Montgomery to Pair Police Officers with Mental Health Professionals on Certain Calls

By Barbara A. Preston | Posted August 20, 2024

Montgomery Township Police Director Silvio Bet announced Monday that Montgomery will partner with police departments in Hillsborough, Manville, and Branchburg to participate in a state-initiated program that pairs cops with mental health professionals to respond to certain emergency calls.

"Acknowledging the rise in mental health calls, everybody has been working together to best handle these calls more efficiently," Capt. Bet told The Montgomery News. Mental health emergencies can include anything from suicide attempts to drug abuse. Increasingly, police are required to act like doctors or psychiatrists, determining why a person is acting erratically and what drug a person may have taken, or what mental health condition they may be experiencing.

The program — Arrive Together, which stands for Alternative Responses to Reduce Instances of Violence and Escalation — partners a community-based mental health counselor or screener with a plainclothes police officer in an unmarked car during certain mental or behavioral health calls.

Montgomery Township will partner with the Hillsborough, Manville, and Branchburg police departments and Bridgeway Behavioral Health Services beginning on September 9 — to become the first multi-jurisdictional mutual aid partnership in Somerset County to participate in the Arrive program.

Montgomery and its multi-jurisdictional police team will partner with Bridgeway Behavioral Health Services. This co-response program will be staffed with an officer who has completed Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) and a Mental Health Clinician from Bridgeway. Together they will share an office and vehicle, enabling the team to provide initial response and follow up to mental health crisis and outreach services, said Capt. Bet.

The Attorney General’s Office, which initiated the program beginning in 2021 as a pilot, has identified important goals for the co-response initiative to keep residents and the community safe.

• The co-response Arrive team leads to fewer arrests, fewer uses of force, and fewer injuries.

• Arrive is increasing the use of mental health resources to the communities.

• Fewer individuals will be unnecessarily taken to the hospital.

• Lastly, Arrive is improving trust between law enforcement and the community.

Bridgeway Behavioral Health Services, a nonprofit organization, began a partnership with the Franklin Township Police Department in January, launching a full-time Arrive Together program there. Franklin was the first municipality in Somerset County to participate in the countywide Alternative Responses to Reduce Instances of Violence and Escalation (ARRIVE) Together program.

Similar to the Franklin Township program, Montgomery's multi-jurisdictional ARRIVE team is a co-response program. It pairs a police officer and a mental health professional working closely together to address mental and behavioral health emergencies as well as conduct community outreach.

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Capt. Bet said he wanted Montgomery to join the Arrive program sooner. However, Montgomery has a small 37-member police squad. "Staffing was the main concern," he said. "So, I had an idea to address my colleagues in other neighboring police departments: Chief Mike McMahon of Hillsborough Township; Chief Richard Buck of Branchburg Township; and Deputy Chief Craig Jeremiah of Manville.

"We are unique with these other [police] agencies in that we already shared a municipal court," Bet said. "I worked to convince the other three chiefs to work on a mutual aid partnership to do the Arrive program together with Bridgeway."

"We also already had a mutual aid agreement with these other police departments, but we all did not have a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Bridgeway. So we had to establish that, and the township had to pass a resolution. Then, the MOUs were put through the township legal teams."

By the end of July, the paperwork was all in order. Capt. Bet held a meeting of police chiefs and Bridgeway leaders in Montgomery on August 7, and all agreed to go live with the multi-jurisdictional Arrive program beginning on September 9.

How Will the Arrive Together Program Work?

Nicole Crowley, the Clinical Supervisor for Bridgeway’s Psychiatric Emergency Screening Services (PESS) program is working with Bet and the other chiefs on merging the roles of a mental health professional with a law enforcement officer on mental health calls.

Crowley will have a work station at each of the four agencies (Montgomery, Hillsborough, Manville, and Branchburg). Monday through Friday, from 10 am to 6 pm, she will rotate her office base. If she is in Branchburg on a particular day, and say there is a call for mental health services in Montgomery, the Branchburg police officer and mental health professional team will respond outside of their jurisdiction to handle that call, Bet said.

"And, vice versa," Bet said. "Montgomery police could potentially be responding to Hillsborough, Branchburg, or Manville for a mental health call. We will have a dedicated car and staff member on our day."

Weekends and evenings, at this time, will not include the Arrive program's pairing of a police officer with a mental health professionals.

"Mental health is a big part of community policing," Bet said. "Promoting public safety is our primary focus. We are continually working to become more innovative and progressive."

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Mental health emergencies in Montgomery appear to have peaked during the pandemic, according to a chart Capt. Bet gave to The Montgomery News. Montgomery officers responded to 122 mental health calls in 2020. In 2023, officers responded to 96 calls.

According to the NJ Attorney General's Office, people in the midst of a mental health emergency are often victims of police violence. When police respond to a call, and they see someone acting erratically at the scene, they do not know why.

Across New Jersey, two out of every three uses of force by law enforcement involve a civilian suffering from mental illness or who is under the influence, according to data from the NJ Attornery General.  More than half of all fatal police encounters occur in similar circumstances. 

Crisis Intervention Training (CIT)

To try to prevent harm, and to de-escalate situations with people in crisis while minimizing the use of force, Montgomery police officers are receiving training in intervention techniques.

The CIT course is a 40-hour five day training for law enforcement officers and psychiatric screening and mobile response professionals. The curriculum is designed, coordinated and delivered  by each county’s CIT Leadership workgroup. It is comprised of classroom instruction, community site visits and practical exercises delivered by local mental health professionals, CIT law enforcement instructors and other subject matter experts.

According to the CIT-NJ Crisis Intervention Team: "Across the United States and throughout New Jersey, there are more individuals with serious mental illnesses incarcerated in jails and prisons than are in psychiatric beds. There is little coordination or collaboration between the law enforcement system and the mental health system to address the myriad of challenges this population presents to the community."

"The Crisis Intervention Team model is based upon building a collaboration and strong communication network between the community’s police department and mental health system. Once established, the collaboration develops a strategy that increases the communication and supports between police and mental health systems and consequently diverts individuals from the justice system to mental health services.

"When a public safety situation occurs involving a person in psychiatric crisis, law enforcement officers will be the first responders. CIT training provides participants with knowledge and de-escalation skills which may decrease the necessity to use force in certain situations, thus protecting both the officers involved and the person in crisis."

Capt. Bet said his goal is for each officer in the Montgomery PD to be CIT trained.

He stated that he and his colleagues long with Bridgeway Behavioral Health Services are committed to continually working to improve how officers respond to members of the community experiencing mental and behavioral health emergencies.

"This initiative will support and enhance our response to those types of calls," Bet concluded.