Miami-Dade police

President Obama Praises Miami-Dade Police Training in Dealing With Mentally Ill

Miami-Dade Police are releasing body camera footage from an encounter between officers and a knife-wielding man as the department received praise from President Obama for their training in dealing with the mentally ill.

Situations like the one depicted in the footage can go south quickly and that's why MDPD officers are trained yearly to deal with suicidal and mentally ill people.

The footage shows veteran officers Thomas Kennedy and Phil Hall during the November encounter in the Hammocks.

"Put it down! Drop the knife! Look at me, look at me," Kennedy tells the suspect.

Police said the man was suicidal and either wanted to hurt himself or provoke officers to shoot. The man refused to put down the knife and even waved it around at one point. Less than three minutes after arriving, one of the officers fired their Taser, not their gun.

Officials said that's what their officers are trained for.

"A split second can change any scenario," Miami-Dade Police Maj. Hector Llevat said. "They're able to identify somebody who's in crisis and they're given tools and techniques to try to deescalate that situation safely."

On Thursday, President Obama praised the Miami-Dade Police Department in an article he wrote for the Harvard Law Review.

"In search of a better way, and recognizing that this population frequently came into contact with law enforcement, the county provided key mental health de-escalation training to their police officers and 911 dispatchers," President Obama wrote.

"When we see ourself on the map, it really, it validates what we're doing," Maj. Llevat said.

Maj. Llevat said the incident with the man with the knife as a great example of that training in action.

"[The officers] were able to safely take him into custody and get him the help that he needed," he said.

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