Nationwide, somewhere between 10-20% of emergency calls to police involve individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. Some of those calls end tragically, as was the case in the 2021 shooting death of Christian Glass, 22, in Clear Creek County. Six officers who responded to Glass’s 911 call have been criminally charged with “failure to intervene” as the situation escalated, ending with Glass being fatally shot five times in the chest. He’d called because his car was stuck on a rock. His family will receive $19 million — the largest known law enforcement settlement in state history — in a civil case that closed in May 2023.
Rio Blanco County Sheriff Anthony Mazzola is aware of the inherent risks for law enforcement when responding to situations involving mental health crises. Officers are trained in basic de-escalation techniques as part of their Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) certification, but they aren’t qualified mental health care providers.
While attending a convention, Mazzola met Charlie Davis, the founder of Co-responder Consulting. Davis is an emergency mental health care provider with more than 30 years of experience in the field. He designed and implemented Boulder County’s Project EDGE program in 2014, an early diversion program offering mental health treatment rather than jail when an individual’s charges were a result of behavioral health issues. Davis formed Co-responder Consulting in 2017.
“The perfect program is when the officer and mental health crisis team work together to respond to an incident. Once the scene is safe, law enforcement can leave and the mental health worker takes over,” Mazzola said. “That gets officers back on the road and keeps people out of the criminal justice system.” In some counties and communities, these co-responder programs happen in person, with trained mental health providers arriving alongside or shortly after law enforcement responds to a call for help.
A lack of staffing, funding and available resources, particularly in rural areas that are already struggling to find mental health providers and hospitals, limits access to co-responder programs in many areas.
“He [Davis] wanted to help rural communities and we came up with an idea,” Mazzola said. Instead of having a live mental health provider, let’s use technology and have a virtual or telehealth plan available 24-7.”
When contacted by local law enforcement on a call, Davis, appearing virtually by phone or on a tablet, is put in contact with the individual in crisis. He talks to them, then comes up with a safety plan and arranges for follow-up care.
Legislation has tried to keep individuals having mental health issues out of the judicial system and out of county jails when an arrest is not warranted, but in many communities, there’s nowhere else for them to go.
“Rangely District Hospital and Pioneers Medical Center are the only options for mental health crisis care in Rio Blanco County. We have to take them to the nearest facility if there’s not an arrest,” Mazzola explained. This can mean an officer has to stay in the emergency room with the individual until a bed opens up at WestSprings, the only mental health hospital on the Western Slope. For understaffed law enforcement agencies and small hospitals, this creates a problem.
Mazzola pursued and received a $212K state grant to pay for Co-responder Consulting’s services in Rio Blanco County for 18 months. “It gets the cops back on the street, alleviates some issues with the hospitals, and keeps non-threatening people out of the criminal justice system,” he said.
Recently, Davis got three calls from Rio Blanco County in one week. On average, his services are needed once or twice a month, but he is on-call as needed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Meeker Police Department and the Moffat County Sheriff’s Office have also used the co-responder service. Davis comes to RBC regularly to debrief officers and answer questions.
The grant funding for the co-responder will be exhausted in June of 2024.
That’s what Dan Conrado, a fifth-generation Meeker resident and co-owner of Meeker Sand & Gravel, heard while listening to a county budget work session online last month.
In 2009, the Conrado family established a donor-advised fund administered through the Western Colorado Community Foundation. Since its inception, $152K has been donated to local organizations in Rio Blanco County.
“When Sheriff Mazzola spoke of the shortfall next year for the co-responder program and the dire need our community has, it resonated with me. I sent copies of the meeting to my sister Katie and parents, asking if they’d entertain this as a donation for this year. Immediately the answer was yes, and the full funding of the shortfall.”
Conrado contacted Mazzola to let him know the family’s decision.
“Meeker and NW Colorado lacks adequate mental health resources,” Conrado said via email. “I appreciate the Herald Times spotlighting this issue over the past few years. And we know from local surveys, mental health is the most important issue for our community. With that lack of support, our first responders are tasked with helping in times of crisis. Dispatchers, local law enforcement, EMS, and emergency room staff, answer the calls when our community members are in desperate need of help, and they do it with compassion. Our hope is this donation helps spur additional attention, resources, and funding from all stakeholders.”
Creating a multi-jurisdictional group to share costs would make the co-responder program more affordable, and Mazzola is reaching out to other entities.
According to a Sept. 2, 2023, article in the Colorado Sun about co-responder programs, “the Colorado Behavioral Health Administration (or BHA, formerly the Office of Behavioral Health) began funding co-responder efforts in 2018 and now backs 31 such initiatives. An additional 20 or so programs exist across the state.
Between July 2020 and June 2021, BHA-supported co-responder teams made nearly 26,000 contacts. Less than 3% of active calls resulted in an arrest.
‘If we can keep someone out of the justice system, their likelihood for recovery is so much stronger than if they get into the justice system,’ says Ray Merenstein, executive director of the Colorado chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).”
For the Conrado family, the opportunity to give to their community is a welcome one.
“This community has been so good to our family over five generations. It is a privilege to live in such a caring community, raise our kids here, and operate a business. Giving back is the right thing to do and we hope our family fund makes a lasting impact,” Conrado said.
“This was unsolicited. Locals helping locals,” Mazzola said.
For small, rural communities, it’s that kind of support from within that may make the difference in bringing and keeping beneficial public programs to its residents.
The Conrado Family Fund chose the Rio Blanco County Sheriff’s Department for a $50,000 donation to fund six months of a co-responder program that coordinates emergency mental health consulting with law enforcement. The program has been grant-funded since January 2023 and would have ended in June 2024 without the generous donation from the Conrados.
