MORAL COMPASS Tr ue Bear ings
Southern Indiana Brother Does More Than Just Protect and Serve BY RICK MOORE
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vansville, Indiana, police officer Mario Reid (Zeta Omicron–Southern Indiana ’04) is more than your everyday policeman. He is the Evansville Police Department’s Community Mental Health Outreach Officer, something seen in only a few police departments around the country. While he carries the full authority of a normal policeman, he spends much of his time working with some of Evansville’s most at-risk citizens, people who may be considered a danger to themselves or to others because of their mental health issues.
I’m still here because
Reid is an Atlanta native who attended high school in Carmel, Indiana, before attending The University of Southern Indiana and becoming a KA brother. After graduating with a public relations/social sciences degree, he decided to make his home in Evansville, where he worked as a youth program coordinator and as a family case manager for the Indiana Department of Child Services before joining the Evansville Police Department in 2014.
you aren’t tough
Reid, who has a wife and two daughters, served as both Number V (Historian) and Number VII (Parliamentarian) of Zeta Omicron. He has always clearly had a passion for helping people, and his current law
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I did what I was trained to do. And just because the aftermath can get to you, it doesn’t mean enough to do the job, it just means you’re human. I challenge everybody to get checked out after something like that.”
enforcement position gives him the chance to do that in many ways. “I’d always wanted to be a police officer,” he said, “and worked in social services and social work before an opportunity presented itself with the department. My job as a police officer is to help you, and I am also working as a case manager at the same time.” In 2019, Reid was involved in a confrontation with a suspect which ended with the suspect’s death. Reid was placed on administrative time off because of the shooting in accordance with EPD policy, and, after an internal investigation, he was cleared of any wrongdoing, the department determining that Reid had “acted in a legal, justified and reasonable manner.” Reid said that he sought mental health counseling for several months after the incident. “I had to see a PTSD specialist,” he said. “The thing that was unique about me was that I had worked in mental health before, and understood the importance of mental health, and knowing that when something happens, you don’t stop everything you’re doing. When you break your leg you don’t stop your life, you go to the doctor to get it treated, they set your leg until it’s healed and you go back to doing
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