Sergeant Aaron Brown didn’t have to think hard when asked for an example of how the Crisis Intervention Response Teams at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office help keep citizens and officers safe.
He quickly recalled how, just hours before his conversation with the Landing, a team was dispatched to a scene where a woman was standing outside a motel room holding two butcher knives. It’s the kind of call that could have led to someone getting hurt.
Instead, armed with information about the women’s mental health history, and the perspective of a mental health provider, the team told deputies to stand back. Two hours of calm conversation later, she peacefully surrendered.
“A typical old police response, what would we do? We would force it. We would force entry, somebody could get hurt for no reason, right?” said Brown, who leads the county’s CIRT teams. “We have a different ideology. We’re going to give them space, and we’re going to listen to understand. We’re going to communicate.”
As part of the budget package approved last week, Harris County Commissioner’s Court gave the thumbs up to an additional $560,000 for the hiring of six more mental health clinicians for the Sheriff’s Office CIRT teams.