Collaboration with local mental health service providers is essential, Tulsa police officers told lawmakers in the Oklahoma House of Representatives late Thursday.
“A Tulsa police officer is not always the best person to be responding,” Tulsa Police Department Deputy Chief of Operations Mark Wollmershauser said.
Wollmershauser joined Lt. Amber McCarty, who was called to testify in a select committee investigation into the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. The department is facing intense scrutiny for budget shortfalls, contract cancellations and a request for last-minute appropriations from the legislature.
Effects of the chaos have been felt throughout the state, especially in the Tulsa area, where three service providers received unexplained notices their contracts with the department would be cancelled.
“Our training is short of none across this country,” Wollmershauser said. “We make sure that we are presenting critical thinking skills of how we respond to the citizens in our area.”
Still, Wollmershauser said, officers are often not as well equipped to handle mental health crises as health care clinicians.
Over the last 15 years, the Tulsa Police Department established relationships with Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, or CCBHCs, which are partially funded by the state’s mental health agency.
“It's through this approach, this process,” he said, “that we think we are doing a much better job of serving the citizens we're sworn to protect.”
In conjunction with Family & Children’s Services, the Tulsa Police Department has established a co-response system comprising three different teams of officers, clinicians and firefighters.
“Last year alone, we had 13,500 mental health calls that did not require a law enforcement response,” McCarty said. “That would have been better handled by mental health professional triage, so that they could get follow-up treatment, they could get connected to resources, talk down from the ledge when they were suicidal and get the help that they need.”
She said police respond to mental health calls every day, especially because anything, from domestic violence to burglaries, can be caused by underlying mental health conditions.
McCarty said the police department also partners with GRAND Mental Health for its recovery centers. Losing the option to bring people there, she said, would set Tulsa back “decades.”
“We need their assistance,” McCarty said. “This is not a law enforcement solvable problem.”
The officers told lawmakers, so far, they have not seen any disruption in services. The state mental health agency rescinded its funding cut to the co-response program shortly after it was issued. It also said funding for Tulsa’s CCBHCs will be extended through the end of the year, despite earlier reports of cancellation.
McCarty and Wollmershauser’s testimonies followed an impassioned speech from Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler – making many of the same points – and a two-hour interrogation of Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Commissioner Allie Friesen.
The select committee will meet again next week. Lawmakers continue to parse through issues at the department and consider whether to appropriate more funds to its leadership.
