Sam Cochran retired as major with the Memphis (Tennessee) Police Department after developing the nation’ s first CIT program and serving as its coordinator for 20 years. Today, he assists law enforcement agencies across the United States, England, Australia, and Israel in building partnerships with the mental health system and in starting their own CIT programs. He is a national spokesperson on mental illness and policing issues and received the 2000 News Person of the Year Award from City University of New York John Jay College of Criminal Justice. NAMI has named an annual law enforcement advocacy award after Cochran. He was retained as an expert consultant to NAMI to coauthor this publication.