WILLIAMSON COUNTY SHERIFF
Deputies collaborate with Bluebonnet Trails for better care
Texas ranks last in access to mental health care, but the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office and other area law enforcement agencies are taking steps to get people help rather than putting them in jail.
“We can keep them out of our jail and get them into facilities because somebody who is struggling with a mental illness, they don’t need to be locked up and incarcerated right now,” said Sgt. Andy Perez, a mental health deputy with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office.
Perez coordinates the sheriff’s Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) and crisis hostage negotiation team. Of all the county’s law enforcement officers, 132 out of 848 carry the designation of mental health deputy or officer.
The Williamson County Sheriff’s Office started the CIT program in 2005 due to the rise of mental health issues. Like all law officers in Texas, CIT officers receive 40 hours of mental health training, but certified mental health officers complete an additional 24 hours of training.
CIT collaborates with the county’s local mental health authority, Bluebonnet Trails, to care for individuals in crisis.
Bluebonnet Trails offers a variety of services, including crisis intervention and behavioral health services. Calls come in through the organization’s hotline, the 911 mental health dispatch or the sheriff’s office and police departments, said Bluebonnet Trails Regional Director Peggy Langenfeld.
“From there, the crisis worker will do a crisis assessment for treatment,” Langenfeld said.
Bluebonnet Trails and CIT deputies corespond to calls in many cases, especially when an individual is a threat to themselves or others. In a severe case, mental health deputies are required to detain an individual and send them to jail diversion.
Jail diversion came after the Sandra Bland Act, which requires law enforcement to divert individuals in crisis toward mental health treatment rather than jail. Sending them to jail can not only be harmful, but it is also costly for law enforcement agencies to provide the proper care in jail, Perez said.
The sheriff’s CIT office in Georgetown shares a building with Bluebonnet Trails where they have a small jail diversion facility with doctors and nurses. The facility holds individuals for 23 hours.
The sheriff’s team and Bluebonnet Trails follow up with individuals after they are released to see that they receive the care they need.
The mental health crisis Texas ranks dead last when it comes to access to mental health care in the U.S., according to Mental Health America, a national nonprofit dedicated to the promotion of mental health, well-being and illness prevention.
“Texas ranks very low in access to mental health care overall when you compare it to other states,” said Greg Hansch, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Health in Texas. “Access to mental health care in rural areas is limited … Lack of services and transportation are among the top two barriers that people express when it comes to accessing mental healthcare in rural areas.”
NAMI data also shows that about two in five incarcerated people have a history of mental illness, and more specifically 70% of youth in the juvenile justice system, have a diagnosable mental health condition.
“We’ve seen far too many examples of dramatically negative consequences resulting from law enforcement officers being there on the scene, kind of quarterbacking a response to a mental health crisis — people have lost their lives,” Hansch said. “People end up disproportionately incarcerated.”
The sheriff’s mental health deputies work staggered shifts so that there is always someone on shift or someone on call, Perez said. A large part of the job is doing follow-up calls to check on individuals to be sure they are taking medication and keeping therapy appointments, Perez said.
Perez recalled doing 53 follow-ups over six months with one woman.
“She just needed the follow ups,” he said. “You don’t want them thinking that they’re forgotten about, right, because then they start to think, ‘Nobody cares about me,’ and then the depression comes, and we’re right back to square one.”
Perez and his officers don’t look like cops. They wear plain clothes and drive unmarked SUVs with dark tinted windows for the privacy of people they pick up.
“Because these people, they’re not criminals, right,” Perez said. “They’re just people struggling with mental illness, so we have to treat them a little bit differently.”
For further information, visit bbtrails. org. In a crisis, call the crisis hotline at 1-800841-1255 or 988, or call emergency services 911.
Soafara Harison is a journalism major at Texas State University and a contributor to Texas Community Health News, a collaboration between the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the university’s Translational Health Research Center. TCHN stories, reports and data visualizations are provided free to Texas newsrooms.
