The Chattanooga Police Department (CPD) launched a pilot mental health crisis unit. The unit is funded in part by a grant of nearly $1 million from Volunteer Behavioral Health. CPD has trained officers to be members of a crisis intervention team; the new approach pairs a licensed clinical behavioral health professional with a trained police officer.

The grant of from Volunteer Behavioral Health is for $980,000 over 21 months. It is funding eight positions that will serve seven counties in Middle and East Tennessee. It is focused on those counties with the most calls involving people struggling with their mental health who pose a threat to either themselves or another person, known as a mental health crisis. CPD has averaged from 30 to 45 mental health crisis calls a week.

CPD has been developing its co-response field since May 2021. The first responses began in November 2021. The goal is to help people with mental health issues and educate the community. The co-response team conducts outreach, responds to mental health calls, and provides follow-up. A key goal is to provide on-scene evaluation to help individuals obtain the most appropriate level of care while avoiding unnecessary emergency department admissions and offering an alternative to incarceration for crimes related to their mental illness.”

In addition to the grant to CPD for the co-responder program, Volunteer Behavioral Health also provided grants to the Cleveland Police Department, McMinnville Police Department, Cookeville Police Department, Murfreesboro Police Department, Lebanon Police Department and the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office. So far, the CPD and Murfreesboro Police Department teams have launched. The Murfreesboro teams launched on February 11, 2022 The Volunteer Behavioral Health crisis hotline receives more than 6,000 calls a year from different institutions around Chattanooga such as the police, emergency rooms and fire department, as well as prisons.

This was reported by Chattanooga Times Free Press on February 13, 2022.

Contact information: Elisa Myzal, Communications Coordinator, Chattanooga Police Department, 3410 Amnicola Hwy., Chattanooga, TN 37406; (423) 643-5707; Website: https://chattanooga.gov/police-department

Contact information: Kelsey Taylor, Community Responses and Training Director, Volunteer Behavioral Health, Post Office Box 4755, Chattanooga TN 37405; Website: https://www.vbhcs.org/contact/