Police Response to People with Mental Illnesses in a Major U.S. City: The Boston Experience with the Co-Responder Model

ABSTRACT

Like most major city police agencies, the Boston Police Department (BPD) serves a sizeable population of individuals with behavioral health challenges. In 2017, the BPD received a total of 681,546 calls for service; of those, 5,953 calls specifically involved people with mental illnesses. To better meet the needs of these individuals, the BPD has a strong history of working with the Boston Emergency Services Team (BEST) of the Boston Medical Center. This partnership resulted in the creation of the BPD’s co-response program, which was launched in January 2011 as a means to team Boston police officers with BEST clinicians. The goal of the program is to provide community-based psychiatric crisis services to stabilize nonviolent persons experiencing psychiatric emergencies, diverting these individuals from arrest and the criminal justice system when appropriate. In this article, we explore the development and implementation of the co-response model, both nationally and in Boston. Next, using quantitative co-responder data, we examine short-term outcomes of the BPD co-responder program. Finally, using qualitative data from officer interviews, we discuss the perspectives of police officers on the utility and effectiveness of the co-responder approach in Boston.

KEYWORDS:

• policing
• mental health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Total calls for service based on Boston Police Department computer-aided dispatch data.

2. Number of “EDP2” calls for service based on data collected by Boston EMS.

3. A few other clinicians were hired, but for various reasons—particularly lack of fit between the assigned districts and the clinicians’ personalities—they did not work out and were not on the job for very long.

4. Officers ride along with clinicians on a voluntary basis.

5. In 2017, the Boston City Council allocated permanent operating budget funding to the BPD to facilitate hiring more clinicians.

6. Interviews have resumed as part of the evaluation process.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by grant no. 2016-MO-BX-0009 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Office for Victims of Crime, and the Systemwide Mental Health Assessment Response Team Office. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.