Program pairing police with mental health pros sees success in Newark and across NJ

At the beginning of August, New Jersey's attorney general announced that the state's largest city had become the latest to implement a police response program called ARRIVE Together, which pairs mental health professionals with officers responding to calls that involve a person in the midst of a psychological crisis.

In mid-July, ARRIVE, which stands for Alternative Responses to Reduce Instances of Violence & Escalation, began a pilot program in Newark, pairing a "screener" from Rutgers' University Behavioral Health Care with a plainclothes officer on patrol in an unmarked car every Monday evening for one shift, responding to reports of people in emotional distress.

Meanwhile, NJ Transit police are joined by screeners from Newark Beth Israel Medical Center two nights a week conducting outreach in and around Penn Station, checking on people who are housing-insecure and others.

“That’s been a powerful tool. They bring with them a host of training and resources that we wouldn’t have access to,” Newark police Capt. Leonardo Carrillo said of the screeners who take part in the program.

A report by the Brookings Institution published in March showed that the program, which Attorney General Matthew Platkin had already rolled out in Cumberland, Union and Atlantic counties, has yielded promising results. Rashawn Ray, a senior fellow at Brookings, who penned the March report, found that only 2% of 342 calls for service involving an ARRIVE team across three agencies ended with an arrest.

Moreover, the data appears to support the public outcry that residents suffering emotional crises are better served by health providers than by an armed battalion trained to handle violent standoffs, even those with crisis training and the best intentions.

"A police officer, whether [in uniform] or not, can escalate an already delicate situation," said Zellie Thomas, lead organizer for the Paterson chapter of Black Lives Matter, whose city has seen multiple residents killed by law enforcement while experiencing an emotional crisis.

“We totally acknowledge that is a concern,” Carrillo said. “That’s why we put the officer in plainclothes and an unmarked car. But, of course, it wouldn’t eliminate that altogether.”

Success in Newark

National data shows that nearly a quarter of all people killed by police officers in America were suffering from a known mental illness, Brookings reported. When ARRIVE was unveiled nearly eight months ago, the Attorney General's Office said two-thirds of every police use-of-force case in New Jersey involved someone who either had mental illness or was under the influence, as did half of the public's fatal encounters with police.

Furthermore, those numbers have been increasing as more people receive mental health diagnoses, Ray said: "It could be argued that this has always been the case but we didn’t collect data in the same way. Now that we are, we’re starting to get a sense of the gravity of people who have mental health issues.”

In one incident, cited in the Brookings report, a son called the police on his father for allegedly threatening him with a firearm. Upon arrival, officers found weapons in the home. But due to the father’s diagnoses of Alzheimer’s and dementia, officers took both men to the station, where they were evaluated by an ARRIVE team for suicidal ideation.

Carrillo said his ARRIVE team responded to a home where a mother reported her son acting erratically after suddenly discontinuing his medications.

"It was one of those assignments where there was potential that it could have gone violent," the captain said. "But in this instance, the screener took the lead, had a conversation, was able to dissuade any potential for violence, and took the kid to the hospital without incident.”

One of ARRIVE's key advantages in Newark has been the screeners' mobile access to health records, letting them pull up the medication and treatment histories of the residents they help.

“It puts the folks they’re interacting with at ease, because they’re saying things that sound familiar," Carrillo said, "like, ‘OK, I know doctor such-and-such,’ or ‘We’re going to reach out to doctor such-and-such.’ Things like that.”

Breaking down the data

The Brookings report was based on both detailed police reports and data culled from those reports but simplified into spreadsheets. In the latter, as Ray described, a complex interaction with law enforcement was pared down to basic questions: whether the call was received through 911 or whether the encounter resulted in an arrest.

But some situations in which the subject was handcuffed and detained, though not officially booked, would be marked as not resulting in an arrest.

"I think those nuances are important," Ray said.

Yet, as promising as the Brookings data was, neither Ray's report nor state studies compare calls that did not involve an ARRIVE team with ones that did. "Comparative analysis" remains ongoing, attorney general spokesperson Trudi Gilfillian said earlier last month, as Platkin's office continued to look at more than 80 emergency responses in Newark involving ARRIVE.

As of Aug. 1, some form of the program had been implemented in 42 municipalities across nine counties. There are three separate models "informed by each community’s unique needs," the Attorney General's Office said. In some cities, such as Newark, a mental health expert responds to the initial call alongside police. In others, such as Hamilton and Ewing townships, the screener is on hand through a web call.

In Atlantic City, the mental health team speaks to the subject only on follow-up and is not coordinating with police during the emergency as it unfolds.

The various models were applied to separate municipalities based on discussions with law enforcement, community members, mental health providers and other stakeholders, Gilfillian said.

In Newark, an ARRIVE response can be triggered in any number of ways: The team may be requested by dispatch, the officer and screener may call in to respond to an emergency they see come through the computer system, or they may be requested on the screener's end by University Behavioral Health Care.

Gov. Phil Murphy earmarked $10 million in this year's budget to launch the program statewide by the end of 2023, including partnerships with county sheriff's offices and NJ Transit.

'Police are onboard'

Promising numbers aside, Ray noted that the program not only has helped reduce violent altercations between law enforcement and residents in crisis, but so far appears to be a rare case of police reform with little pushback from police.

"Police are onboard with it because it helps them do their jobs better. So, at the end of the day, they don’t have to pay as much attention to concerns they don’t want to deal with," Ray said.

Carrillo said he has no complaints from his ARRIVE officer and likens it to any other infrastructure or resource that makes the job easier, from computer systems to police cruisers.

"He appreciates the way this program is going and sees the value in it," Carrillo said of his ARRIVE officer.

In six weeks, that officer, who has also been trained in crisis intervention, and the screener have responded to 17 calls, with only one other officer filling in on that shift about twice, Carrillo said, giving the program 19 reports in all, not counting the outreach work underway at Penn Station, a tactic the captain said he would like to expand to the city's downtown.

Altogether, the Attorney General's Office said, it had received more than 80 ARRIVE reports out of the city by the beginning of August.

Why New Jersey?

While a separate code of conduct for policing communities of color has long been part of the country's narrative, the issue gained steam for younger generations beginning with the response to the civilian shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012, followed by the death of Michael Brown at the hands of a white police officer in 2014.

After that, a battery of similar incidents unfolded in the public eye until the deadly choking of George Floyd in 2020 ignited a powder keg across the U.S. that has yet to burn out.

But in North Jersey, community advocates have lately focused on another tale of two departments: the tactics police use while responding to suspects in good mental health, and how they respond to those in crisis.

Similar to allegations of excessive force used against people of color, Paterson police drew scrutiny in 2012 and 2017 for the deaths of Saulo Del Rosario and Ramon Andrade, respectively. But it was with the 2019 death of Jameek Lowery while in police custody that the issue took a foothold in the national conversation.

More recently were the deaths of Bernard Placide Jr., who was shot by an Englewood police officer after a violent altercation with his family during what his mother has described as a "breakdown," and Najee Seabrooks, who was shot in his Paterson apartment after a four-hour standoff with law enforcement.

Although police video in each case shows the men acting aggressively or wrestling with officers, family and friends maintain that the decedents should have been treated as patients, not perpetrators, and that de-escalation would have avoided their fatal conclusions.

As of Friday, both deaths remain under investigation by the attorney general's Office of Public Integrity and Accountability.

A better way?

Derek Perkinson, New York City field director for the National Action Network, said the ARRIVE program "makes sense."

But Thomas, the Paterson Black Lives Matter organizer, would rather see a program that places health providers and anti-violence professionals at the forefront of calls like the one that ended with Seabrooks' death, rather than alongside police.

"That may work in some communities, but not all," he said of ARRIVE.

Rather than have police and EMTs or behavioral health experts respond to calls in tandem, Thomas believes the better course of action would be to have health professionals go in alone and be the ones to call law enforcement only if they deem it necessary.

"We recognize those situations will happen, where someone is aggressive and have a weapon and they may not respond to commands. But that does not mean that person should die," he said.

Thomas referred to the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Oregon, which sends a team of EMTs and "experienced crisis workers" to calls involving a person who is "intoxicated, mentally ill, or disoriented," according to the program's website.

The site says only 3% to 8% of those calls end with a referral to police and that some calls do involve a co-response involving law enforcement, but that a CAHOOTS team remains the primary responder for many calls involving an emotional disturbance.

However, the Eugene Police Department said it sends officers with CAHOOTS to respond to incidents that are violent at the outset, as was the case with Placide, who had stabbed his family members before police were called. Or when the subject is already said to be armed, as in the case of Seabrooks, who barricaded himself in his bathroom with knives and claimed to have a gun.

Nevertheless, advocates like Thomas insist that if the basis of the emergency is emotional, the response should be emotional.

"We need to be able to find pathways that realize a person in a mental health crisis or psychotic break may or may not have a weapon, and may be aggressive," Thomas said. "They may be agitated, but that does not mean that you match their aggression or frustration, because that ends with violence."

When Platkin assumed control of the Paterson Police Department in March, he announced that part of the initiative would include implementation of ARRIVE. But more than five months later, Thomas said, community organizers have yet to hear when the program will begin.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Mental health program for police sees success in Newark NJ