(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Dax Shane, a detective assigned to domestic violence with Salt Lake City Police center, play acts a violent and possibly suicidal man who thinks he is dying of AIDS in a scenario to train new police academy recruits. SLCPD recruits Jeremy Dimand, left, and Joel Morgan, right, had to draw guns because Shane is violent and pulled a large knife threatening to kill himself. A difficult situation from real life. The recruits had to de-escalate the situation, calm the person down while still protecting themselves. The Salt Lake City Police Department hosted a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Academy for police officers and police trainees Thursday, May 10, 2018. The academy provides training for officers and recruits to learn about and identify signs of citizens who are experiencing a mental health crisis.

(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Dax Shane, a detective assigned to domestic violence with Salt Lake City Police, left, play acts a violent and possibly suicidal man who thinks he is dying of AIDS in a scenario to train new police academy recruits. SLCPD recruit Joel Morgan, right, has his gun drawn because Shane is violent and pulled a large knife threatening to kill himself. A difficult situation taken from real life. Morgan has to de-escalate the situation, calm the person down while still protecting himself. The Salt Lake City Police Department hosted a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Academy for police officers and police trainees Thursday, May 10, 2018. The academy provides training for officers and recruits to to learn about and identify signs of citizens who are experiencing a mental health crisis.

(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) SLCPD recruit Colby Jeppsen, left, calms a distraught elderly husband, (arms raised) as his partner SLCP recruit Daniel Harman calms a wife suffering from dementia. She jumped out of her husband's car in a parking lot, and ran away, thinking the driver was a kidnapper trying to kill her, in a real life emotional crisis scenario. The recruits had to de-escalate the situation and calm the couple down. The Salt Lake City Police Department hosted a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Academy for police officers and police trainees Thursday, May 10, 2018. The academy provides training for officers and recruits to learn about and identify signs of citizens who are experiencing a mental health crisis.

(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Dax Shane, a detective assigned to domestic violence with Salt Lake City Police, center, play acts a violent and possibly suicidal man who thinks he is dying of AIDS in a scenario to train new police academy recruits. SLCPD recruits Jeremy Dimand, left, and Joel Morgan, right, had to draw guns because Shane is confrontational, violent and pulled a large knife threatening to kill himself. A difficult situation taken from real life. The recruits had to de-escalate the situation, calm the person down while still protecting themselves. The Salt Lake City Police Department hosted a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Academy for police officers and police trainees Thursday, May 10, 2018. The academy provides training for officers and recruits to learn about and identify signs of citizens who are experiencing a mental health crisis.

(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Police trainers and recruits, left, talk over how they responded to a mental health crisis scenario with a citizen who was violent and suicidal in a training session Thursday, May 10, 2018. The Salt Lake City Police Department hosted a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Academy for police officers and police recruit trainees to learn about and identify signs of citizens who are experiencing a mental health crisis.

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When two police officers walked into the room, she told them her upstairs neighbor had been filming her with infrared cameras that revealed her naked body beneath her clothes so that he could post pornography of her online for the world to see.

The officers were visibly uncomfortable. Neither man said much as she shouted about being violated.

“And scene,” said someone in the corner.

The woman — a Salt Lake City police officer playing the role of someone having delusions — relaxed.

So did the officers, attendees of the Crisis Intervention Team Academy, who on Thursday were practicing how to better respond to people experiencing mental health crises.

With therapists, social workers and experienced police officers watching nearby to evaluate, the scene was reset and the next three recruits came into the room to try the simulation.

Then it was time to debrief.

Jessica Waters, who has been a therapist with the Salt Lake City Police Department for two years, suggested they try to find clues to give them an idea of what might be wrong: Ask about sleeping and eating habits. Check the counters for medication bottles and check the sink for food. Identify triggers.

Tell her, “We believe that you’re going through something that feels very real to you,” Waters said. “That can calm her down.”

The simulation was one of five scenarios — based on real cases police officers have faced — that let the officers practice what they’d learned in classes over the past two days: Try singing when helping someone with developmental delays. Face someone away from what upsets them. Note what triggers a negative reaction, and what calms them down. Find a way to connect.

“Trying to relate,” recruit Randi Thomas said of the training. “Trying to be in her shoes, I would say, was the biggest thing.”

Determining whether someone is having a mental health crisis will take time and experience, Thomas added.

But the academy teaches them to look for red flags. For example, dementia is sometimes worse in the evening, according to Amanda McNab, with the Crisis Line.

“If she doesn’t know what day and time it is, that’s a red flag,” McNab said following a simulation involving a woman with dementia who ran out of her husband’s car, thinking she’d been kidnapped.

The training also was intended to reorient police officers’ approach to calls.

“Going in on a clean slate is huge,” Thomas said, adding that avoiding assumptions — assuming drug use, for example, — has “been the bottom line of this whole class.”

This whole training has been eye-opening, Thomas said.

“A little bit of a reality check,” she added. “Your first thought isn’t always, ‘I wonder if they have a mental illness. I wonder what they’re seeing.’ ”

The Salt Lake City Police Department has hosted the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Academy for the past 17 years, according to Detective Joseph Taylor, with the department’s CIT unit. The training is for all new recruits and for existing police officers who want to learn how to identify signs of a mental health crisis.

On Wednesday, the group went to the state hospital and listened to a panel of patients on medication explain their diagnoses, Taylor said.

“Hopefully that builds empathy,” he said.

The officers also learned what resources are available.

Three days a week, Taylor responds to calls with the department’s social workers. During a lot of the calls they respond to, they end up helping people find or navigate mental-health resources.

“You’d be surprised at the lack of knowledge [of resources that are available],” Taylor said. “A lot of these people don’t have families, friends. They don’t know how to navigate resources.”

He and the social workers explain how Medicaid applications work, and connect patients to mental health professionals, drug treatment and housing.

The department has recently been criticized for a shooting that killed a suicidal man in Sugar House.

Statistics of whether the interactions have been successful are hard to track, but Taylor said that anecdotally, the training is helping.

Most importantly, officers gain insight through the training, Taylor said.

“They have a little more empathy for people,” he said. “So [they] can understand, there’s something else going on.”