Houston Police outline mental‑health response: co‑responder teams, outreach and training credited with fewer visible encampments

The Houston Police Department’s Mental Health Division told the City Council Public Safety Committee that it uses co‑responder teams, targeted outreach and annual crisis‑intervention training to respond to mental‑health crises without defaulting to arrest.

"Neither mental illness nor homelessness are crimes," said Jessica Anderson, executive assistant chief over strategic operations. Anderson introduced Captain Isaac Duplishane, who described the division’s history, operations and partnerships with the Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD.

The division traces its partnership with the Harris Center to 1991 and said it began broad training of officers in the early 1990s. Captain Duplishane said more than 80% of HPD officers are crisis‑intervention‑trained and that the department requires annual recertification for those classes.

The division’s highest‑level response is a Crisis Intervention Response Team, a co‑responder model that pairs an HPD officer with a Harris Center clinician. "Sometimes our mental‑health consumers deal better with clinicians. Sometimes they deal better with…