By VINCENT CORSO
BELLEFONTE — Centre County and the State College Police Department have received funds for the establishment of a mental health program in the department.
The county announced it received a $150,000 grant award from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency for Crisis Intervention and Pre-trial Diversion Program for the creation of the program on March 15. The county served as the applicant agency for the grant and SCPD is the recipient.
The grant will help establish the State College Police Department Social Work Program to provide preventive services and case management for individuals interacting with law enforcement and dealing with issue-related to mental health, homelessness, substance abuse and family management challenges.
“We see this individual leading us and assisting in not just mental health cases, but a lot of clients that we deal with, whether they are homeless, or individuals that we end up interacting with that maybe police isn’t the best place to do it. I see it as a way to divert people away from the system, but also, maybe more importantly, get them connected to the services that are best suited for them. But on the same token, free up police officers so they aren’t dealing with the same individuals over and over again,” said SCPD Chief John Gardner.
Gardner said police services are stretched to the limit and “we view this as an opportunity to work with a professional who can maybe give us other options or opportunities.”
The announcement of the grant comes nearly three years after the police shooting death of Osaze Osagie in State College on March 20, 2019, which spurred community wide discussion about how police respond to people in mental health crisis.
“We are looking forward to moving ahead with this project,” said Gardner.
“I think the true winners are the citizens we are going to be serving … I think the police in this region do an exceptional job, but they need help. Hopefully this is not the only police department that does this. This could be the building block for this throughout the county.”
Commissioner Mark Higgins said the county was glad to partner with SCPD in “bringing something to fruition that community members have been advocating for several years now.”
In the same meeting, the county announced that it is looking to apply for another grant from the PCCD to implement a new caseworker in the public defender’s office.
The $250,000 grant application would cover the program for two years and commissioners moved it to the consent agenda for next week’s meeting.
The caseworker would coordinate services to clients with mental health, behavioral health, intellectual disabilities and substance abuse disorders in the court system. Services that could be utilized are housing, employment and referrals to treatment services.
If the county is awarded the grant, the start date of the program would be in October and would run through September of 2024.
“If I had a dollar for every time a judge said to me, Dave, find me a place to send this person and convince me that they won’t come back,” county Chief Public Defender David Crowley told the commissioners.
“Holistic public defense is cutting edge stuff and it takes into account that we are not only here to take care of the immediate problem, but to maybe help point people to keep them from recycling back into the system.”
Board chair Michael Pipe said if the grant is awarded, he hopes the program will be a model across the state.
“There are many other public defenders across the state who need this. I hope this will set off a trend where they will copy this and they will call up your staff and say how did you do put this together,” said Pipe.
