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Our sheriff and police chief disagree, sharply, on a question so long in the news that the headlines begin to run together.

The question? How much training do patrol officers need to protect and serve mentally ill people coming home to Guilford County as psychiatric hospitals close and funds dry up?

But before arm-wrestling this issue, some background:

Ever since communities began feeling the effects of mental health reform, police chiefs and sheriffs across the state witnessed growing contact between their field personnel and the mentally ill. Tragically, they also witnessed all that could go awry with what 911 dispatchers code a "10-96" call, a subject in mental distress.

Across the country, their counterparts had already accepted the offer of what law enforcement associations call "best practice" training. It sounds expensive, but in fact is free. Psychiatrists and social workers from local mental health agencies provide the training to the rank-and-file on how to recognize and understand mental illness as a disease. How to de-escalate a 10-96 call. How to keep jail a last resort.

But what about the Tar Heel state? Would this be dismissed as some feel-good program that liberal newspapers would praise? Something that might have worked for Andy Taylor, but not for a modern urban sheriff? And how many big-city police chiefs would be on board in North Carolina?

Actually? Almost without exception, every one, according to a year-end 2008 survey, showing that nearly every major department in North Carolina has phased in the intensive Crisis Intervention Training.

Have you guessed the exception? It is the Greensboro Police and the Guilford County Sheriff's Department - most notably for our readership - along with the Orange County Sheriff's Department and the Fayetteville Police Department.

The survey by the N.C. Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse showed 98 law enforcement agencies in the state had, as of Jan. 1, put 1,216 sworn officers through the 40-hour course, with more each month.

In Guilford, how many of the 889 sworn Greensboro police and Guilford sheriff's deputies had CIT?

Zero.

Greensboro Police Chief Tim Bellamy has decided to change that in 2009, after attending a Raleigh briefing last fall and being sold on the benefits. Bellamy said Friday he will begin scheduling the training soon, and a new shift structure will help make officers available.

Guilford Sheriff BJ Barnes, however, said the in-house training his department already provides - a four-hour Power Point lesson plan taught every year or two by a certified instructor, is sufficient.

Like Bellamy, whose officers have been involved in a spate of fatal and nonfatal shootings, Barnes most recently withstood public criticism last week, with the SBI's clearing of a deputy in the fatal shooting of a troubled Iraq War vet, Dylan Hartsfeld.

Training, Barnes emphasized, would not have altered the outcome.

"We're talking about a matter of seconds," Barnes said in an interview Friday, referring specifically to the September shooting. "There was no time to say, 'I'm sorry you don't feel well. Let's talk about this.' "

So much for background, and on to some arm-wrestling, between Sheriff Barnes and a law enforcement colleague from up the road, Capt. Patricia Murray of the Winston-Salem Police Department.

The department started CIT two years ago and now has 55 officers trained, with another group to train in March.

Murray, a 22-year veteran and district commander who completed the training herself, said the No. 1 lesson cops learn is that mental health isn't a personal choice.

Among the field tactics taught by psychiatrists and Alcoholics Anonymous representatives are calming and listening techniques for de-escalating a situation, and even more basic, backing off.

"Before, we may have just rushed in and put hands on and used force. A huge part of it is listening to what the person has to say," said Murray, the department's liaison to the local mental health agency. "A lot of times, (CIT) works. Not always. It's certainly worth what we get out of it."

How much, exactly, did it cost?

"Snacks and coffee," said Murray, who took Wake Forest University up on a free conference center.

Barnes, in 13 years as sheriff, has consistently dismissed the idea that de-escalation training - a 1988 Memphis training model now widely accepted in law enforcement circles - would be beneficial.

But given the fact that his department, for two years voted the best large department in the state, is now the only one without CIT, Barnes now may be dealing with a different variable. Manpower problems.

"All of a sudden, I'm 10-100," Barnes said Friday, using 911 shorthand for "no cars available." "I'm not used to that."

Like Chief Bellamy, who rose through the ranks from rookie patrolman to detective to manager, Barnes has 33 years of law enforcement under his belt. Just as his training section managed to find a way to staff a Spanish-speaking deputy on most shifts - providing interpreters to the GPD in some cases - Barnes can no doubt shuffle schedules to get deputies training he determines they need, for the price of snacks and coffee.

A small-ticket item, as items go. Compared to, say, a human life. A family that won't be the same. A deputy, too.

And don't forget the other costs that add up, year by year. Adverse public opinion, informed or misinformed. Deputies and police on administrative leave for months on end - not just for 40-hour training.

So, no, there's no second-guessing that difference 40 hours of learning would make, hearing the symptoms, learning the soft-voice technique, seeing clients at the clinic in recovery. Knowing they are not a scary stranger coming at you. They are a person with an illness, trying to get better.

Would it have changed what happened on the Hartsfelds' front lawn?

Or what happened to Paul Edward Thompson, Gil Barber, Daryl Howerton, years of headlines that - sad to admit - start to run together?

Maybe it wouldn't help.

But when did training ever hurt?

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com