Fairfax County police and the Community Service Board’s co-responder program continues its expansion, enabling teams to provide direct mental health treatment to individuals in crisis.

The co-responder program partners one police officer assigned to the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) with a CSB Crisis Intervention Specialist. The pair ride in a patrol cruiser together and respond to behavioral health calls for service throughout the county. These calls could be linked to mental health issues, substance usage, developmental disabilities, or other concerns, FCPD said.

There are currently three teams of co-responders, with a fourth team to be added this fall. The teams are deployed every day, operating between noon and midnight based on peak volume of calls for service related to mental health. The co-responder units respond to calls for service received by dispatch.

The original July 2020 proposal for mental health teams to respond to appropriate 911 calls cited programs in other parts of the country, for example in Eugene, Oregon. The city implemented “a strategic triage initiative that dispatches unarmed medics and mental health workers to 911 calls that do not contain elements of extreme violence or criminal activity. These crisis intervention workers are able to alert law enforcement in instances where they require additional support, however out of roughly 24,000 calls dispatched in 2019 only approximately 150 required additional intervention from law enforcement.”

The board matter from Supervisors Rodney Lusk and Walter Alcorn mentioned that only 40 percent of FCPD officers had received Crisis Intervention Training. They continued: “Jurisdictions in California, Arizona and New Jersey have instituted similar models to great effect, and I believe that the time has come for Fairfax County to evaluate the feasibility of following their example.”

The motion, which passed, called for a review of the 9-1-1 dispatch and response system “to enhance our Diversion First strategies by implementing systems for the deployment of trained unarmed medical, human services, and mental health professionals in instances where mental and behavioral health are the principal reason for the call.”

Chief Kevin Davis of FCPD objected to the idea of CSB crisis case workers going out without police, citing safety concerns, and the co-responder program emerged.

Still training FCPD officers in Crisis Intervention training and Integrating Communications Assessment and Tactics (ICAT) has lagged. 

In its April 2023 Fairfax review of FCPD police shooting incidents, the Police Executive Research Forum identified that in 2022, the Fairfax department recognized the need to train its officers on how to defuse critical incidents through the implementation of the PERF-developed program ICAT, but did not implement the program in 2022.

The department says it expects all officers to be trained in ICAT by the end of September. 

The goal of the co-responder program is to increase timely, on-scene assessment and de-escalation of behavioral health crises, FCPD said in a release. The co-responder program could assist in diverting community members from arrest and incarceration.

To date, 838 officers of approximately 1,400 have completed Integrating Communications Assessment and Tactics (ICAT) training with the remainder of the Department to finish in September, according to police

The co-responder program also aligns with the Marcus Alert, the Virginia law that requires 9-1-1, crisis call centers, law enforcement and behavioral health agencies to work together to improve responses to individuals experiencing behavioral health crises, according to FCPD.

One example of the program working as designed:

On June 6, officers responded to a parking garage in the 2600 block of Park Tower Drive in Vienna for a man who was sitting on the edge of the top deck. Officers engaged the man in conversation and determined he was considering taking his own life. An officer trained in crisis intervention spoke with the man, building a rapport and pleading with the man to step off the ledge. A co-responder unit responded to assist with the conversation. Together, the officer and clinician successfully convinced the man to step off the ledge. The man received further treatment.