PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A pilot program in Cumberland County, New Jersey, will test the effectiveness of sending a mental health counselor with a police officer when responding to certain types of 911 calls. If the police reform experiment is successful, the protocol will roll out to other parts of the state.
It’s called Arrive Together. On calls for wellness checks, suicide watch and emotional or behavioral problems, a plainclothes state trooper will first secure the scene. When the scene is safe and there’s no threat of violence, the mental health expert will take the lead and provide help for people in distress.
"We want to see how it works here in Cumberland County. We are cautiously optimistic this is going to be successful if it works similar to how it’s been in other states," said acting Attorney General Andrew Bruck.
Bruck says since his office started tracking data, they found that two out of every three use-of-force incidents with police in New Jersey involved a person who is experiencing a mental health crisis or is under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He says he hopes this will take some pressure off police.
"We ask law enforcement officers to be marriage counselors and to be therapists and to be crisis interveners. And we ask them to do a bunch of things sometimes for which we give them the training and sometimes we don’t," Bruck said.
He says the main objective is to reduce the number of police use-of-force incidents by decreasing the likelihood of a situation escalating to violence.
Bruck says Cumberland County was selected because most of the county is under the jurisdiction of New Jersey State Police.
Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae says she is excited to get started and hopes to see more positive outcomes for residents as well as police.
"They don’t want to be responding to things that they’re ill-equipped to deal with. And that’s not defunding the police. It’s really reallocating resources," Webb-McRae said.
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She says another key goal of the program is to keep people from entering the criminal justice system just because they are experiencing a mental health crisis.
"This is a step toward better outcomes," said Col. Pat Callahan.
If the plan works out as well as police and some community leaders expect, it will be expanded to other parts of the state.
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