COVENTRY –– A bitter veteran of the Iraq War sat at a table in his kitchen, despondent and determined to die. Five police officers stood near him, one of whom tried to keep him talking.

You don’t know what I’ve seen, said the man. You don’t know what it’s like to see all your friends die. My wife doesn’t know me anymore. My kids would be better off without me. I wish I’d died in Iraq with my friends. Why don’t you just shoot me?

The officer, West Warwick Detective Roland Coutu, tried to establish a rapport with him. We don’t want to hurt you, Coutu kept saying. We want to help you. Let us help you.

It would take a lot of tense conversation to convince this man to surrender peacefully. And this was just role-playing.

In reality, the stakes are as high as life or death. Every moment, every word, and every decision that an officer makes in dealing with a person who’s mentally ill is weighted with consequences.

This week, police officers from nine departments in Rhode Island took part in a three-day pilot program held at the Town Hall annex meant to teach them how to deal with people who have a mental illness. These 20 officers are being certified as trainers through the state Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals, and they will be responsible for training officers in their departments.

There’s been talk for years between law-enforcement agencies and the mental-health community about the need for in-depth training for officers. That discussion turned to action late this summer after three mentally ill men died in police custody this year.

In February, Jason Swift, 30, was shot to death by the Pawtucket police after a violent struggle. That same month, Leonel Farias, 40, also died after struggling and being hit with pepper spray by East Providence police officers. In June, Mark Jackson, who was schizophrenic, died after a struggle with the police in West Warwick.

Coventry police Lt. Robin Winslow, who designed this program with Richard Crino, the vice president of acute services at NRI Community Service, said they’d been talking about launching a statewide program for police officers. They both work in peer support for police officers, and they’d seen how officers were struggling with how to respond to people who are mentally ill.

“We’d developed an in-service training,” Winslow said. “But with all the recent incidents, it seemed we needed to do this on a much larger scale.”

Using a $30,000 grant from MHRH, the two designed the program in about six weeks. The state department has also developed standards and a certification board for the program, so officers can be certified in handling crisis situations, said Craig Stenning, the director of the divisions of behavioral health care and developmental disabilities.

The officers for this pilot program came from departments in Central Falls, Coventry, Cumberland, East Providence, Johnston, Lincoln, North Providence, West Warwick and Woonsocket. The three-day workshop included discussions on policies for handling people with mental illness –– many police departments in Rhode Island don’t have policies, Winslow said –– explanation of the signs and symptoms of different illnesses and detailed training about how police officers can respond in various situations, including use of force. The officers had to take a written exam and pass the evaluation during the role-playing scenarios.

To qualify for this program, the officers need to have been trained in hostage negotiations and dealing with domestic-violence situations.

“It’s very stressful, very draining, very tiring,” said Coutu, who is a crisis negotiator on West Warwick’s SWAT team and a member of the peer support group. “You’re trying to take care of a lot of things at the same time –– you’re worried about their safety, officer safety and the safety of the people around you.”

All day at the police training center yesterday, the officers tested what they’ve learned in different scenarios –– all of which were based on real incidents.

There was the war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, a suicidal woman on the ledge of a bridge, a man convinced that aliens were coming, another man suffering from psychosis who had ingested drugs. Some coaxed with words, some required use of less-lethal force. Mental-health professionals stood by, evaluating how the officers reacted.

In the annex’s auditorium, police officers from Central Falls, Lincoln and North Providence worked to talk down a woman from the edge of a bridge.

Tell me who hurt you, one officer said. I want to help you. I truly want to help you.

Go away, she said.

As he kept talking, his pleading got her to look away from the “water” and back at him.

Why? She asked. What do you care?

Because I help people, the officer said, holding her gaze for a crucial second. That’s what I do for a living.

“Perfect!” the evaluator shouted.

amilkovi@projo.com