Across the country — both civilians and police—are hurting. Our officers are out there building bridges with members of the community to maintain healthy and ongoing dialogue. Since , it has been dedicated to serving at-risk youth, those experiencing poverty, mental illness, homelessness, addictions, domestic violence and other socio-economic plights through its broad community policing philosophy. Please reach out to us if you're interesting in learning more about any of the services we offer to the residents of New Bedford.
The Co-Response program provides real-time access to a trained behavioral health clinician. Through the program, an Emergency Services Technician along with NBPD officers respond to individuals who are suffering or experiencing mental or behavioral health crisis. A clinician provides a community-based intervention with the intent to stabilize non-violent individuals, provide linkages to support systems, reduce the need for these individuals to go to a local emergency department, and decreases arrests of individuals experiencing psychiatric or behavioral health emergencies.
The program also decreases the amount of time officers are tied up with behavioral health calls and allows officers to tend to calls for service. This ride-along program pairs a diversion clinician with a police officer for most of a shift to patrol and respond to calls. While on-site with police, the mental health clinician can evaluate the need for immediate services detox facility, crisis center, and psychiatric emergency room , initiate a mental health hold if necessary, make referrals, and later provide follow-up services to link the individual to further treatment if needed.
In addition, the mental health clinician provides a liaison to police in non-crisis situations like assisting police with wellness checks and working with police in other non-criminal community encounters as needed. CCIT brings together law enforcement, Health, and Community agencies for the purpose of effectively and compassionately providing care, safety, and services for people experiencing a destabilizing crisis in their lives.
Emergency cases that arise during the month are handled by a committee of members that can best handle a crisis. Partners are added on a regular basis. LEAD is a program aimed at reducing police contacts and chronic criminal law violations by addressing the underlying causes like drug use, mental illness or extreme poverty.
