Iowa City Police Department Launches Game-Changing Crisis Co-Responder Team

When asked to do a job, most of the time in that job description is misc duties which means you might end up doing lots of things.  If you're at a job and someone leaves, the work still needs to be done and sometimes it's piled up on YOU! That's how it goes.

When you're a first responder, the same thing happens.  The workload of first responders gets piled on too.  Many moons ago I responded to a crisis call with a person that wanted to take their own life.  They had a gun and claimed they wanted to use it on themself.  The 911 call was a call for help.  Responding were Montgomery County Police and our Medic-299. Upon arrival, we staged until the MCPD gave us the go-ahead.  They took the gun from the gentleman and asked us to come in.  During our transport, he talked about what he was going through and it was a lot.   He was very kind and didn't want to hurt anyone, just himself.  We ended up transporting him to a psychiatric facility that specializes in the troubles he was dealing with.

Here is the issue, none of us were trained to do any of that.  Yes, the police handle weapons, and ambulances transport patients with issues.  Mental health is a whole different ball of wax that many times personnel may not be ready to handle.  Understanding and helping individuals who are in crisis takes specialized training and that can take years to complete and be competent at. So, asking first responders who are not trained, or meagerly trained is sometimes a tall order.

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Taking steps in the right direction is Iowa City Public Safety.  According to KCRG.com they've added the first crisis co-responder team.  The team is made up of a specially trained ICPD officer, Kristie Davis, and CommUnity Crisis Services Mental Health Liason Kelsie Tomlin.  Tomlin's expertise is helping people struggling with mental health and substance misuse.

They've instituted the team full-time after a successful partnership that began in February of 2021.