SOCORRO, TEXAS – On October 6, 2021, the City of Socorro was awarded $204,000.00 in federal grant funding from the US Department of Justice COPS Community Policing Development for the Socorro Police Department Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Pilot Program. The SPD CIT program will be the first ever crisis intervention team deployed in Socorro, Texas and will be responding to 911 calls for service involving individuals suffering from a mental health crisis or special needs individuals. The crisis intervention team will be made up of an SPD officer and a qualified mental health professional who will be deployed into the community to provide mental health and social service resources during crisis calls for service with the goal of reducing the number of individuals with mental health challenges that enter into the criminal justice system.
The Socorro Police Department fully believes in a community policing model of intervention, wherein community members and police officers work together to identify problems, develop solutions, and implement change. The SPD CIT Pilot Program is an example of one way that the SPD plans to implement this community policing model.
The Socorro Police Department will be making a conscious effort to help the citizens of Socorro who are in need of mental health resources and special needs assistance (?). In over 2,700 communities nationwide, Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) programs create connections between law enforcement, mental health providers, hospital emergency services and individuals with mental illness and their families. Through collaborative community partnerships and intensive training, CIT improves communication, identifies mental health resources for those in crisis and ensures officer and community safety. Not only can CIT programs bring community leaders together, they can also help keep people with mental illness out of jail and in treatment, on the road to recovery. That’s because diversion programs like CIT reduce arrests of people with mental illness while simultaneously increasing the likelihood that individuals will receive mental health services. CIT programs also:
- Give police officers more tools to do their job safely and effectively. Research shows that CIT is associated with improved officer attitude and knowledge about mental illness. In Memphis, for example, CIT resulted in an 80% reduction of officer injuries during mental health crisis calls.
- Keep law enforcement’s focus on crime. Some communities have found that CIT has reduced the time officers spend responding to a mental health call. This puts officers back into the community more quickly.
- Produce cost savings. It’s difficult to estimate exactly how much diversion programs can save communities. But incarceration is costly compared to community-based treatment. For example in Detroit an inmate with mental illness in jail costs $31,000 a year, while community-based mental health treatment costs only $10,000 a year.
The City of Socorro and the Socorro Police Department are excited to establish the first CIT grant program and hope to continue to serve the Socorro community through this community policing initiative.