(Source: MIRS.news, Published 05/29/2024) The officers in the Detroit Police Department's mental health department aren't your regular gun-toting, blue-uniformed cops. Instead, they're unarmed officers wearing khaki green uniforms.
Their disarming appearance is part of the point. They are brought into a situation to deescalate individuals in mental health crises.
Police Chief James White, who is also a licensed therapist with a master’s degree in counseling, asked for Mayor Mike Duggan's support in opening the department and Wednesday boasted its successes in a question-and-answer session with the Mayor at the Mackinac Policy Conference.
In one instance, the officer walked up to an individual and took a gun out of the man’s waistband, then walked him to the police car without his family and without needing to put him in handcuffs.
“We’re a new unit. We’re a different kind of police,” an officer told a woman holding a knife in February this year. “You sound intelligent and beautiful, and you deserve a chance.”
Duggan said there needs to be more mental health treatment centers, 72-hour psychiatric beds and long-term treatment beds.
Duggan said the money for these long-term treatment centers could come from the money spent imprisoning the 25 percent of Macomb County inmates that have been previously hospitalized for mental health issues or if the federal Medicaid Inmate Exclusion was eliminated, which prohibits federal funds being used for treating inmate mental health.
“In the last three or four years, we’ve seen more commitment from the Governor and the Legislature,” Duggan said, “but we’ve got so much more to go.”
