NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville has announced it will expand a pilot project linking mental health professionals with police after the first seven months of the program showed promising results.
The announcement comes about a week after nine law enforcement officers, including six from the Nashville Metropolitan Police, fatally shot a man walking on Interstate 65. Officers who spoke with him for about 30 minutes failed to calm the situation. Landon Eastep’s wife, Chelesy Eastep, later told reporters that her husband had woken up “excited” and decided to go for a walk to calm down. Eastep’s death prompted a call for a greater focus on responding to mental health crises.
The Partners in Care program matches master’s-level physicians with Nashville officials on calls flagged as potential mental health crises. The pilot program launched in June 2021 and will continue through June 2022. The city last week announced plans to expand services from two congressional districts to three and offer additional resources to the county’s remaining five congressional districts, the Tennessean reported.
Second-quarter results released last week showed doctors accompanying police on 247 calls. Only 4% resulted in arrest and less than 1% resulted in the use of force. In nearly 35% of those calls, someone was transported to a hospital or Crisis Treatment Center.
“It’s the right resource at the right time, and last week’s tragic incident certainly demonstrates the importance of this work,” said Dia Cirillo, Metro’s senior public health and safety policy advisor, during a presentation of the report. the second quarter of the program.
All Nashville campuses have access to the city’s mobile crisis team, but the Partners in Care program allows doctors to come on-site with officers to provide immediate assessments.
“When someone is in a state of crisis like that, it’s very easy for them to become more and more agitated as time goes on,” said Nashville Police Officer Donovan Coble, who is part of the pilot program. Officer Gabriel Centeno said having a mental health professional present who is not wearing a police uniform helps people open up, shifting the conversation away from law enforcement and toward mental health care.
Lt. Anthony Brooks said the couple offers officers alternatives.
“In the past … an officer could come to a call and maybe even think that jail might not be the best place for this person,” Brooks said, “but with our training and experience, the only option we would have is to arrest them for breaking the law, whether it’s trespassing or public intoxication or something, in the hope that maybe they can connect to services through Mental Health Court.”
Callers to 911 may not identify a situation as a mental health issue, Department of Emergency Communications Director Stephen Martini said. Instead, the calls may come as reports of a suspicious person or disorderly behavior. Therefore, dispatchers are trained to ask a series of questions to help identify if a situation could be a mental health crisis. Following Eastep’s murder, Martini said the program may expand the types of calls for service that qualify, possibly to include support requests from a neighboring agency.
Metro is also exploring a non-police model, potentially with teams made up of a doctor and a mental health specialist, to complement the Partners in Care program. Metro requested technical assistance to develop the model from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration last week, Cirillo said.
