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Tucson Police Chief Calls for Better Co-Response for 911 Call Centers
Emergency 911 call centers handle a variety of emergencies, but increasingly, they’re called on to handle mental health crises. Some municipalities have floated the idea of staffing 911 call centers with trained mental health professionals so emergency response workers can get a better idea of how to approach the problem.
In Tucson, Arizona, Police Chief Chris Magnus noted that a recent high-profile kidnappings of crisis workers may have been prevented or mitigated if mental health professionals had been tapped from the beginning of the calls. In June of this year, two members of Tucson’s Crisis Mobile Team were forced into a vehicle by an armed suspect in the midst of a mental health crisis. The suspect, Jerrold Whitfield, held the women hostage and forced them to withdraw cash from the ATM before finally releasing them. Whitfield was arrested and charged with two counts of armed robbery, two counts of kidnapping, two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and auto theft, according to local news source The Arizona Daily Star.
Magnus noted that in this case and many others, police and crisis mobile team workers are entering a "universe of unknowns" when responding to calls, and that information sharing can help workers make better choices about how to approach the crisis. The workers who approached Whitfield had access to his behavioral record, but not his police records that would have informed them he was capable of violence.
“If the call takers and dispatchers had been housed together, they could have shared that information before the mobile crisis team went out to the scene. Also, police would have known where the team was and would have done check-ins with them,” reported the Daily Star.
This type of cooperation between agencies is often termed “co-response,” and at its core is information sharing between resources and departments. Magnus says expanding the department's ability to co-respond, including co-locating mental health workers in the communications department, will save money and is necessary to prevent situations like June's kidnapping.
Edited by Luke Bellos