This bill makes several changes affecting law enforcement and related agencies, including the Police Officer Standards and Training Council (POST), mainly about mental health (for both police officers and those with whom they interact). Among other things, it:

1. extends existing employment protections to certain police officers who seek or receive mental health care services after undergoing a required behavioral health assessment (§ 1);
2. eliminates police basic and review training on handling incidents involving a person affected with a serious mental illness and replaces it with training on interacting with people who (a) have mental or physical disabilities or (b) are deaf, hard of hearing, or deaf-blind (§§ 2 & 7);
3. sets up a task force to study law enforcement officers’ mental health needs (§ 3);
4. by January 1, 2023, requires UConn’s Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy, in consultation with the United Way of Connecticut, to submit a report to the Public Safety and Security Committee that includes a study of a representative sample of 911 calls and analyzes the percentage of the calls that would be more appropriately directed to the 2-1-1 Infoline program (which the United Way of Connecticut operates) (§ 4); and
5. requires the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) to report to the legislature about the Community and Law Enforcement for Addiction Recovery project‘s status (§ 6).