St. Louis: Crisis Response Unit (CRU)

Location

• City: St. Louis, Missouri (CRU)
• Population Size: 300,576
• Jurisdiction Size: 61.91 sq miles

Intercept

• 1 – CIT
• 1 – CRU co-responders

CIT (Crisis Intervention Training) Requirements

• Have CIT, state-run (officers are all CIT trained)
• Have a CIT statewide database that officers can check for treatment referrals (where drop-offs were made)

Model Components

• Area of Jurisdiction
  • Moving to citywide
• Staffing Structure
  • 8 co-responder teams are assigned 8 officers to join with clinicians
  • Have peers performing follow-ups and live handoffs on the scene from officer/clinician to peer support (through facetime)
  • CRU Team (Crisis Response Unit) EMS can request them
  • Also have a new call diversion program
  • Moving to city-wide and are doing 9 AM-5 PM and 3 PM to 11 PM (overlap is due to large call volumes at that me)
  • A BHR (Behavioral Health Response organization) clinician is stationed at the jail for bookings. If the person is arrested following a co-responder interaction and transported, the information can be seen by the clinician at the jail
• Dispatch Structure
  • Co-response, secondary response, and at the moment response – serving as a backup to patrol. They intending to open to primary response and self-initiated but don’t want to limit types of calls.
  • 911 is owned by Police Department – Police decide if police are needed, if they are not, they are transferred to EMS. If transferred to BHR they call back into 911 to provide a disposition and close the loop on the call
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Operating Structure

• • Operations
    • Everything is done through Behavioral Health Response org (all of their technology/information sharing)
  • Funding Mechanism: All covered under city budget ($1.1 million)
  • MOUs/Contracting
    • Contracted with BHR (Behavioral Health Response)- They run everything (crisis line, MH counseling, resources).
    • Clinicians are hired through BHR
  • Supplies/Equipment
    • Co-responders- Officers are currently wearing police uniforms but are moving towards no uniforms
    • Use marked cars because police are concerned about the level of violence for some of these calls

Data Systems & Collection

• Data Systems:
  • BHR data platform is used for everything- allows for data sharing between clinicians
  • Have a CIT statewide database that officers can check for treatment referrals (where drop-offs were made)
• Data Collection:
  • They plan to track individuals long-term post-intervention, but not sure how long