This week's roundup highlights crisis response teams gaining recognition and resources, from Scranton officer Nick Philbin earning a CIT Challenge Coin and Huntington's City Council approving a new Ford Expedition for its Crisis Intervention Team, to Omaha's "Frank Unit" co-responders each fielding 20-30 mental health calls a month with possible overnight expansion on the table, and Cambridge, Maryland preparing to launch its first co-responder program this August in partnership with the Affiliated Sante Group.

Scranton police officer Nick Philbin, a member of the Crisis Intervention Team, received the NAMI/NEPA CIT Challenge Coin for his empathetic handling of mental health crisis calls.

Huntington, WV's City Council approved buying a Ford Expedition for the police department's Crisis Intervention Team, which pairs an officer with a healthcare professional to respond to mental health crises.

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Let’s image a 34 year old army veteran named Marcus.

Marcus calls 911 on the weekend at 2 a.m., agitated and disoriented. The officers who respond don't know he has PTSD. They don't know he's been seeing a VA behavioral health counsellor for six months. They don't even know he stopped taking his medication three days ago.

That information lives in a system they can't access. So Marcus ends up in handcuffs. Then a cell. Then a courtroom.

And his counsellors only find out on Monday morning...

This is what happens when the people trying to help can't talk to each other.

With Julota, Marcus's care team can see what they need to see, when they need to see it. The next time he calls at 2 a.m., the responding officer knows. The co-responder knows. And instead of a cell, Marcus gets a callback from his counsellor by morning.

Same person. Same call. Completely different outcome.

That's one of the abilities Julota gives your program.

Omaha police field roughly 43 mental health calls a day, and the department's seven-person "Frank Unit," a co-responder team operating since 2018, each handles 20-30 of those calls monthly. Co-responder Hannah Dougherty said most calls end peacefully through communication and empathy, followed by safety planning or connecting individuals to mental health providers. The unit also helps train officers, including a customized version of Crisis Intervention Training called CRIT. Currently the team only operates weekdays from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., but Omaha's mayor has proposed a budget adding seven new positions to the police department that could expand coverage, potentially to overnight shifts.

The Cambridge, Maryland police department is launching a co-responder program this summer, pairing officers with mental health clinicians from the Affiliated Sante Group, one of the first such efforts on the Eastern Shore. Police Chief Justin Todd said the partnership will help connect people in crisis, including those who are unhoused or involved in domestic or child-related situations, with proper mental health resources. Sante Group's Tina Brown said the goal is to divert people from hospitalization and incarceration, drawing on a similar program the group has run in Baltimore for nearly 20 years. Chief Todd noted a significant share of the department's calls are mental health related, making this a potentially major benefit for the city. The program is set to officially launch in August.