Baltimore County presenters map mental‑health crisis response across police, courts and jail and identify major capacity gaps

Baltimore County officials and police on the workgroup described a cross‑system “process map” for how people with behavioral‑health needs move from police contact through pretrial, the courts, the Baltimore County Detention Center (BCDC/BCBC) and back into the community, and identified key capacity shortfalls that they said are delaying care and contributing to repeated police involvement.

The presentation, led by county staff and Lieutenant Catherine Greenback, commander of the Behavioral Assessment Unit at the Baltimore County Police Department, traced three common police outcomes after a behavioral‑health call: resource referral, emergency petition and arrest. Staff and police said the county’s Mobile Crisis Team (MCT)—a co‑responder pair of a clinician and a trained officer—plays a central role but has limited clinician capacity and cannot meet all calls for service.

The mapping exercise matters because limited crisis capacity affects how long people wait for evaluation, whether they are released from hospital emergency departments, and whether they ultimately enter the criminal‑justice system. Workgroup members repeatedly described a shortage of short‑term crisis beds and limited inpatient capacity as a primary bottleneck that drives repeated emergency responses and jail…