KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Police officers are getting more training to better help them de-escalate situations in the community.

During Wednesday’s training, officers were put through three different crisis scenarios and were able to walk through different techniques to de-escalate the situation.

The goal is to give officers different tactics to try before they use force.

“Teaches them maybe to slow down, get as much information as they can before they even get on scene and then it teaches them to have a plan a, a plan b, maybe a plan c, all in their mind and have a plan before they go in knowing if plan a doesn’t work, we immediately have a plan b that we can go to,” Director of the Kansas City Police Academy Maj. Paul Luster said.

Luster says there’s a mental health crisis right now in the U.S. and officers are increasingly being put in these types of situations so it’s critical they have training like this to have different ways of responding.

The 45 officers who were trained Wednesday will train the other officers in the department on what they learned.

The goal is to have every KCPD officer fully trained by the end of this year.

The life-saving training is in partnership with the Kansas City Police Foundation and the Police Executive Research Forum.