text: This has the potential to devastate health care in rural communities.  Today at my place of work, we held a forum for police and emergency service personnel from across Montana on de escalation techniques in dealing with mental health clients. This involved clients who have been involved in the criminal justice system.  Everyone of them stated the services they received had everything to do with their not recommitting felony offenses.  They talked about their treatment teams, specific staff, their PO officer who was part of our case management team and so forth.  What broke my heart is hearing from police in Eastern Montana whose communities did not invest in any kind of community mental health.  They wanted to know if they could send their folks our way where they could find the same kind of community support.  It was heartbreaking for me to hear their concerns because they deal with the same people over and over and over again and the community sees jail as the answer.  It's not.