Northbrook Police join Cook County Sheriff in promising program
In essence, there is now a social worker in every police squad car in Northbrook.
A new partnership with the Cook County Sheriff's Office Treatment Response Team bolsters the Northbrook Police Department's 40-year history of handling individual crisis situations through its Counseling Services Unit.
“We really are lucky,” Northbrook Chief of Police Christopher Kennedy said of the plan.
Created on the direction of Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart to respond to mental health needs, the Co-Responder Virtual Assistance Program (CVAP) was first implemented in December 2020 to handle calls of potential suicide and other mental health scenarios in addition to substance abuse issues, all exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As Treatment Response Team (TRT) Director Elli Petacque Montgomery said: “We're not arresting our way out of this problem.”
“Law enforcement are not the people to be doing this, but historically we always have been,” said Dart, who noted that 40% to 50% of calls to Cook County Sheriff's Police for domestic incidents boil down to mental health issues.
“It was literally envisioning the next best thing to having a mental health professional show up with police to all these calls,” he said.
Under CVAP, responding officers use an iPad or tablet, squad phone or even a cellphone to link the subject, family or loved one to a TRT clinician available 24 hours a day.
“You're basically giving the police an opportunity to phone a friend. And that friend is a mental health professional,” Petacque Montgomery said.
“They give the tablet to the individual who wants to talk to the mental health professional, who can de-escalate, start offering options, work with the individual during the crisis and post-incident, without arrest,” she said.
In Northbrook's case, Cook County clinicians — on call outside of normal business hours and on weekends — will then refer the client to the Counseling Services Unit bright and early the next day.
“What's nice about this for Northbrook is they don't have to have a social worker leave their house at 2 a.m. and potentially go into a dangerous situation. The CVAP program allows for instantaneous connection to a mental health professional when the police are called out on a service call, a 911 call,” Petacque Montgomery said.
Northbrook, which over March 22-23 received CVAP training led by Cook County Police sergeant and drug interdiction specialist Efrain Mata, is the third suburb to join the program. Oak Lawn started it in July 2021, and as of March 21 its force had received 20 Zoom and phone calls, and remained actively engaged with all 20 clients.
Blue Island joined in October 2021. It has since received only one Zoom call, but staff is still engaged with that client.
After its own soft launch on Jan. 1, 2021, armed with 120 tablets Cook County Sheriff's Police through March 21 had facilitated 110 Zoom calls and 61 phone calls. Of those, 44 clients still receive services by the Treatment Response Team. A 24-hour line — 309-4ME-HELP (463-4357) — is given to current clients or others who may need real-time assistance.
“Do we provide crisis intervention? Yes,” said Nancy Vaccaro, director of the Northbrook Police Department's Counseling Services Unit. “But this will augment that in terms of maybe an ongoing conversation in the middle of the night or on the weekend or on a holiday that would require additional police services.
“We have three full-time clinicians that are extremely busy and have been for years and all through the pandemic,” Vaccaro said. “So to have nine more (TRT clinicians) and the chief to say, Here, can we add to your staff and it's not going to cost the village anything, and it could also be by Zoom, by call, by settling something down, allowing the officers to go to the next call and free them up? That's a benefit for all of us.”
The Cook County Sheriff's office said there is a “minimal financial impact.”
During the March 23 training in Northbrook, Mata noted an interesting case. Responding to a domestic dispute between a parent and child, once police connected the youth to a TRT clinician by something comfortable and familiar — an electronic device — she settled down and made progress.
“It was much easier for her to talk to the tablet,” Mata said. “And we see, hey, we're on to something that's going to assist our officers.”
Also at that training, CVAP program manager Froilan Sanchez recalled a suicide negotiation. The troubled person went into a room and locked the door. Officers slipped a tablet through a window, conversation ensued, and the person came back out of the room.
Other people, “frequent flyers,” routinely call police with problems that require neither arrest nor hospitalization. When connected to a clinician with whom they feel safe, they tend to stop calling.
Sgt. Jon Salmi, head of the Northbrook Police Crisis Intervention Team (Kennedy said about half the department is trained in crisis intervention), said nationally 10% of 911 calls involve a mental health crisis. Salmi said it's about the same in Northbrook, and rising.
Officers certainly retain the ability to arrest, but CVAP's ability to provide options has great practical application, Salmi thought. Sanchez said the program also enhances the relationship between police and the community.
“I think it's going to be very useful,” Salmi said.
Police have been trained to take criminals off the street. Clinicians deal with mental health and substance abuse. This partnership between Northbrook and Cook County will help both do their jobs.
“The cornerstone is service,” Kennedy said. “You can think, well, this is drastically different. Really, it's not. It's understanding environment, it's giving people a window to speak and be heard — and sure, to make policemen's lives safer and easier, too.”