County creates mental health emergency dispatch response program
The first steps of a multi-faceted plan to change the way officials respond to certain mental health crises are underway in Albany County.
County officials announced that they have joined forces to create a response unit that will handle certain incoming nonviolent calls for assistance. The new initiative will be referred to as the Albany County Crisis Officials Responding and Diverting (ACCORD) program.
The ACCORD program creates new response teams which will consist of social workers from the County’s Mobile Crisis Team joined with EMTs from the Sheriff’s Office to respond to situations where law enforcement is not paramount and a situation may be more appropriately handled by mental health professionals and/or paramedics. These unarmed responders would be dispatched by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office. Instances including non-violent mental illness and addiction may trigger the dispatch of the ACCORD.
“Through our budgetmaking and legislative process, we always look for ways to establish great partnerships among subject matter experts, and to innovate,” Chairman of the Legislature Andrew Joyce stated.
“We will not be defunding the police in Albany County. What we will do is re-imagine policing, and create the necessary collaboration between our officers and mental health professionals. We believe this will result in making Albany County residents safer,” Joyce explained.
The Sheriff’s Office and Department of Mental Health are currently working with officials from various communities who have similar programs, including the Portland, Oregon-based CAHOOTS program that has become a model to other communities looking to build similar alternative programs. Officials expect to build Albany County’s model starting with a pilot program in the County’s hill towns that can eventually be expanded throughout the County and adjusted to fit local municipalities systems.
“We have a tremendous opportunity to build this program out and tailor it to the various needs of our diverse county,” Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said.
“We firmly believe that we will be successful, which means that individuals needing services will get them provided by those who are best equipped to give them and it allows our deputies to be handling crime and enforcing the law,” Apple noted.
“Our Mobile Crisis Team has done an extraordinary job in delivering first-rate mental health services to some of those most in need in our communities, having received a total of nearly 2,200 calls last year alone. This new pilot program will allow us to expand these efforts, while saving taxpayer dollars by ensuring we’re not sending law enforcement to calls for nonviolent offenses,” Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy remarked.
“This initiative is an innovative plan that will focus on getting people the services they need quicker and more efficiently,” McCoy noted.