Lee's Summit describes co‑responder program pairing officers and mental‑health professionals
Summary
Police and behavioral‑health staff described a co‑responder program in which licensed mental‑health professionals respond with specially trained officers to crisis calls to deescalate scenes, connect people to services and divert them from emergency rooms and jails.
Lee's Summit police and behavioral health staff outlined the city's co‑responder model for crisis response: officers trained in crisis intervention accompany licensed mental‑health professionals (corresponders) to scenes so residents in crisis can be linked with services and diverted from jails or emergency departments. A staff member explained how callers can request a corresponder when they call 911.
One corresponder introduced herself on the record: "My name's Allison. I'm a mental health professional. I'm here to help you. I'm not here to take you to jail or arrest you," she said. The program's goals include safety planning, connection to ongoing services, and reducing unnecessary emergency‑room transports; staff also reported rising mental‑health‑related calls in recent years (from 722 in 2020 to 1,479 in 2022), reflecting growing demand for such responses.
AI generated
The text on this page is AI generated. Summaries, highlights, analysis, and video transcripts are all produced from the original source material.
AI can make mistakes, so if you spot one, and we will fix it for everyone.
Note: the source content is unaltered by us. Any content source we link to, be it a video, an audio recording, or a document, is presented exactly as its publisher released it. That publisher is usually a government body, sometimes an individual official or another organisation.
