Morris County is the latest area to launch the Attorney General's arriv together program partnering police with mental health professionals when responding to crisis calls the program began as a pilot in 2021 in Cumberland County and is now active in all 21 counties throughout the state part of an effort to help deescalate situations involving law enforcement and members of the public in distress a senior correspondent Joanna gagas reports moris county is taking a different approach in how they'll roll out the model it's shocking but the violence that occurs in law enforcement almost uh two-thirds of those incidents involve persons who are suspected of having some Mental Health Challenge situations that officers are not adequately trained to respond to says Morris County prosecutor Bob Carroll couple that with substance abuse uh domestic violence situations and there's several motivations that an officer uh in particular is facing when he's uh dispatched to a call um we've recognized that professionals screeners mental health screeners can be of extremely uh valuable use in in responding to these situations Morris County is participating in the Attorney General's arrive together program where officers and mental health care providers respond to 911 calls together although in this case they don't use a co-response model instead they use what's called a close in time model meaning a mental health professional arrives on the scene within 30 minutes of an officer's arrival Morris County recently partnered with the Mental Health Association of Essex and Morris counties to roll out the program we have uh mental health clinicians from mha that are basically embedded in a number of different towns uh one day a week and they rotate and they respond to those calls with law enforcement and if they're not there when the Call Comes in what they will do is the officers will provide the information to our clinicians that they can do follow-up work afterwards right now funding for the program only covers two clinicians who work from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Monday through Friday but that follow-up work is a critical piece of the program ensuring that the person in crisis gets connected to resources and in turn frees up officers to handle more pressing law enforcement matters auto theft is really big throughout the state of New Jersey so we want to be focused on our proactive presence in communities and neighborhoods deterring those activities but you know a lot of the towns are everywhere dealing with man shortages so you know if we can just take a component of what we do every day and have the appropriately trained and certified individuals to deal with those issues the officers can focus on our communities a little bit more by working together it really benefits the person who called the police um to begin with and as a result of that people are arrested less people are in incarcerated less the officers have to use less Force the people are more likely to be engaged in treatment today officers and other emergency responders underwent a crisis intervention training alongside those mental health professionals where they were taught techniques to identify and deal with a range of mental illness and special needs what schizophrenia looks like uh what they would expect to see was somebody who is uh bipolar when they're in a manic stage uh somebody who's suffering from anxiety or depression uh we we talk about perinatal uh depression and anxiety we talk about autism officers are taught that the two biggest skills that they have the two tools that they have when they arrive on the scene is time and space there's no reason to rush the intervention and there's no reason to get too close are lives saved in this process without question without question the Mental Health Association is in the process right now of hiring two more clinicians to cover the 3 to 11:00 p.m. shift they're hoping more money comes their way in the next budget to staff overnights and even a weekend shift in Morristown I'm Joanna Gagis NJ Spotlight News NJ Spotlight News