Brighton Police Department Mental Health Co-Responder Program

The Brighton Police Department (BPD) in collaboration with Reaching HOPE and Dr. Lisa Ingarfield is applying for the BJA FY22 Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program grant. The purpose of this grant is to determine the efficacy of implementing a Co-Responder mental health/police collaboration between the BPD with Reaching HOPE to better assist and respond to residents experiencing a mental health crisis.  A Co-Responder program is a police-mental health practitioner collaboration where police and mental health professionals work in partnership to assist members of the community in crisis (Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2022). With these grant funds, evaluate this Co-Responder program and create an opportunity to expand this intensive comprehensive approach to effectively responding to a citizen who needs a mental health response, rather than a police response.  This project will not only incorporate the co-responder response but the follow-up services and community collaboration to increase the successful intervention, addressing the mental health need, and avoiding recurrent emergency response. BPD is requesting funding under priority area number one (1): Promote effective strategies by law enforcement to identify and reside the risk of harm to individuals with mental health illnesses and to public safety. BPD intends to further our partnership with Reaching HOPE (RH) to collaborate on the creation of a mental health clinician/police response- Co-Responder Program.  BPD will develop and enhance a traditional model making it an impactful, sustainable community collaboration. Community members experiencing mental health disorders and/or substance abuse are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. In 2021 approximately 20% of all BPD calls for service were related to mental health/substance abuse issues (Brighton Police Department, RMS, 2022).  It is the goal of BPD to divert community members suffering from such conditions from being involved in the criminal justice system to meaningful treatment. Additionally, providing community members with the treatment and resources needed to achieve recovery and improve the overall quality of life. BPD also recognizes the benefits of partnering with RH as well as the benefits which experts in the mental health field can offer the citizens of Brighton. The project requests $525,703.00 in federal funds with an additional $173,323.00 in-kind contribution from BPD for this three-year project period.