As part of a multi-edition effort (here, here and here) to highlight compelling, fair, and informative local television news reporting, here are two must-watch segments on mobile crisis response teams:
For Louisville, Kentucky’s local CBS affiliate WLKY, Mark Vanderhoff reported on the case of Robert Curran, a local man who was in the throes of a mental health crisis when his apartment flooded. Louisville police officers arrived on the scene, but “despite the flood damage and Curran’s obviously poor mental state, officers left him at the apartment over the protest of the building manager.”
The building manager told the officer who responded that he was concerned about Curran’s mental state and that “he could catch the place on fire.” Tragically, that’s just what happened: “Hours later, police say Curran did set his apartment on fire, damaging nearby units while other tenants slept” and faced charges and jail time.
Curran’s son told Vanderhoff that he wished the city’s Crisis Call Diversion Program—a mobile crisis response team composed of trained crisis triage workers and mental health professionals—would have been dispatched instead: “[That team] could have come in and prevented all of this from happening, there would have never been any fire, no charges brought against him.”
Following the incident with Curran, Mayor Craig Greenberg announced an expansion of the crisis response program to cover the entire city, which “in turn, frees up officers to respond to actual crimes,” Vanderhoff reported.
Here’s Mayor Greenberg from the announcement: “Sometimes when police officers respond to these calls, it becomes clear that what those individuals really need isn’t a police officer… They need a trained mental health professional who can help with problem-solving.”
For Denver’s local NBC affiliate 9News, Kelly Reinke detailed the findings of a recent study on the STAR program, which sends mental health professionals, instead of police, to some 911 calls. Reinke reports:
“In neighborhoods that STAR focused on … low level crimes fell by 34 percent, there were fewer citations, and people were less likely to reoffend because they got the help they needed… [the study estimates that] there were 1,400 fewer criminal offenses in Denver because of this pilot program.”
Kyle Clark, anchor for 9News, added:
“The study also found that the STAR program has saved taxpayers money… [the study] estimates that if people were placed in the criminal justice system instead, it would have cost the city four-times more.”