or are they just a threat?,” Lt. Jeremy DeLange said.

The goal is to get everyone through situations like those safely.

It’s especially important when the person officers are dealing with is in crisis.

“They may be suicidal, they may be may be barricaded,” Sgt. Jonathan Hickory said.

Albemarle police is seeing more need for controlled responses, so this is timely.

“In 2024 alone we’ve handled 500 mental health calls for service, this is a 21% increase from the same time last year,” DeLange said.

To get all officers on the same page on how to respond, they are going back to the classroom for ICAT: Integrating communications, assessment and tactics.

“SWAT style tactics of forming a perimeter around a person who’s in crisis and bringing in resources and slowing things down,” Sgt. Jonathan Hickory said.

ICAT teaches them how to recognize if someone is in crisis and then how de-escalate the situation through words.

“No officer wants to use force if they can help it for many reasons. It’s something that we live with, but it’s also can affect that person, it can affect their family,” Hickory said.

Joseph George has been an officer with ACPD for 13 years. He said he responds to these types of situations all the time.

“We always just try to fix a problem,” George said.

He was one of those in class Wednesday.

“It’s not how long it takes to resolve these situations,” George said. “It’s take all the time you need.”

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