‘A paradigm shift in policing’
Law enforcement enlists mental health experts
SAVANNAH, Georgia — Sometimes, when Savannah police officers are called to the scene of a crisis, those who respond may not look like police at all.
Officers arrive in an unmarked Ford Explorer, donning a simple blue polo and gray khaki pants.
Their SUVs offer more comfort than the usual police vehicle, with only a thin partition separating the front and back passengers. The seats are soft, not hard molded plastic.
No flashing lights line the top of the vehicles, and the department’s logo isn’t emblazoned on the side.
It’s part of an effort started in 2020 in the coastal city to respond to the growing mental health crisis — a way of de-escalating a tense situation without anyone getting hurt or the person being sent to jail, as was common in the past.
“We have a very subdued look because in Savannah, a lot of people don’t want other people to see them with the police,” Officer Julie Cavanaugh said. “So the person doesn’t feel like that they’re going to jail or that they’re encountering a police officer that’s in a full uniform.”
Cavanaugh and the behavioral health unit respond to community members in crises with the toned-down appearance. A key component is having a trained mental health professional with them.
Angela Spivy, a behavioral health clinician, rides with the team for 40 hours a week. They respond to anything from disorderly conduct calls to suicide attempts to overdoses.
Spivy fills a role that traditional policing hasn’t always included: an expert on scene who can diagnose individuals who may need mental health support.
It’s a change from previous tactics, when people suffering from mental crises were often arrested, a strategy that only exacerbated their issues and resulted in jails filling up.
Spivy provides a calm, professional presence, able to talk people down from a breaking point. She referred to one recent call where a man was waving a gun in public. She and her team managed to calm him, and he was taken to the local mental health services center.
It was a situation, she said, that could have gone a lot differently.
“I was able to evaluate him and determined that it was a mental health issue,” she said. “Whereas any time before, that individual probably would have been arrested and taken to jail.”
SYSTEM STRAIN
Law enforcement officers say they have long shouldered the heavy responsibility of fielding calls from Georgians who need mental health support.
It creates strain across the system, they say, with officers responding to emergencies not related to crimes. And officers often are not trained extensively on how to deal with someone in mental crises like psychosis or severe depression.
They are left with few options but to make arrests.
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston championed mental health reform during the 2022 legislative session.
Ralston, a Republican from Blue Ridge, made clear that a comprehensive mental health bill was his No. 1 priority. Around the state, Ralston said he heard too many tragic stories from people with mental health issues who told him the easiest way to get help was to get arrested.
The state Senate created Senate Bill 403, which paves the way for the creation of “co-responder units,” teams made up of officers and mental health professionals who are trained to help individuals in crisis.
Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan said the initiative can yield “long-term” results.
“In my home county of Forsyth, I have seen firsthand the impact that behavioral health professionals can have on law enforcement response efforts,” he said.
Around a dozen such teams, like the one in Savannah, exist within Georgia today.
Lawmakers, policy experts and advocates hope that with the new law and a renewed focus on mental health, the state can break the cycle of repeated arrests of people in need of services.
“The need for this is a paradigm shift in policing,” said Maj. Robert Gavin, who oversees the Savannah co-responder unit. Gavin said the stress and isolation of the pandemic added urgency to implement a change.
Members of the specialized teams connect people with mental health services on scene, schedule doctors appointments and even conduct follow-up visits.
Out of 270 individuals encountered since the Savannah team began working in the community, three were arrested who didn’t have outstanding warrants, according to the department. All others were directly connected to help.
The unit has also conducted nearly 100 follow-up visits to check in with the individuals they’ve met.
During the pandemic, Georgia’s top health officials raised the red flag on the increased number of opioid deaths as individuals with substance abuse disorders struggled through nationwide lockdowns.
Advocates in the mental health and substance abuse community said that the drug epidemic has also forced states to take a hard look at where they start to curb the startling statistics.
“Finally, people in communities across Georgia will get a chance to get the medical help that they need and deserve, as opposed to being another statistic in the crime system,” said Jeff Breedlove, with the Georgia Council on Substance Abuse.
‘FAMILIAR FACES’
In the 15 years that Senior Judge David Sweat sat on the bench as a Superior Court judge for Athens-Clarke County, he said he saw the same faces over and over again.
All too often, he said, those before him were not career criminals, but people in need of mental health treatment.
“Their legal problems were just a small part of the challenges that they had in their life,” Sweat said. “Many had substance use disorders.”
He added that many had a mental health or behavioral health diagnosis. And most often, they had a combination of both, he said.
The phenomenon is known in the criminal justice system as a cycle of “familiar faces.”
And the same individuals were taking up a majority of the space in local jails.
Sweat said that a review of the Clarke County jail found that 38% of individuals behind bars were diagnosed with a behavioral health disorder.
“Those individuals were likely to remain in jail three times longer than those who did not have a behavioral health disorder,” he said. “They were more likely to be convicted, and they were more likely to be rearrested within 12 months.”
Leaders in the criminal justice community like Sweat want people to get treatment, not jail time, as part of a growing effort to decriminalize mental health issues.
Terry Norris, executive director of the Georgia Sheriff’s Association, said the state’s 143 jails and those across the country have become “de facto mental institutions nationwide.”
“We in law enforcement have been the first responders for all types of mental and other types of issues with people in our community,” he said.
Sgt. Robie Cochran, with the Athens-Clarke County Police Department, tracks individuals whom police encounter on a regular basis. Over one three-month period, he said, police responded to calls regarding one individual 49 times.
The northeastern Georgia law enforcement office has three co-responder teams, after receiving funding from a federal grant in 2017 to kick-start the program.
“We’re linking people up to the resources that they need instead of taking them to jail because it used to be that jail was the only option,” said Cochran, a crisis team supervising officer. “Now it’s, ‘Hey, there’s resources out in our community that we can connect you to.’”
Cochran, who’s trained in crisis negotiation, works with mental health professional Katie McFarland, who is also a director at the regional behavioral health service provider.
Not long ago, the pair responded to a frantic woman who had taken a butcher knife to her ears.
“She was hearing voices,” Cochran recalled.
The situation previously may have ended with the woman involuntarily committed to a hospital, but after talking her down from the point of crisis, McFarland was able to organize almost immediate treatment — before the woman’s children arrived back from school that day.
“We got her in, we assessed her, we safety-planned with her,” McFarland said. “We got her set up with a doctor’s appointment for, like, the following day. Robie got her something to eat, and she was home before those kids got off the bus.”
“And we haven’t seen or heard from her since,” she added. “So that’s a beautiful story when we don’t have to see them over and over again.”