Description:

Ernie & Joe: Crisis Cops follows two officers with the San Antonio Texas Police Department who are diverting people away from jail and into mental health treatment -- one 911 call at a time. In the process, they are redefining policing and its mandate to “keep people safe,” while transforming the ways in which law enforcement across the U.S. can approach and help those who suffer from mental illness.

Biography:

Jenifer McShane is an independent filmmaker committed to using film to bridge understanding in situations where structural, organizational, cultural, or religious divisions typically keep people apart. Ernie & Joe is Jenifer's third feature documentary. She spent nearly five years visiting the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility to make her previous documentary, Mothers of Bedford, which reveals the impact of incarceration on jailed mothers and their children and aired multiple times on PBS' American ReFramed series. Jenifer’s first film, A Leap of Faith, which follows a group of parents in Belfast, Northern Ireland as they open an integrated school for Catholic and Protestant children was narrated by Liam Neeson, broadcast on PBS, and screened broadly on European television.