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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 these calls – and risking the potential that the encounter could escalate into a violent one, as was the case in the death of Daniel Prude in Rochester last year – a two-person team of crisis intervention counselors and social workers would show up with the aim of de-escalating, assessing what level of care the person in crisis needed and helping to connect the person to the relevant resources, such as a mental health urgent care center.
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 the request of law enforcement, after the scene is stabilized, to do in-field assessments and connect people with services. Of the 9,900 mental health crisis calls to Monroe County 911 in 2020, FIT personnel responded to 1,150, officials said, generating 15,600 contacts to service agencies.
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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
Rochester Police and Monroe County prepare for expected changes in Forensic Intervention Team
President of the Police Union welcomes changes but calls for a seat at the table