In metro Atlanta, police come to terms with becoming default first responders for mental health crisis calls
Gwinnett County Police Sgt. David Smith had already spent a better part of his career working in the homicide and special victims units when he was asked to help start the Behavioral Health Unit (BHU) in 2021.
“My reputation has shown I really want to help people,” Smith said. “I have a 33-year-old brother with Down syndrome, so anybody with any type of disability, mental illness, anything is very important to me.”
The BHU consists of a single police officer and a licensed mental health clinician at each police precinct, who work side-by-side to try to help people get the mental health treatment and services they need before they get caught in the criminal justice system.
Cobb, DeKalb, Forsyth and Athens-Clarke counties have similar partnerships, but Gwinnett’s is unique because it serves one of the fastest-growing counties in Georgia and the most diverse in the Southeast.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Gwinnett’s population in 2023 was 31.3% Black, 23.8% Hispanic or Latino and 14.1% Asian.
Smith said that’s why it’s helpful that many in the BHU can speak a second language such as Spanish, Arabic and Farsi.
“I feel like we have a really good, solid team of people, who come from all walks of life and experiences that there’s always somebody that can help somebody,” Smith said.
On this day in early July, Smith was making his way to the Central Precinct in Duluth to check in on his team. He was driving an unmarked Ford Explorer and wearing a simple gray polo over a bulletproof vest and khakis, with his gun and handcuffs sat on his hips.
“You kind of never know what to expect,” Smith said. “Some days we are a little slower than others, where we get to where we just do a bunch of follow-up calls … and then there’s some days where it’s just nonstop where it’s just one mental health crisis after another.”
The back of Smith’s SUV has a cage like a traditional police vehicle, but it’s decked out with cameras that watch the front and back seats for people who may try to harm themselves.
“We try to not even handcuff them, especially if it’s voluntary just because we don’t want them to feel like they’re being punished, because they’re not,” Smith said.
One thing he says he’s realized over the years is that many mental health crisis calls come from two main demographics: juveniles, who are just starting to show signs of a possible mental health condition, and older adults with dementia.
“When that starts coming out, it’s the first time somebody’s dealt with it,” Smith said. “And families don’t always know what to expect. So, sometimes it comes in to the police department being called in as aggression.”
Smith said sometimes they are taken to jail, but the unit still touts a 98% jail diversion rate.
According to the county, Gwinnett’s behavioral health unit responded to 4,800 calls in 2023, more than half of which were related to a mental health crisis.
Officials expect the unit will handle a similar workload this year.
In June, the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners approved a $714,000 contract extension with View Point Health — a 3% increase from 2023.
Currently, Smith said the co-responder teams take turns covering an 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. shift seven days a week. He hopes all six will be available for around-the-clock coverage in the future.
Crisis response
Diane Dighiera, a licensed clinical social worker with View Point Health, moved to Georgia in 2022 after spending several years with the Los Angeles Police Department’s co-responder program called Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Team, or SMART.
She now works with Master Police Officer Kyle Howse at the Central Precinct, which is tied with the West Precinct in Norcross as the busiest in the county in terms of 911 and mental health calls.
“My philosophy is if you’re focused on what’s best for [the client], then you’re always going to have a good outcome,” Dighiera said. “You have to balance what they need, you know, the police department. They have calls pending, but I’m there to be for the client, advocate for them, and luckily because he’s with me and he’s a cop, then he can manage the police part and do what we think is best.”
Dighiera and Howse are getting ready to follow up with a U.S. Army Veteran, who they think could have been having a bipolar episode when they met him a few days ago.
“He had found out that he can’t go to his child’s baby shower, so he was a little bit upset about that,” Howse said. “He had some issues with paying some internet bills, so he was a little bit stressed out, and then his car wouldn’t start, so everything just kind of happened at once.”
After assessing him at the scene, Dighiera decided he didn’t meet the criteria to be taken to the hospital against his will. However, she managed to convince him to go for an elbow injury on his own, hoping he would also get help for his mental health while he was there.
WABE is not using the veteran’s name to protect his privacy.
“I’m doing a lot better,” the veteran said on the phone with Howse. “I had a couple days of sleep and taking care of myself. I’m back on my routine and trying to get there, you know?”
According to the county, 223 individuals were involuntarily committed to a hospital last year while 82 agreed to go on their own, like in the veteran’s case.
While the duo’s actions seem to have led to a good outcome this time, it’s not always like that.
Activists call for changes
Earlier this year, a retired nurse filed a federal lawsuit against Gwinnett County and one of its officers for the 2022 fatal police shooting of her son, Jonathan “Dani” Laubscher, who had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.
The lawsuit says his mom requested a mental health crisis unit but that police were dispatched instead.
The county is seeking to dismiss the case. However, it highlights what the Washington Post has been tracking, which is that one in every five people shot by police in the U.S. since 2015 was in the middle of a mental health crisis.
These deaths, along with pressure from activists like those with the Policing Alternatives and Diversion Initiative, or PAD, in Atlanta, have prompted cities across the country to change their approach to emergency calls by trading armed police officers with unarmed civilians who can help people find housing, jobs and substance use treatment.
A 2019 study in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law also acknowledges that while crisis intervention teams have helped more people access mental health services, they’ve failed in a fundamental goal: to deescalate and reduce violence.
Back at the department’s headquarters in Lawrenceville, Smith didn’t comment on the Laubscher case, but he says he has mixed feelings about the role police play in these tense situations.
“I still believe to an extent it’s not the police department’s job to handle mental illness,” Smith said. “We’re just the ones that are going to be called when you call 911, so we decided we can either get in front of it or we’re always going to be behind.”
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the Behavioral Health Unit was fully staffed in 2023 thanks to the contract extension. In fact, it was fully funded at the end of 2022. The story has been updated to simply state that the contract extension was approved in June.
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