Rockford proclaims National Co-Responder and Crisis Responder Week; team highlights low criminal-justice involvement

Mayor Thomas P. Maximer read a proclamation at the Sept. 15 council meeting declaring the week of Sept. 15, 2025, National Co-Responder and Crisis Responder Week in Rockford and invited co-responder team members to speak about their work.

A co-responder team representative thanked the mayor and the council and credited Winnebago County Community Mental Health Board sales-tax funding for sustaining the program. The representative said, citing the team’s internal reporting period covering the latter half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, the team served “16 10 unduplicated individuals” and that “only 3.5 percent ended up becoming involved in the criminal justice system,” adding the program’s goal is to keep that number below 5 percent.

The proclamation text, as read by the mayor, named participating agencies and partners, including the Rockford Police Department, Loves Park Police Department, the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office and Rose Grama Behavioral Health, and cited the Winnebago County Community Mental Health Board half-cent sales tax as an important funding source.

The co-responder representative described the team as an interagency collaboration that pairs law enforcement officers with behavioral-health professionals to respond to mental-health and substance-use crises with the stated aim of linking people to services and reducing more intrusive outcomes such as incarceration or emergency-room visits.

The council and the team announced a public “Coffee with a Co-responder” outreach event on Wednesday, Sept. 17, at 3885 Perryville from 8 to 10 a.m., where residents can meet co-responders and ask questions about their work.

Why it matters: The proclamation recognizes a cross-jurisdictional crisis-response approach that, according to the team’s reported figures, appears to have kept justice-system involvement low among the people they served. Funding and interagency coordination will determine whether the program can maintain or expand services.

Provenance: The proclamation was read by Mayor Maximer during the meeting; the team representative’s remarks and the event announcement occurred immediately afterward.