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Helena police reform group recommends expansion of mental health crisis work

Independent Record - 12/17/2021

Dec. 17—One of the Helena City Commission's police reform working groups has presented its recommendations on the expansion of behavioral health services to city leadership, calling for less law enforcement response to mental health episodes within the community.

The group, established at the end of last summer during the height of civil unrest in Helena and abroad over the murder of George Floyd, was tasked with reviewing and making recommendations on Helena Police Department policies and procedures, including the handling of those in mental crisis.

HPD Chief Steve Hagen, who participated in the working groups, presented the latest recommendations to the city commission during its Wednesday evening administrative meeting.

This particular group met twice, once in September and once in October, before voting to send its recommendation to the commission.

Hagen said that while he believes local police in partnership with Lewis and Clark County's mobile crisis response team have done an "excellent job" in responding to mental health-related calls for service, "put simply, it's still not enough."

Hagen said the police department has been responding to numerous such calls in recent memory, citing cases of those with mental illnesses camping in the lobby of his department, homeless people being trespassed from local businesses repeatedly, and recent suicides.

The county's mobile crisis response team, implemented last fall and administered by St. Peter's Health, has responded to such calls in tandem with local law enforcement, which Hagen said has been helpful.

"I believe this is the direction we should continue to take and build on our mental health response program as a community, not just the police department," Hagen said.

The chief said his department needs more help "in the field."

"We don't need more folks sitting in the office," he said.

His proposal calls for an expansion of this model that would include some police-first response; some hybrid response of police and the mental crisis response team; and the addition of mental crisis response team response only.

Members of that team currently do not respond alone to calls for service, but Hagen said with the hiring of more mental and behavioral health specialists, the team could increase its capacity, take on a greater share of the burden and hopefully begin to reach people with mental health issues before they are in crisis.

The proposed model is fashioned after a more than 30-year-old model used in Eugene, Oregon, known as Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets, or CAHOOTS.

Despite the drastic increase in population within Lewis and Clark County, Hagen said his department has the same number of officers as of October 2021 as it did in 2001.

He hopes that an increase in mental and behavioral health specialists responding to non-violent individuals in crisis would free up more police officers "to help solve problems rather than just respond to problems."

He also shared the working group's recommendation to establish a small mental health task force to continuously monitor the community's success in this realm and make its own recommendations to community leaders.

Hagen further added that case managers need to be folded into such efforts. By his estimation, without dedicated individuals helping to assist those struggling with mental health by connecting them to local programs for things like housing and addiction counseling following a run-in with the law, his officers and the mobile crisis response team will continue to respond to the same individuals.

The city commissioners on Wednesday directed City Manager Rachel Harlow-Schalk to allocate $500,000 of its more than $8 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds into a separate pool to be drawn from for public safety purposes.

The city intends to further study its proposed contribution to the county's mobile crisis response program and work with their county counterparts to determine how best the city could fit into the work already being conducted.

"We really do need to have a larger conversation with the county on a few of these items," City Commissioner Emily Dean said. "They do have money available too, and I think there is opportunity."

City Commissioner Sean Logan has decried the spending of one-time ARPA funds on ongoing programs or projects since the beginning of discussions regarding the federal aid.

Logan said he is unsure why the city is moving forward independently of the county government and local health providers in allocating the money for the city's contribution to expand the program.

YWCA Helena Executive Director Jen Gursky encouraged the commissioners during public comment to also consider hiring a grant manager to "turn it into a five-year plus pilot program."

"I encourage you to really put your toe into the deep end of that water," Gurskuy said.

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