El Paso County deputies will soon have co-responders on mental health calls
Law enforcement officers are encountering more and more mental health issues on the streets, that’s what El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder, said.
“More and more when people are in mental health crisis, it ends up with a call to the sheriff’s office, a call to 911,” Elder said.
But help is coming for his deputies thanks to a grant funded by marijuana taxes.
Deputy Lora Lowry has noticed the rise in the number of calls involving a mental health crisis in El Paso County too.
“It’s an illness that they’re trying to come with and ultimately law enforcement is trying to find a way to cope with it as well,” Lowry said.
She’s certified in Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) and uses it to mitigate situations daily.
“That’s why I am in this job, is to help people,” Lowry said. “It’s a struggle to not be able to help somebody when you’re there trying to do everything that you can.”
The grant awarded by the Colorado Department of Human Services will now allow to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office to have a “co-responder” on calls.
“You’ve got a therapist that will rush in there with you and hopefully give you a way to deal with and de-escalate and to get some help to people that are in crisis,” Elder said.
Elder recognizes the therapists might not be able to help in every situation, like what deputies in Douglas County faced New Year’s Eve.
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“I’m not sure that a therapist would have been any different anyway. It’s hard to second-guess that,” Elder said.
But Elder hopes it means more people will get their mental health illness addressed, rather than ending up in jail and give an extra hand to deputies like Lowry.
“We can probably get them help and resolve the issue much sooner and probably a lot more satisfactorily by dealing with them on the street,” Elder said.
“More people are always better on the first responder side,” Lowry said. “They (therapists) would be able to directly take those people to Aspen Point and Lighthouse and they would be able to connect those people directly to resources a little better than us, as a first responder, can.”
As for how many mental health professionals will be joining deputies on the streets, Sheriff Elder said that hasn’t been determined yet. However, they hope to have at least one person per shift, so there’s always a co-responder available.
