She goes to police calls in a Prius. Its part of a new approach to mental health emergencies

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Briana Fair, a mental health clinician with the San Mateo Police Department, received a dozen voicemails from the same distressed caller over a single weekend this month.She knew the voice.

It was her client, saying that a celebrity has been hacking her phone, that she needed help moving into a different apartment and why was the process taking so long?“Normally, she won’t call like this unless she’s starting to get towards a crisis,” Fair said.If Fair keeps her close, it will ensure she is connected with the services she needs and prevent her from calling 911 dispatch, reducing the possibility of a full-blown crisis involving officers or unnecessary hospitalizations.“I fill in the gaps,” said Fair.“It’s just a matter of getting her the right supports.”It’s working, according to a new study of San Mateo County’s efforts from Stanford’s John W.

Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, which found that pairing law enforcement officers with mental health clinicians reduces the likelihood of costlier and more intrusive interventions.Fair was hired four years ago as part of a program to pilot this approach, also known as a “co-responder model,” across San Mateo County’s four largest cities — Daly City, San Mateo, Redwood City and South San Francisco.The idea was to free up police officers and provide alternatives to incarceration and hospital emergency rooms for people in a mental health crisis.

Since then, the model has rolled out to police departments in nearly every city in the county.Researchers behind the Stanford study found the co-responder model decreased involuntary psychiatric holds by approximately 17% and reduced the likelihood of future mental health 911 calls among the four pilot cities.The hold allows a hospital to keep someone for up to 72 hours to determine if they are a danger to themselves or others.

Given the reduction of r...