'I like helping people'; Streetsboro police officer honored for helping those in crisis

In a hotel room a few months ago Streetsboro police officer Josh Bartholomew found himself sitting across from the despondent and potentially suicidal man.

"I was sitting on the bed right next to him. Right across. There was two queens. I was sitting right across from him, talking to him," said Bartholomew.

Eventually, the man admitted to having a gun with him in the room, and Bartholomew got him to peacefully give it up and agree to get help.

"Just an individual in a real bad spot and a real bad day and, you know, we got there and were able to talk, and talk him down and get him where he needed to go," he said.

Helping people going through tough times, including talking and listening to them, is a specialty for Bartholomew. For more than a decade, nearly his entire career with the Streetsboro Police Department, he has been a trained crisis intervention team officer. He was one of three officers the Portage County Police Chiefs Association and the Mental Health & Recovery Board of Portage County named as crisis intervention officers of the year in 2021 and is now Portage County's CIT coordinator.

Last month, Bartholomew received the Michael S. Woody CIT Coordinator of the Year for the State of Ohio award at a CIT conference in Columbus. Woody, a retired Akron police lieutenant, is credited with creating the first crisis intervention team program in Ohio, and the fourth in the nation, when he brought CIT to Akron as the department's training director in 2000.

"It was a huge honor," Bartholomew said of the award. "I mean, I was surprised by it. I wasn't expecting it."

The annual conference, which was April 19, is organized by the Criminal Justice Coordinating Center of Excellence, located at Northeast Ohio Medical University in Rootstown, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness in a collaboration with various community partners.

"This conference serves as a platform to recognize and honor outstanding achievements and dedicated members of CIT who have made significant contributions to their communities," said Jeff Futo, Ohio CIT coordinator law enforcement liaison at the criminal justice center, in an email. "Throughout the event, various awards are presented to acknowledge their exemplary efforts."

Started in 2001, the center's mission is to advocate for alternatives to jail for people suffering from mental illness, with crisis intervention teams as a component of that mission. It is funded by a grant from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to the Summit County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board.

In his capacity at the Criminal Justice Coordinating Center of Excellence, Futo, who is also a police officer and crisis intervention team coordinator at Kent State University, provides CIT technical assistance and guidance to law enforcement and community CIT programs statewide.

Futo said the CIT program in Portage County is "a partnership" among agencies and individuals in the criminal justice and behavioral health spheres, advocates, and "people with lived experience and their families."

"This partnership is designed to facilitate better outcomes when law enforcement officers are called to interact with a person in crisis," said Futo. "That person is often in crisis due to unmet behavioral health needs such as mental illness, substance use disorders, other life stressors, or a combination."

John Garrity, executive director of the Mental Health & Recovery Board of Portage County, said in a written statement that Bartholomew is "well deserving" of the award.

“He is committed to improving outcomes for people in crisis and values collaboration and community," said Garrity.

Drawn to crisis intervention team early on

Futo said CIT arrived in the county in 2006, when the mental health recovery board organized its first crisis intervention Patrol Officer Training Course. Since then, more than 260 members from all law enforcement agencies in the county have gone through the training.

One of those officers was Bartholomew. He joined the Streetsboro Police Department in 2010 and gravitated early on to CIT, taking the training in 2011. A significant influence was his friend and mentor, Sgt. Andy Suvada, a crisis intervention team trainer and one of the first CIT officers in the county.

“You just talk” to people in crisis, Suvada told the Record-Courier in June 2021, not long before he retired. “Get a general idea of what’s going on with them and work through that.”

It is that fundamental aspect of CIT that drew Bartholomew to it.

"I like helping people, and I enjoy the talking to people and trying to get people to calm down," he said. "It's something I feel I've always done well with. And CIT just kind of meshed with that."

He began teaching, with Suvada and Futo, around 2017 and became Portage County's CIT coordinator in 2020, when the position was created through a grant, coordinated by the mental health and recovery board through the Criminal Justice Coordinating Center of Excellence.

"So as a coordinator, I pretty much try to fix any problems that we have in the county," said Bartholomew. "If there's an issue between agencies, I have reached out to all the different police departments to try to get everybody on the same page, make sure that everybody has set procedures and that they're trying to abide by those procedures."

Bartholomew said every law enforcement agency in the county now has its own CIT coordinator, which gives him a contact person with each agency. Part of his job is also gathering statistics to help evaluate how well things are going.

"A lot of it's a lot of meetings, a lot of going around and meeting with different people," he said. "Fill the cracks that there are in the system, things like that."

One initiative is the establishment of Coleman Access with Coleman Health Services in Kent.

"If we have somebody that doesn't necessarily need to be hospitalized or go somewhere, but needs mental health assistance, Coleman will actually come out to the residence," said Bartholomew.

Futo said crisis intervention team coordinators have a "dual role."

"In their capacity as a program coordinator, they engage in collaborative efforts with community partners, provide training to CIT members, and implement other program initiatives such as information sharing and data collection, and countywide policy and procedure development," he said. "Additionally, as a law enforcement liaison, they play a crucial role as a communication facilitator, collaborator and mediator between law enforcement agencies and other partners."

Officer has an 'unwavering commitment'

Futo said a CIT program has multiple goals, including:

• Improve the safety of everyone whenever law enforcement officers engage with people in crisis.

• Improve outcomes of such situations.

• Increase understanding of, accessibility to, and improve responsiveness by the local crisis response system.

• Whenever possible, steer people in crisis from the criminal justice system and toward mental health treatment alternatives.

• Transform the local crisis response system to use police officers as first responders only when there is an immediate or imminent threat to safety or a serious criminal concern.

Futo said these are not only goals, but illustrations of the value of crisis intervention teams.

As for Bartholomew, Futo said he is "exceptional" in his role as the county's CIT coordinator, on top of his other duties as a police officer, and his award is well-deserved. He describes Bartholomew as motivated and passionate, with enormous energy and approaching his duties in a proactive way, going "above and beyond to improve the lives of the people in Portage County."

"Officer Bartholomew has a reputation for being remarkably approachable and easy to work with," said Futo. "His ability to forge relationships with law enforcement leadership has paved the way for effective collaborations and innovative cross-systems projects. His unwavering commitment to his role is exemplified by his relentless coordination of CIT activities."

Reporter Jeff Saunders can be reached at jsaunders@recordpub.com.

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Streetsboro police officer honored for helping those in crisis