Justice &
health
Taking a Snapshot of Multi-Disciplinary Response Teams in Texas
The Meadows Institute is part of a national effort to transform mental health emergency response and bring that transformation to scale in select communities across Texas and the United States. This transformation centers on the Multi-Disciplinary Response Team (MDRT) model for handling calls to the 9-1-1 call center, navigating a path between an all-civilian approach and a traditional law enforcement co-responder approach.
With the support of The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Institute in 2021 created a snapshot of the MDRT teams in Texas, with an eye toward the future of the effort in the years ahead.
Across Texas in 2021, there were multiple communities in various stages of MDRT implementation, including Dallas, Abilene, and Bexar County. It is expected that there will be at least seven more teams operating in communities by the end of 2022, including in Galveston and San Antonio.
The first of these initiatives, RIGHT Care (Rapid Integrated Group Healthcare Team) in Dallas, launched in 2018 as a South Dallas pilot program—a part of the W. W. Caruth, Jr. Fund’s Dallas County Smart Justice Project. The teams consist of a clinician, a paramedic, and a law enforcement officer. As of the end of 2021, RIGHT Care has seven full multi-disciplinary response teams and two roving units operating throughout the city. These teams respond to all mental health emergency calls in their districts, including calls referencing a potential risk to public safety.
In Abilene, the first MDRT—called a Community Response Team—began operating in June 2019, and a second team launched in January 2020. Abilene, a more suburban area, utilizes a virtual clinician in the 9-1-1 dispatch center to triage behavioral health calls through the crisis line of the local mental health center, the Betty Hardwick Center. This model serves as an example for mid- and small-sized communities across the state.
3,000
RIGHT Care responses resulted in more than 800 hospital diversions and 350 jail diversions, while serving more than 1,700 unique clients. Less than 4% ended up in jail, half of whom were required to do so under outstanding arrest warrants predating RIGHT Care contact.
1,651
In 2020, Abilene’s Community Response Team responded to 1,651 mental health calls. Those responses resulted in 58 hospital diversions and 33 jail diversions.
We first implemented RIGHT Care as a pilot in the South Central Patrol Division in 2018 and, since then, the number of emergency detentions in that area of the city has decreased by 41%. During that same period, we’ve seen a 33% reduction in the area for 9-1-1 calls related to mental health.
— Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson
The fact of the matter is, many people—particularly in this COVID-19 pandemic—have been through a lot of isolation, a lot of financial hardship, and a lot of stressors and strains that are much worse than they might otherwise be. When somebody suffers from a mental health crisis, the last thing you want to do is slap handcuffs on them.
— U.S. Senator John Cornyn
Caruth Police Institute Named an ABLE Center of Excellence
ABLE (which stands for Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement) is a program for police and other law enforcement officers—at all experience levels or ranks—that prepares them to successfully intervene with colleagues when necessary to prevent them from causing harm or making life-changing mistakes.
ABLE was established by Georgetown Law’s Center for Innovations in Community Safety, formerly the Innovative Policing Program (IPP). In 2021, the Caruth Police Institute (CPI) at the University of North Texas at Dallas, an established Meadows Institute partner, was named an ABLE Center of Excellence. Meadows Senior Vice President of Health and Public Safety, B.J. Wagner, was appointed as the inaugural Executive Director of the Texas ABLE Center of Excellence (ACE).
As part of the ABLE program, ABLE National hosts train-the-trainer sessions for up to 90 Texas instructors, provides technical assistance and support, and conducts a perception survey to measure the training’s effectiveness.
The Texas ACE conducts its own training course for Texas law enforcement agencies, promotes the program, provides implementation technical assistance and support, and recruits law enforcement agencies to participate.
The goal of ABLE is to empower officers to prevent excessive use of force incidents before they happen, resulting in better outcomes and more trust and faith in law enforcement. Further, ABLE also promotes better mental health for officers at all levels by fostering peer-to-peer projects in law enforcement agencies across the country. The Texas ACE works closely with the Texas Law Enforcement Peer Network (TLEPN), which is also based at CPI.
In June, the Dallas Police Department became the first department in a major city in Texas to fully embrace the ABLE program. By the end of 2021, the Texas ACE had recruited seven of the nine major city police departments in Texas, including our capital city of Austin, and 35 departments statewide, has trained 11% of the Texas law enforcement workforce, and provided an ABLE ready police workforce for 8 million Texans.