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Sent: Monday, November 05, 2001 2:55 PM

Subject: Fwd: Iowa: Mental Health Workers in Police Squad Cars

In a message dated 11/5/01 9:14:17 AM Eastern Standard Time, NAPS writes:

Police seek to expand service for mentally ill
By TOM ALEX    Des Moines Register Staff Writer    11/03/2001

Health and law enforcement officials want to expand a new program that helps police deal with mentally ill suspects.

"Until recently, we had just three options," said Des Moines police Lt. Gaylord Houston. "We could commit them to a hospital, we could arrest them or we could walk away."

Since last month, Des Moines police and Polk County sheriff's deputies have had a licensed mental health counselor or psychiatric nurse on duty, in a squad car, five days a week, 12 hours a day.

The $320,000 annual tab for the "mobile crisis unit" is picked up by Polk County Health Services, a private, nonprofit group.

The money pays for Richard Davenport, a licensed mental health counselor, Dave Speaker, a psychiatric nurse, and Larry Hejtmanek, director of clinical services with Eyerly-Ball Community Mental Health Services. The trio works with police Thursday through Monday, 2 p.m. until 2 a.m.

"Mental health issues don't just happen from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Having the police dealing with these problems the rest of the day hasn't been a good option," Assistant Police Chief William McCarthy said. "When we have to shoot someone with severe mental problems, the failure didn't happen at the time of the shooting. The failure happened years before when that person didn't get the help they needed."

Law enforcement officers have long complained about hours spent at local hospitals trying to commit people who displayed signs of mental illness. They've sometimes taken people to jail because other options were not available, Houston said.

The mental health workers answered 39 calls between Sept. 7 and Oct. 27. More than half of the cases were handled by counseling, referrals to other professionals or medication. Only one of the 39 went to jail. That person figured in a burglary, police said.

Maria Walker, a program planner for Polk County Health Services, said the program should be expanded.

"There is still a lot of area in Polk County, the suburbs, where we are not meeting needs," she said. "We are going to make every attempt to maintain what we're now putting into it - at least the current level of funding."

Expansion faces at least one roadblock: the county's tight budget. County supervisors can't increase property taxes for mental-health spending, which is guided by state limits.

Earlier this year, county supervisors asked department heads to trim their budgets by 8 percent because of falling revenues, but they decided not to cut the $38 million health budget.

Hejtmanek, who rides with officers to provide help, said other sources of money will be sought to expand the program to other law enforcement departments and perhaps add more hours.

"When they come to the scene, they may have information about that person we don't have," Lt. Houston said. "They have knowledge about how to handle these situations that we don't have.

"They know the places that have beds available. They can start the admittance process before we even get there," he added.

Hejtmanek said the success of the program has also shown the need.

"We've been coming across new people who we've never had contact with before," he said.

This "Mental Health E-News" posting is a service of the New York Ass'n of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services,
a statewide coalition of people who use and/or provide community mental health services
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