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Briefs on Crisis Intervention: New Voices, New Models
From Pineville’s embedded clinician to Lansdale’s funding debate and Kuujjuaq’s mobile team, communities are reshaping crisis and co response in 2025.
Today’s Brief:
Briefs on Crisis Intervention
Pineville PD Enlists Mental-Health Pro to Join Officers on Patrol—Here’s Why It Matters
Paying for Support: Lansdale Weighs Bringing Mental-Health Co-Responder In-House in 2026
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Total Read Time: 3 minutes
👮 Crisis Intervention Briefs
A mobile crisis intervention team—pairing community social workers with police officers—began operations in Kuujjuaq on August 25 to respond to 911 calls involving mental-health crises, domestic violence, suicide risk, and youth concerns. Early results mirror success seen in Puvirnituq: in 2024, 576 of 595 such interventions were resolved without hospitalization or arrest.
The ADAMH Board recently honored first responders who successfully de-escalated a critical situation, crediting their crisis-intervention training for safely resolving the incident.
Fort Worth’s Mental Health Crisis Intervention Team, established in September 2017, continues to play a vital role in addressing mental-health emergencies and gun-violence incidents by deploying specially trained officers to handle such sensitive situations.
The Pineville Police Department has added a co-responder mental health clinician—Allison Pastirik—who’s now working alongside officers to address mental health calls. Drawing on her experience in crisis intervention and a background in social work, Pastirik helps de-escalate high-stress situations and offers resources even while off duty. She’s also collaborating with county services to connect unsheltered individuals with needed support and housing resources. Pastirik shared her passion stems from wanting to be a beacon of hope for people struggling with mental health and understands the darkness they may be facing. The town also provides a full list of crisis, drug, alcohol, and mental health resources on its official website.
Lansdale’s public safety committee is considering a contract extension to keep the mental health co-responder program active through the end of 2025, with discussions underway to potentially hire the position in-house starting in 2026. Estimates show bringing the role in-house for 2026 would cost around $106,000, slightly less than continuing through contractor Merakey at $110,000 annually. While the contract for the remainder of 2025 is moving forward, budget planning for 2026 is still unsettled and could affect decisions about staffing and resource allocation. The chief’s upcoming November departure further complicates how the budget and future staffing will be structured. No additional grant funding has been identified yet, but ongoing discussions and data gathering continue as the committee prepares for an eventual decision.
If we're serious about ending the overdose crisis, we must prepare for trauma the way we prepare for storms. That means funding long-term, culturally grounded behavioral health services and embedding mental health professionals into disaster response teams
— Island Press (@IslandPress)
6:01 PM • Aug 27, 2025
“What we really need are alternative community responders—not police, not fire.” – Crista Taylor, President and CEO, BHSB
Baltimore must invest in behavioral health crisis teams.
📖 Read more via @baltbeat.
— BHS Baltimore (@BHSBaltimore)
4:57 PM • Sep 4, 2025
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