Renee Balodis-Cox ‘92 writes that she is a licensed mental health counselor and has been working with the state of Washington’s criminal justice training commission for the past several years to provide crisis intervention training to law-enforcement officers. "It is essentially a training that teaches them about the most common mental illnesses, and educates them on appropriate resources in the area to help these people and their families, as well as emphasizing/teaching verbal de-escalation tactics. This is a big issue across the nation and a very needed training. I’m proud of Washington for being on the forefront of this. We have a legislation that just passed requiring all commissioned officers to attend this training, we are the only state in the nation that has done so, so far."