Forensic Intervention News Today

"Mental illness is not a crime, its a medical condition," one retired sergeant from the Rochester Police Department told Newsweek.

SHARE: When officers from the Rochester Police Department arrived on the scene of a family dispute involving a 9-year-old girl in emotional distress in January, a brand-new tool was at the city’s disposal: Rochester’s new Person in Crisis team. Launched earlier that month, the PIC team was created as an alternative response to mental health, substance abuse and other emergency calls that would normally involve police or paramedics. Instead of police officers being the first responders to th...

Monroe County will nearly triple the size of its mental health crisis response team over the next 90 days, County Executive  Executive Adam Bello announced Tuesday. The move from 10 full-time equivalent positions to 28 comes one month after the team similarly doubled in size from FTEs. Bello made the announcement hours before a scheduled special hearing of the Monroe County Legislature focused on "deficiencies" in utilization and deployment of the Forensic Intervention Team. FIT responds at t...

SHARE There is a call for a hearing in the Monroe County Legislature to address the status of the FIT team. Republican-sponsored legislation is asking for the hearing to take place next week to address any deficiencies in the utilization and deployment of the Forensic Intervention Team. Events over the last year in our area are shedding more light on police responses to mental health-related calls and on the need for more help when dealing with these types of cases. What You Need To Know Roches...

FILE PHOTO Monroe County Executive Adam Bello. A federal grant will allow the county to expand its Forensic Intervention Team, a mental health intervention program, so that it operates around the clock. The Forensic Intervention Team pairs county mental health clinicians with police officers responding to calls in which a person is experiencing a crisis. The co...