BRATTLEBORO — Lt. Jeremy Evans never imagined how much of his career would include supporting people struggling with mental-health issues.
One night after an emotional call to the Brattleboro Police Department of a possible suicide - which later proved false - the 17-year veteran of the BPD smiled and shook his head.
Evans said that what he first thought policing was and what he found it actually it is are “two entirely different things.”
“We deal with a lot of social concerns,” said Evans, one of the first to receive the first Team Two Frank Silfies Award, in conjunction with Christi Sousie, a Health Care and Rehabilitation Services (HCRS) crisis worker in Windham County.
The award is presented to a law-enforcement officer and a mental-health-crisis clinician who exemplify a collaborative response to citizens dealing with mental health crises. Evans and Sousie will be presented with their awards on Oct. 6 at the Department of Mental Health (DMH) Mental Health conference at Lake Morey in Fairlee.
Kate Lamphere, director of emergency services, nominated Sousie who has worked with HCRS for three years, mostly in Windham County.
“I think she just has a great attitude,” Lamphere said.
Sousie's enthusiasm and willingness to foster relationships with members of law enforcement has helped the relatively new, three-year, collaboration operate more smoothly, Lamphere said.
Sousie recognized the benefits of collaborating with law enforcement from the start and persuaded coworkers to work with the program, Lamphere said.
According to Lamphere, Sousie went above and beyond in reaching out to the police, troopers, and sheriffs she works with, including participating in ride-alongs.
Officers have told Lamphere that Sousie's assistance has meant many people with mental health issues have avoided jail or court. Instead, they receive the services they need.
This allows law enforcement to focus on safety, Lamphere said. “It takes the social working out of policing.”
Sousie can conduct a mental health screening in a person's home where they feel comfortable, she said.
“[Sousie] is very skillful at doing that,” Lamphere said.
To get similar results, law enforcement must take people to an emergency room, she said, adding this can feel invasive and scary.
Many of the calls Sousie responds to involve people “who are having trouble keeping themselves safe,” due to a mental health issue or threat of suicide, Lamphere said.
Collaborating with agencies like HCRS that specialize in mental health issues ensures people who need help will get it quickly, Evans said.
“Many of the calls police officers respond to involve non-criminal matters,” Evans said. “But these issues fall outside the general capacity of the police, however, and are best handled by directing people to the proper social services.
“By getting these people in touch with the correct services, we both help them to satisfy their needs and reduce the amount of calls we may need to respond to in the future, since those needs are being satisfied by other social-service providers.”
The award is named in honor of Frank Silfies, a former emergency services director at HCRS, who died earlier this year.
Silfies served on the original steering committee that designed the curriculum for Team Two, a program that trains law-enforcement officers and mental-health-crisis clinicians to collaborate on responses to a mental-health crisis.
Evans said he hasn't taken the Team Two training, but became interested in mental-health issues while earning his undergraduate degree.
He said he was “ignorant” of mental-health issues until then.
“It really opened my eyes a lot to the why of some of the things we deal with,” Evans said.
Evans had debated studying psychology but eventually pursued criminal justice, earning a Master's degree in the field.
“But it does make you feel good” to assist those who are struggling or get them to someone who can connect them to services, he said.
Leadership by example
Police Chief Michael Fitzgerald nominated Evans.
The mindset of his officers has changed in part because of Evans' efforts, Fitzgerald said, praising Evans for showing “leadership by example.”
Younger officers saw how Evans responded to people in crisis, they witnessed him treating the issue as a priority, and they emulated his work, Fitzgerald continued.
Evans helped shift how the department responds to calls involving people in crisis, Fitzgerald said.
Taking a role in the community's social issues was not always a priority, he said, but the BPD has made community policing a priority in recent years.
Evans took an active role in building a working relationship between the officers and HCRS, Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald wrote in a press release, “Lt. Evans motivated officers on his shift and in the department as a whole to work to integrate [the police social worker] into their daily duties. He encouraged ride-alongs, referrals, casual conversations, and the other smaller pieces that are needed to develop trust and reliance in work relationships.
“Over time his efforts took on a momentum of their own and have become a part of the BPD culture. Lt. Evans' work has resulted in a top-down cultural change in the relationship between the police social worker and duty shift patrol officers.”
HCRS has partnered with the department for approximately nine years, providing mental-health social workers, he said.
The public might assume the BPD deals only with crime, but most of the calls to the department have nothing to do with what's illegal under Vermont's statutes, Fitzgerald said.
But for a long time, he said, the police academy taught only laws, procedures, and strategies for how to prepare a case. Helping someone dealing with a mental-health crisis did not appear in the curriculum.
It's not a crime to have a mental health issue, or to “act strange,” Fitzgerald said.
Under a strict law-enforcement model - not that the BPD would ever do this, Fitzgerald stressed - if police officers responded to a call where there was no crime, they would just leave.
That strict model doesn't work, Fitzgerald said: crime or no, a person needs help.
And police can provide that help in a number of ways, including connecting the caller with someone who can screen for mental-health problems, find food resources, or apply for other services.
“Just because it's not a crime doesn't mean we can't do anything,” Fitzgerald said.
Officers work closely with an in-house social worker from HCRS, Kristin Neuf, he said.
“She's good people,” said Fitzgerald.
By the time officers are called to assist someone dealing with mental-health issues, a situation has hit crisis levels, Fitzgerald said: “It's already reached an apex.”
If someone from the department walks away, Fitzgerald said that the department will only receive another more serious call for the same person.
It's better to connect someone with services sooner rather than later, he said.
Fitzgerald hasn't seen an increase in the number of calls related to people experiencing a mental-health crisis.
“The need was always there,” he said. Mental health cross references with a multitude of social struggles like addiction, homelessness, or even crime.
“It really crosses all boundaries,” he said.
The difference, Fitzgerald noted, lies in how the department responds to the calls.
How it began
Team Two originated with the Vermont Department of Mental Health (DMH) in 2013, said Kristin Chandler, coordinator of the program.
The scenario-based training ensures that officers and crisis workers are in sync when responding to calls involving mental-health issues, Chandler said. Common vocabulary and responses for the officers and crisis workers involves three components: safety, clinical, and legal.
When police and mental-health workers collaborate, they can often avoid automatically arresting or hospitalizing a person, she said.
Instead, the person in crisis finds safety and is connected with needed services.
A few municipalities of varying sizes have adopted the program, Chandler said.
So far, 160 people have gone through the program. Team Two, a contracted program with DMH administered by the Vermont Care Partners, will hold eight more trainings between now and July 2016.
According to Chandler, the idea for the program started with Mary Moulton, the former deputy commissioner of DMH, who later led the department on an interim basis. Moulton asked Chandler, an assistant attorney general, to develop a statewide program.
Moulton is now the executive director of the Washington County Mental Health Services, Inc., where she witnessed strong collaborations between police and mental-health professionals, said Chandler.
Chandler, along with Silfies, launched a task force that included people from the health department, family members, peers, and workers from other state agencies.
Nominations for a law-enforcement officer and a mental-health-crisis worker to receive the award were solicited from police chiefs, sheriffs, state police barracks commanders, and emergency-services directors.
The Team Two Steering Committee reviewed the nominations and selected the two recipients.
For his part, Evans shrugs off his chief's praise. In his opinion, the entire department deserves credit for finding new ways of responding to the community's needs.
“I don't think it is something you could do alone,” he said. “It has to be a department-wide move.”