A new program will embed a case manager inside the Newark Police Department to help officers deal with calls involving people with underlying mental health issues.
The behavioral health response program, which was approved by city council Monday night, is funded by a $103,000 federal grant.
The city is contracting with ChristianaCare, which will provide a full-time case manager to work at the police station. The employee's job will be to follow up on calls involving mental health to help the people involved get connected to the proper resources or treatment.
“I think it's going to vastly improve our responses to these incidents,” Deputy Chief Kevin Feeney said.
In some incidents, the case manager will respond to a call with an officer, but most of the time, he or she will follow up after the fact. Officers will refer cases to the case manager when they think a mental health issue is involved.
The case manager will then contact the person, evaluate the situation and discuss options for mental health treatment, substance-abuse treatment, counseling, housing assistance or other programs.
The case manager will also revive and oversee the Newark Hub Program, which was started several years ago but has languished due to staffing shortages in the police department. The Hub brings together support agencies, such as probation officers and social workers, to team up for intervention efforts aimed at homes where police are often called.
Ultimately, early intervention by the case manager should reduce the amount of time that police officers have to spend dealing with repeat calls involving someone suffering from mental health issues.
“The No. 1 priority is, of course, our residents and getting them the best care possible and the best services if they need it,” Feeney said. “But No. 2, it's reducing those repeat calls for service.”
A growing need
Through the first five months of 2024, the Newark Police Department has responded to approximately 250 mental heath-related calls, Feeney said.
Those calls vary widely and can include people who are suicidal, people who are homeless, people acting out or people committing low-level crimes due to an underlying mental health issue. Approximately a third involve substance abuse.
“After Covid, we started seeing an increase in some of these mental health calls,” Feeney said. “But when we actually dove into the statistics, and we started looking at all these different calls and broke them down, it was much higher than I thought. We're definitely seeing an increase in these types of calls.”
He recalled one case from a few years ago when an elderly woman was calling 911 several times a month to report non-existent or non-sensical issues.
“It wasn't quite at the serious level where we could commit the person or anything like that, but we kept having to go up there,” Feeney said, explaining that is a person who could have benefited from the new behavioral health program. “This case manager now can establish that relationship, build that rapport and start saying, 'OK, who do I need to get involved?”
Perhaps the woman needed to be evaluated by a doctor for dementia or could have qualified for more care through social services, he added.
Another common example is a domestic argument where the wife tells the officer that her husband has been acting differently after losing his job and struggling to make ends meet. If there was no crime committed and the husband isn't actively suicidal, there often isn't much an officer can do.
That's where the case manager will come in.
“The officer can come back, go to the mental health case manager and say 'Hey, there's something going on here and I think we need to dig a little bit deeper into this,'” Feeney explained.
Building on previous success
The behavioral health program will build on an initiative that the police department started several years ago to better train officers to respond to people in crisis.
So far, 17 officers have been trained as part of the Crisis Intervention Team. There are CIT officers on each patrol shift and they respond to calls that could involve an underlying mental health issue.
“The training is to help officers recognize the signs of mental illness, mental crisis, mental breakdowns, things of that nature,” said Sgt. Joseph Conover, who oversees the program. “And once they recognize them, learning additional skills to help de-escalate the situation properly.”
The officers are trained to take their time, listen to the person and try to de-escalate the situation.
“It's truly an eye-opening experience when realizing that it takes two parties to de-escalate,” Conover said. “And while it may be very difficult with that person who's in a crisis moment, spending the time to do it is well worth it.”
CIT officers will continue to respond to solve the immediate crisis but can now hand the case off to the case manager. The nature of policing is such that officers don't often have time to follow up on calls.
“A lot of times officers take the initial call but if we can't get them help right away or they're just not eligible, you kind of move on to the next one,” Feeney said. “Here, the case manager can continue to follow up.”
Conover, who will supervise the case manager, is excited for how the program will benefit both the police department and the community.
“This is just an extra tool for us to use,” he said. “It's going to help us further down the line to hopefully not have further interactions with this person in a negative light.”
Arrests can't solve the problem
Police officers have always found themselves dealing with mental health calls, because, as Feeney puts it, “when all else fails, you call the police.”
In recent years, however, there has been greater recognition of the need to find alternative ways to handle such calls. Better handling of mental health calls has also been a key demand of many police reform advocates.
“What law enforcement is starting to realize is we need to dive deeper into this,” Feeney said. “And I guess the federal government feels the same way because they're providing grant money to do it.”
When looking to create the behavioral health program, the Newark Police Department looked at examples elsewhere in Delaware.
The New Castle County Police Department has a behavior health unit that pairs officers with mental health clinicians that can diagnose patients and commit those who are a danger to themselves.
The Dover Police Department has clinicians that ride with officers, and some smaller towns in lower Delaware join forces to share a clinician or case worker.
With limited funding available, Newark decided to start with a case manager and possibly expand the program later.
“Our hope is this is successful, then we can start embedding clinicians and kind of take it to the next level,” Feeney said.
Ultimately, he would like to see Newark establish a court diversion program through which people who agree to get treatment for their mental health or addiction issues can have their charges dismissed.
“You can't arrest someone out of a mental health issue,” Feeney said. “It's not going to happen.”
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