A new partner for the Lansdale Police Department has already been busy in their first few weeks.
Council heard an update last week on the department’s new mental health co-responder program, and successes they’ve helped with so far.
“As of the 25th, we had approximately 13 referrals already. We’re learning what calls we can fit into this,” said police Chief Mike Trail.
In June borough council awarded a contract to Merakey, the local chapter of a national agency, to develop a mental health co-responder program that would respond along with police to certain types of emergency calls. Beginning with the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, police and council worked with neighboring departments and local nonprofits and agencies, to respond to homelessness and mental health issues caused or worsened by the pandemic.
Among those efforts has been the “North Penn HUB,” a collaborative of local police departments and agencies that meet monthly to solve problems they all encounter, a joint effort in which Merakey takes part, and in April council issued an RFP for a mental health co-responder, a request that led to a contract approval in June.
At that time, Merakey said they specialize in connecting those in need of services with adult behavioral health, autism, addiction recovery, veterans’ aid, aging, child and family, and other services, and already work on a similar program with Philadelphia police, with a goal of reducing the need for arrests, emergency room visits, and other police responses for calls that can be handled in other ways.
The 24-month initial contract is grant-funded, and police have said they intend to evaluate the results and consider whether the co-responder role could be done by a police employee at the end of that contract.
During council’s Sept. 6 public safety committee meeting, Trail gave an update, saying the Merakey co-responder had started work in mid-August, and was already starting to see firsthand what types of incidents the officers handle.
“What we’re really learning is, there’s an extreme nexus to mental health, substance abuse, drugs and alcohol — things that really drive a lot of the problems we have,” Trail said.
“We’re seeing if we can expand on what we’re putting down to our mental health co-responder — if it’s a domestic (call), where a husband and wife need to get counseling, we’ll give it to the co-responder so they can refer them to counseling. I’m very optimistic it’s going to go very well,” he said.
Each month police will give the public safety committee an update on the numbers of cases handled by that co-responder, the chief added, and he had heard the co-responder had replied to a case and created a referral as recently as the day of the council meeting.
“We had a subject today, on an assault call, and what normally would have been a standoff, maybe a possible use of force call, the co-responder was able to go out with the officers, engage the subject, de-escalate the situation,” after less than an hour of in-person conversation, he said.
“It totally changed the dynamic of what that call looked like. I know this works, that’s why I have a passion for it,” Trail said.
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