CSUF Mobile Crisis Response Team

The California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) Police Department provides public safety and security for the largest California State University out of the 23 campuses statewide, with over 44,000 students, plus faculty and staff. As concerns with mental health, homelessness, and substance abuse grow, CSUF must address challenges that can become viable threats to our campus community and stand in the way of student success.
As part of this proposal, CSUF proposes to pilot and fully implement a school threat assessment crisis response, called the CSUF Mobile Crisis Team (MCT). The MCT teams’ main purpose is to ensure CSUF student success and enhance campus and campus adjacent safety by identifying potential mental health threats and mitigating them with unarmed response using a new tiered holistic response model. As part of project activities, the MCT team will intervene before the behavior escalates due to untreated mental health challenges. This collaborative team will provide proactive assessment, intervention, early screening and identification, case management, and monitoring, training and program consultation for our college community and its partners.

Funding will allow for the needed mental health and cultural bias training of officers, dispatch, and outreach to the entire University community. Expected project outcomes include increased collaboration and communication between law enforcement and behavioral health practitioners; reduced costs; decrease in arrests and use of force by law enforcement; decrease in repeat calls for service for the same individual; and increased speed and access to care for persons in crisis through seamless connection of campus resources. There are no planned conference activities for the recommended award.