Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Co Responder Program topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Co-responder program pairs mental-health specialist with police to reduce arrests and repeat calls
Summary
Jen Farmrell told the council the Wisconsin Rapids–Southwood County co-responder program, funded by a Legacy Foundation grant, engaged 89 of 147 identified individuals in 2025 and made 109 community-resource referrals; she said the program diverts people in crisis from arrests and repeated emergency calls.
Jen Farmrell, the city’s co-responder embedded at the Wisconsin Rapids Police Department through Opportunity for Hope, told the council the program aims to give people experiencing mental-health crises a noncriminal pathway to care.
"Everybody who is having a mental-health crisis doesn't need to be handcuffed, put in the back of a squad car, and taken like they are a criminal," Farmrell said, describing the program’s incident-response and case-management roles. She said the position was seeded through conversations with local partners and supported by a three-year Legacy Foundation grant; services began in March 2025.
Farmrell summarized first-year data from March–November 2025: staff identified 147 individuals who qualified for outreach, produced 225 referrals, and engaged 89 people directly; co-responders provided 109 referrals to community resources and sometimes transported people to out-of-town treatment when needed.
She gave multiple examples of long-term follow-up, including a person with more than 30 combined emergency contacts who was ultimately transported to detox and has been "living in recovery" since Thanksgiving, and another individual who resisted law enforcement but calmed and accepted help when the co-responder arrived.
Farmrell said the program both reduces acute law-enforcement involvement and aims to lower repeat contacts. "By having a co-responder get involved with individuals... it helps prevent future engagement with law enforcement and reduce more calls with them," she said.
Council members thanked Farmrell and the partner agencies. City staff and Farmrell said the program coordinates with fire, EMS and the Wood County Sheriff’s Department and is collecting more data to measure impact on repeat behavioral-health calls and emergency detentions versus voluntary hospitalizations.
The council did not take any formal action at the presentation; Farmrell encouraged continued partnership-building and community education to expand the program’s reach.
