RACINE - "Turn your voices on," Racine Police Officer Chris Cronin told two fellow officers at a special police training last week.

She was referring to MP3 players that simulated the experience of hearing voices, which is a symptom of schizophrenia.

It was part of Racine County's first weeklong Crisis Intervention Team training, which is training for a core group of officers from across the county to recognize people with mental illnesses and help prevent those people from ending up in the hospital or jail.

With voices coming from headphone speakers alternating between whispering and repeating negative statements, the officers had to fill out a resume and play cards together.

They had to concentrate while the voices said things like "loser, loser, loser" and "You're not funny. It's not a joke. Everyone knows about you."

The officers only listened to the voices for about 10 minutes, but it was enough to give them a picture of what life would be like for someone with schizophrenia.

"I could fairly well ignore it. But I don't know how long term I could do that for," said Dale Swart, a Mount Pleasant Police officer. "I think after a while it would literally break you down."

Throughout last week, officers learned different techniques to calm down people with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. They rode along with human services workers to learn about other alternatives to sending people to jail or bringing them to the hospital for emergency detentions, where people are taken into custody because they appear to pose a threat to themselves or others.

From January to November of last year, law enforcement officers spent an estimated 5,472 officer hours on emergency detentions, a Journal Times analysis found.

Also, a 2006 report found that 14 percent of Racine County jail inmates screened in 2005 said they had some form of mental health treatment in the past.

Officer Cronin went through the team training last fall in Appleton and she said she has used it at least 10 times, which includes repeat calls to two or three people.

Before training she would have either sent those people to the hospital or jail, she said.

Due to the state of the economy and number of returning Iraq war veterans, Deputy Racine Police Chief Tom Christensen said he doesn't know if the training will lessen the total number of emergency detentions. But he said he anticipates the number of emergency detentions will be less than if there was no training.

The training at Gateway Technical College, funded by county dollars, is the first of two team training sessions this year. There will be another training in September for more law enforcement. Eventually Christensen said he would like 20 percent of the Racine Police Department to be trained to help people with mental illnesses.