Beginning this summer, a mental health professional will arrive along with a police officer in a modified uniform and in an unmarked car at some 911 calls for behavioral health crises in two cities in North Jersey. The program, already underway as a pilot in rural South Jersey, is part of the attorney general’s plan to change the way law enforcement statewide handles mental health crises and avoid police killings. 

“This program is a recognition by law enforcement, as well as by the communities, that there are actually people with better expertise in handling an incident of emotional or mental distress,” Acting New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin told Gothamist/WNYC.

Called ARRIVE Together, the program is limited, for now. It runs twice a week during the day in Elizabeth and adjacent Liden, with one officer assigned from each city’s department and a mental health screener from Trinitas Regional Medical Center. Each officer in the program will wear a shirt that says “police” and arrive in an unmarked patrol car without flashing lights, according to Elizabeth Police Chief Giacomo Sacca. 

“When you’re dealing with someone in a mental health episode, you want to have the least amount of triggers as possible,” Sacca said. There has been a spike in emergency calls about people going through mental health crises since the start of the pandemic in Elizabeth, the fourth largest city in the state, according to Sacca.

The use of deadly force by police “overwhelmingly involves cases of mental health or emotional distress,” according to Platkin. And so in these instances, the hope is that the officer and mental health screener “can divert those individuals away from the criminal justice system to the mental health system and really provide them the care that they need.”

For the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.com.