ERNIE & JOE: CRISIS COPS is an intimate portrait of two Texas police officers who are helping change the way police respond to mental health calls. The film takes audiences on a personal journey, weaving together these two officers' experiences during their daily encounters with people in crisis. These two officers are not your everyday cops. They are part of the San Antonio Police Department’s Mental Health Unit.
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 (Hot Docs Film Festival, 2011), which reveals the impact of incarceration on jailed mothers and their children aired multiple times on PBS' American ReFramed series. Jenifer’s first film, A Leap of Faith (Sundance Film Festival, 1996), 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.
