GLEN ROCK — A neighborhood police officer is 1000’s of miles away in Australia this week to present advice to other cops from around the globe on how best to reply to mental health emergencies.

And for Patrolman Matthew Stanislao, the long journey may feel like deliverance from a very difficult chapter of his life.

Stanislao, 43, an officer of greater than 20 years, will lead a workshop and function a panelist on the World LGBTIQ+ Conference for Criminal Justice Professionals in Melbourne, the capital of the Australian state of Victoria.

He said he’s the one officer from Recent Jersey on the four-day event, which ends on Friday.

“I feel privileged,” said Stanislao, who’s gay. “If this work that we’re doing in Glen Rock is finding its way onto a global platform, we’re doing something right.”

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Organizers of the conference invited Stanislao to participate after they saw a brief film that he produced and uploaded to YouTube. It was shared amongst law enforcement circles online, eventually making its approach to them.

Within the four-minute clip, initially created as a training tool for the Recent Jersey Crisis Intervention Team, Stanislao and one other officer discuss the way to handle a fictional dilemma over lunch at a pizzeria. The colleague confides in him that his son overdosed in an apparent suicide attempt after coming out as nonbinary.

“I am going into clinical mode,” Stanislao said, “and I attempt to help him.”

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At the identical time, Stanislao senses that his colleague is contemplating retirement from the police force and affected by his own mental health decline.

The video shows, on the very least, that there ought to be no shame in asking for help. But on a deeper level, Stanislao said, it highlights a way that each one officers should employ when talking to people in such crises.

He calls it “motivational interviewing.” Moderately than ask questions, Stanislao said, officers should speak using prompting statements. “While you’re undecided how someone’s doing,” he said, “it might probably really assist in getting information that you could must help them.”

The strategy will form the crux of the discussion that Stanislao will guide through the 40-minute workshop on Wednesday.

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The video, which incorporates a cameo by gay rights icon Barney Frank, a native of Bayonne and a former Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, will likely be screened for many who attend the seminar.

Chief Dean Ackermann said he’s proud that an officer from the borough will get to showcase his mental health expertise on a world stage. “It’s an area of law enforcement that we’ve given an amazing deal of attention to,” Ackermann said. “I don’t think people realize how a lot of their neighbors are struggling.”

Stanislao, he added, is “helping us learn from one another.”

However it was a frightening road that brought the officer to his current state of achievement.

He was fired from the police force in October 2014, and shortly afterward, he sued the department, claiming that he was unjustly let go due to his sexuality.

The discrimination case ended 2½ years later with a $750,000 settlement and the reinstatement of Stanislao. He said he spent that point attempting to “put my life back together.” In doing so, he received a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University and gained the abilities that he now uses on the job each day.

It’s ironic, he acknowledged, how a wrongful termination ultimately steered him to this week’s conference in Australia.

“I had a chance to return to police work and to assist the occupation that turned its back on me,” Stanislao said. “It’s not a path that I intended, however it seems value it greater than ever.”

Philip DeVencentis is a neighborhood reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to crucial news out of your area people, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: devencentis@northjersey.com