CLEVELAND — Mayor Justin Bibb and Division of Police Chief Wayne Drummond are pushing a proposal that would significantly expand and build upon a pilot program where specially-trained police officers and mental health professionals respond to and follow up on emergency calls involving those in mental distress or suffering from a mental health crisis. The proposal comes as city officials have reported early successes in the pilot program.
The $5 million proposal to expand the co-responder program includes bringing an additional crisis intervention team to each police district, the hiring of a specially-trained mental health dispatcher as well as a senior-level strategist who will be tasked with crafting a sustainable model for the crisis intervention team (CIT) for the years to come. The proposal would be funded through grants, general fund dollars as well as part of Cleveland’s tranche of American Rescue Plan Act funding.
The legislation will be the subject of a joint hearing of the City Council’s Safety and Health, Human Services & Arts committees on Wednesday morning.
In January 2020, the city launched the co-responder program, which included one team based out of each of the city’s five police districts. Each team is comprised of one specialized crisis intervention team officer as well as a licensed mental health caseworker. The pair responds collaboratively to emergency calls involving subjects suffering from mental distress or those suffering from a mental health crisis. In addition to responding to ‘live’ emergency runs, the crisis intervention team also follows up on incidents where they were not on scene. In those follow-up runs, the crisis intervention team works to connect the subject with mental health referral services and other wraparound care.
“It’s so important that we have officers that are trained to handle people in crisis because a good percentage of our calls are for people in crisis,” said Chief Wayne Drummond. “What we try to do through our program is to defer people away from jail and get them into treatment and help that they need.”
According to city data, the city’s co-responder teams responded to 2,087 incidents, which include both live calls and follow-up calls. Chief Drummond said of those incidents, 98 percent did not result in an officer using force. Additionally, 97 percent of those incidents did not result in any injuries, Drummond said.
The early success of the program — as well as a recent ride-along with a co-responder team — were more than enough to convince Mayor Bibb to expand the program.
“This is what the future of policing is going to look like,” Mayor Bibb said. “Having this co-responder model expanded in all five of our police districts not only allows us to advance our reforms under the consent decree but it also allows us to do a better job of addressing the root causes of trauma and stress and really address the mental health issues that many of our residents are going through day in, day out.”
City data also shows that as a result of the co-responder program, a total of 544 individuals have been re-connected with their outpatient providers. The police officers that make up half of the co-responder teams have received additional and more intensive training in de-escalation and crisis intervention, Drummond said. Currently, the Division of Police has 91 officers that has completed the advanced training and 20 more officers are expected to be trained in the near future.
By doubling the number of co-responder teams to two teams per district, the city moves closer to having an active team in every district at any time of day. Under the current proposal, by having two shifts of co-responder teams per district, the Division of Police will have teams active and available from 8 a.m. to midnight each day. That time frame is when more than 81 percent of the district’s CIT calls come in.
As part of the proposal, a specially-trained mental health dispatcher will also be added to the fold.
“Adding a mental health dispatcher will allow us to triage some of those mental health calls so they can get the right response and right support they need, but also really looking at how do we do a better job of trauma-informed care and trauma-informed policing,” Mayor Bibb said.
More broadly, the expansion of the co-responder model, which would come with a price tag of $5 million over five years, should lead to a decline in the number of injuries as a result of interactions between police and the mentally ill; an increase to officer safety; a reduction in the number of mentally ill being sent to jail as well as a reduction in the use of force, Chief Drummond said.
“Those officers that are in that particular program, they want to be there. The reason they want to be there is because it really touches them personally because of friends or family and so forth. That’s the beauty of the program,” Chief Drummond said. “Their emphasis is to make sure that when they are responding, they are exercising those things that they are trained for: to have compassion, empathy, and to listen. You’re taking their mental health under advisement and putting that at the forefront versus criminalizing someone that has mental illness.”
The specialized crisis intervention officers and their social worker counterparts often engage with residents for longer periods of time while responding to mental illness-related emergency calls. This investment of time as well as the implementation of other de-escalation techniques can oftentimes defuse a potentially tense situation.
“We find now that all of our officers are taking longer for assignments. That’s our de-escalation and our procedural justice [in action]. They are taking much longer to get assignments accomplished, which I’m okay with,” Chief Drummond said. “You’re having an ear to listen to people, you have empathy and sympathy, which is extremely important. That’s all part of that de-escalation.”
