The Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office will use more than $1 million in federal grants to provide local police with tools to reduce encounters with people suffering from mental illness and to remove criminals struggling with addiction from the criminal justice system. and take them to treatment.
Details of the two new grants, totaling more than $1.4 million, were announced during a virtual news conference Tuesday morning with County Attorney Jennifer Webb-McRae, Acting Attorney General Andrew Bruck, political leaders and representatives from local law enforcement and health care agencies.
A $543,046 Law Enforcement Behavioral Health Responses grant will focus on how law enforcement can better engage with someone suffering from mental illness, including cases involving substance abuse.
Under the program, law enforcement will partner with Inspira Health to add a social worker to the Millville Police Department “to increase access to justice through appropriate clinical care,” Webb-McRae said.
This will build on the work Millville is already doing to help homeless and at-risk populations, he said. Additional funding will be sought to link social workers with the Bridgeton and Vineland police departments, the prosecutor added.
The program also includes officer training throughout the county in crisis intervention and de-escalation. This training will give officers the tools to know when a mental health professional is needed, while ensuring the safety of those experts.
“We do not intend to endanger any lay worker,” McRae said. “When we train and work with our mental health professionals, and allow them to train us, we can all have a better response.”
Another element of the effort is to create a 24/7 crisis response team that would assist law enforcement and protect the public during mental health-related incidents.
“We’ve had some critical incidents in Cumberland County that we know were the result of mental health,” Webb-McRae said, adding that she wants to make sure any officer responding to a scene has the resources available when a call involves mental health.
All police officers across the state are being trained in de-escalation techniques, he noted, and the new local effort will take this process a step further.
“It will be of particular interest to me to see how having mental health professionals available to them at any time will improve our responses to crisis calls that are really screams or mental health help,” Webb-McRae said.
He thanked local police chiefs, some of whom attended the press conference, for embracing the notion of police as “guardians” of their communities.
Cumberland County has the highest rate of people in distress in the state and has a suicide rate that increased 40% between 2010 and 2020, said Inspira Health President and CEO Amy Mansue. She spoke about the importance of breaking down the silos between mental health and police disciplines, praising everyone involved in the initiative.
“We have to try some new and innovative ideas,” he said. “This will not be solved by one of us. It will only be solved by all of us.”
The second grant, totaling $900,000, will offer legal fun along with treatment services for those struggling with addiction who have been charged with a crime.
While state drug courts, newly renamed Recovery Courts, works to help those charged with non-violent crimes avoid prison when seeking treatment, this new effort would work from the start before an offender enters the justice system. Eligible crimes would include simple drug possession, robbery and shoplifting charges.
“We will be able to divert people who are committing truly addiction-related crimes out of the criminal justice system and dangle the carrot of dismissing their charges if they comply with treatment recommendations,” Webb-McRae said.
The program will work in conjunction with the county Department of Human Services through its FirstStep Outpatient Clinic Y Capital Recovery Center.
These new initiatives dovetail with a program the state launched last year in Cumberland County called ARRIVE Together, or “Alternative Responses to Reduce Instances of Violence and Escalation,” Bruck said Tuesday. under that programsoldiers from the New Jersey State Police headquarters in the county are paired with mental health professionals when responding to certain types of calls.
Cumberland County was chosen due to a recognized need for these services, according to Bruck. “It’s a part of the state that is too often overlooked,” he said.
He praised the county for leading the way on new initiatives like the ones unveiled Tuesday.
“It is not surprising that Cumberland County sought out and received these grants, because Cumberland County has been at the forefront of creative and innovative ways to use grant money to create a better and safer criminal justice system,” He said.
Webb-McRae announced a year-long project in October to improve the way the police deal with juvenile delinquencyboth in an effort to reduce crime and improve the way police and the community interact.
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Matt Gray can be contacted at [email protected].
