Fallon Tribal Police and Health Center Behavioral Health Intervention and Response Project

Behavioral health issues continue to be major concern with law enforcement as individual with mental health issues create an extremely fluid situation that can have serious consequences for an individual with mental health disorders or co-occurring mental health/substance use disorders, the officer, and the community.  Too often, there is a disconnect between law enforcement personnel and behavioral health professionals which creates a situation where situations can spiral out of control.  The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe is no different to this situation and has seen a dramatic increase in law enforcement response with individuals that have or displaying mental health issues and in many of these cases they are co-mingled with alcohol and drug abuse.  This project will serve the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe which is a federally-recognized Indian Tribe in Nevada.  The target population will be community members who reside on the Tribe’s Reservation and Colony which has an estimated population of 1,200 people.  Under this project, the Tribe is projecting to serve a total of 50 individuals in crisis and case management services.  The total federal funding for this project is $549,211.

This purpose of this project is to create a unified approach between the Fallon Tribal Police Department (law enforcement agency) and the Fallon Tribal Health Center (mental health agency) to help better coordinate services to help de-escalation these situations before they turn into something more dangerous to the individual and the officer.  This unified approach will be done by first developing the infrastructure for this type of major endeavor by creating the laws, policies, and teams to allow both agencies to collaborate with and then working to establish a law enforcement-based case management with a Behavioral Health Liaison, as well as creating Crisis Intervention Teams that assist with a coordinated pre- and post-intervention process, including mental health crisis holds. 

This project meets the OJP Priority Area as it will serve a traditionally underserved community of Native Americans, as nearly 87% of the service population are Native Americans.  The primary purpose of this project is to embed a trained behavioral health professional in law enforcement to identify and reduce the risk of harm to individuals within the tribal community experiencing mental health disorders or co-occurring mental health/substance use disorders (as detailed on page 11 of the proposal narrative).