Local officials and field experts discussed the merits of pairing police with mental health professionals on calls involving emotionally disturbed people, at a forum in the Town of Wallkill on Oct. 5.
The forum was sponsored by the Town of Wallkill Police Community Council, a citizens’ body that serves as a liaison between the police department and town residents.
Wallkill Police Chief Robert Hertman opened the forum discussion by citing the 1984 fatal shooting of a mentally disturbed woman named Eleanor Bumpurs by police in New York City.
Police were called by the public housing authority to forcibly evict the lady, who was armed with a knife and resisted leaving the apartment. An officer fired during the ensuing struggle.
The death of Ms. Bumpurs prompted swift changes in the department’s protocols in dealing with emotionally disturbed people while also adding fuel to extreme ideas such as not having police respond to mental health-related calls at all, which later proved not a viable option, Mr. Hertman said.
Then, a new concept emerged to pair police officers with mental health professionals on such calls, which not only helps deescalate situations but also connects people with help, he said.
For many years, Wallkill police responded to a portion of mental health-related calls with county mobile response teams, which comprise mental health professionals. The teams aid police across the county.
In July, the department took the co-responder model a step further by adding an in-house mobile response team, thanks to a state grant secured by Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther.
So far, the team has co-responded with Wallkill police on 42 calls and answered another 67 calls by itself; less than 10 percent of people being responded to were admitted into hospitals, according to Laura Altieri from Access: Supports for Living, a contractor agency that mans the mobile response team.
Since January 2020, Wallkill police have responded to about 2,000 mental health-related calls.
Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler said a key merit of the co-responder approach was having trained professionals on-site to get people who need help to want to get help.
“They are not wearing a uniform, and sometimes, for the most part, they have a softer touch than the police do,” he said. “If you can get people to treatment, and if you can get people to treatment on their terms, you can have successful outcomes.”
That will, in turn, reduce crime, according to Mr. Hoovler, who estimated that 7 in 10 people who entered the criminal justice system in Orange County suffered mental health issues, substance abuse, or both.
County Mobile Response Teams
Orange County Mental Health Commissioner Darcie Miller said the county mobile response teams began with a small stipend from the state decades ago but are now accorded a multimillion-dollar budget.The teams are activated by a 311 crisis call center, which is co-located with the 911 call center at the Orange County Emergency Services Center in Goshen.
“If 911 gets a call from someone having an emotional crisis, they can transfer that call over to 311 call takers,” Ms. Miller said. “They will make a decision about whether that person is safe during that call period and able to move on with their day and have a follow-up call the next day or if they need their mobile response teams to go out and do a face-to-face.”
Police will be called when the situation escalates to a point that warrants their help, she said.
The crisis call center receives about 52,000 calls per year, with about 10 percent of responses involving police, according to Ms. Miller.
“So, when someone is having an emotional or mental health crisis, most of our responses don’t involve the police—the goal is only to involve police when they need to be involved,” she said.
Follow-ups are oftentimes done by the mobile team themselves and a peer support group.
Even as desirable as the co-responder approach is, the number of mobile response teams falls far short of that of the police force in the county, which means that police often respond faster and are usually the only ones available during night hours.
The county has two mobile response teams, based in Goshen and Newburgh, with the third team stationed at the Wallkill Police Department; it has none stationed at any of the other more than 30 police departments.
NAMI Orange County, a nonprofit affiliated with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, also operates a 24/7 call center from which people with mental health challenges can receive help.
