County Expands Mobile Mental Health Crisis Team to Cover Overnight Hours
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A county mobile mental health crisis response program, which pairs licensed clinicians with specially trained police officers to respond to psychiatric emergencies, is expanding to cover overnight hours after data showed a significant share of crisis calls occurred between midnight and 6 a.m., a window the program previously could not staff.
The team responds alongside or instead of standard police units to calls involving suspected mental health crises, aiming to connect individuals with treatment resources rather than default to emergency room visits or arrest, outcomes program leaders say are often neither necessary nor helpful for de-escalating a psychiatric crisis.
"A huge percentage of these calls don't need handcuffs," the program's clinical director said. "They need somebody trained to talk someone through what they're experiencing and connect them to the right level of care."
Funding for the overnight expansion comes from a combination of county behavioral health dollars and a state grant targeting crisis response infrastructure. Program data suggests calls handled by the crisis team result in emergency room diversion at a meaningfully higher rate than standard police response alone, though officials caution that comprehensive outcome tracking is still being developed.
