Va. Beach opening mental-health crisis center

VIRGINIA BEACH

A call came in last June about a man screaming in front of a grocery store.

Police Officer J.A. Binder, who had completed mental health training three months before, was one of the officers sent out on the call.

"I was able to make a determination that he was possibly suffering from mental illness," Binder said.

He brought in the man to be evaluated by mental health professionals. Then, he had to wait with him until a psychiatric bed was found. Later, Binder took the man to the hospital.

From start to finish, the episode took about five and a half hours.

And because at least two officers are mandatory for safety reasons on mental health calls, more than one officer was off the street during that time, Binder said.

That's a situation Virginia Beach is hoping to avoid going forward.

The city is opening a Crisis Intervention Team Assessment Center today at Virginia Beach Psychiatric Center. It will be staffed with mental health professionals and security officers.

The goals of the initiative include making sure people with mental illness do not get stuck in the criminal justice system and that they receive the health care services they need.

"This is a huge step, because it's going to help the police make a secure handoff, and then they can return to their other calls," said Carolyn Wood, a board member of the Virginia Beach affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

The public/private partnership will be the first Crisis Intervention Team initiative in Virginia that will be staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, said Victoria Cochran, the state's coordinator for behavioral health and criminal justice initiatives.

Other cities in South Hampton Roads - including Norfolk, Chesapeake and Portsmouth - also have officers trained in crisis intervention. But they don't have a specific site designated where police officers can surrender custody and return to the streets.

Countless hours are spent by police officers transporting people with mental illness to the closest facility, which could be halfway across the state, Suffolk police spokeswoman Debbie George said.

Chesapeake would like to eventually partner with another locality on a center, said Joe Scislowicz, executive director for Chesapeake Community Services.

Crisis workers in the Beach point to the need for the center.

Mary Whitmer, Virginia Beach's crisis intervention training coordinator, said about 1,800 people in Virginia Beach were evaluated in 2009 to determine the best mental health placement for them.

Out of that number, mental health professionals had to go through a legal procedure with about 930 people to hospitalize them involuntarily for further assessment, she said.

"Police had to stay and wait for hours while we were looking for a bed," she said.

The situation has already improved, because of mental health training, she said.

City dispatchers now know to send out trained officers when a potential crisis situation arises, Whitmer said.

Pilot writers Matthew Bowers and Kristin Davis contributed to this report.

Jen McCaffery, (757) 222-5119, jen.mccaffery@pilotonline.com