The biggest accomplishment in 2021 for Lansdale Borough Police was neither the 38% decrease in minor crime events like simple assault, forgery, and fraud from the year prior, nor the ongoing two-year decline in major serious crimes.
It was the creation of North Penn Outreach HUB, a proactive response to address community mental health, housing insecurity and other societal challenges head-on before they get out of hand. Lansdale police meet monthly with several community partners to combat homelessness and mental health issues in the region.
Undoubtedly, the response was spurred by the 38% increase in public service calls in 2021 from the pervious year Lansdale Police responded to 8,379 public service calls last year, nearly 3,000 more than in 2020.
"In 2020, we saw a spike in mental health calls, and calls for service for people in crisis,” said Chief Mike Trail during
a presentation Wednesday night of the police department’s Annual Report to Borough Council. Trail said the department received 450 mental health calls for service last year, which was up from 273 calls in 2020 and 145 calls in 2019.
"These are people who have no other resources. No family or friends to work through their problems. They call us,” Trail said. "A lot of it is a result of the pandemic.”
Trail then broke down those mental health calls into specific categories. Of those 450 calls, nine were related to attempted suicides or suicides, he said. In 2020, out of 273 calls, 11 of them were for attempted suicide or suicide. In 2019, out of 145 mental health service calls, 14 were related to an attempted suicide or suicide. In 2018, out of 116 calls, 17 were related to suicide.
"People reached out for police services. They are seeking out help,” Trail said. "We are pushing the narrative that it’s OK not to feel OK.”
Service calls up, suicide calls down
Trail noticed a trend in the statistical data: Between 2018 and 2021, as calls for service increased, instances of attempted suicide or suicide went down.
"I will not say this is a statistically-verified mode of data. I will say it’s interesting and it’s definitely something to look at,” Trail said.
Trail re-instituted the annual report from the police department in 2018. The report gathers data related to crime, arrest, public service calls and the like, as well as providing a roadmap for the borough police force in the future.
"The people are the police, and the police are the people. The community is the people we represent,” Trail said.
In 2021, the department conducted a count of homelessness in the borough and discovered there was a significant need with respect to the homeless community in Lansdale. It was not just housing challenges, Trail said, but mental health and substance abuse disorders as well.
"Your police departments are great at triaging incidents. What we’re not very good at doing is finding long-term solutions for the five minutes we interact with people,” he said. "We’re community servants, and sometimes we use law enforcement as a means to get the job done.”
Trail said he was fed up with the vicious cycle of "Respond-Report-Repeat” when it came to addressing homelessness and mental health calls. He thought it best to partner with key community stakeholders to build a group that can work in tandem to break the cycle.
"Our model is to get those folks at the table regularly,” Trail said. "We want to establish relationships prior to the occurrence of services and have the resources at hand.”
Thus, Trail challenged an officer in his department to adopt a problem-solving approach. Officers David Pelzer and Rich Bubnis took the HUB model and "executed flawlessly,” Trail said.
"(The HUB) started from a very, very humble ‘Let’s try and make this work.’ Let’s build these relationships,” Trail said. "Let’s foster them.”
The HUB looks to address the human and social problems before they become policing problems, per the annual report. When meeting as a group, it provides rapid support to individuals.
Now, the outreach meets once a month for an hour, with a desire to move to twice a month. Trail said the partners are professionals that cover multiple human services disciplines in the region.
More than a dozen agencies in HUB
Agencies involved in the North Penn HUB are Manna on Main Street, Women’s Center of Montgomery County, Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services, ACCESS Services, Laurel House, Montgomery County Adult Probation, The PEAK Center in Lansdale, Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, NAMI of Montgomery County, Malvern Treatment Systems, Jefferson Health, St. Luke’s Health Network, Penn Foundation, and Merakey.
Lansdale Police also brought its colleagues on board from police departments in Montgomery Township, Telford, Hatfield Township, Upper Gwynedd Township, Towamencin Township, Lower Salford, and Ambler Borough. Pennsylvania State Police are on board as well.
"What I’m most proud of is not just necessarily our partners, but our police partners,” Trail said. "These relationships are cross-jurisdictional. These organizations quickly fell in line and built partnerships. We have significantly impacted people’s lives in a meaningful way.”
Mayor Garry Herbert wrote in the Annual Report that the police department needed to double-down on its values and "actualize our belief that community-based policing, where we work together with the public and partner organizations to increase effectiveness, is the best path forward to ensuring the safety and well-being of our community, our residents, and our neighbors.”
Herbert said challenges do not resolve themselves.
"As a community we must address and confront the mental health crisis we find ourselves in and the frank reality that policing alone is not a viable solution to these issues,” Herbert wrote. "In addition to our HUB, department training and development continues to be a centerpiece of our community-based policing model and will serve a vital role in the continued growth of the department over the next several years.”
He wrote police are expected to be ‘jacks of all trades,” which holds true in Lansdale.
"Nearly 40 percent of all calls are related to public service where officers are not dealing with any type of threat or criminal act. To properly manage these situations, officers require training over a broad spectrum of everyday situations that require a deeper understanding of empathy, psychology, and emotional intelligence,” he wrote.
Watch the Annual Report at the Lansdale Borough Council meeting here.
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