$550,000 RowanSOM grant to improve encounters between police and individuals with mental illness

The Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine (RowanSOM) has received a three-year, $550,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice - Office of Justice Programs to develop and implement, the Crisis Outreach during Police Encounters Response System (Project COPE) in partnership with the Atlantic County Sheriff’s Office.

Project COPE’s goal is to improve outcomes during encounters between law enforcement officers and individuals with mental illness or co-occurring mental illness and substance abuse (CMISA).

“The target population for this program will be adults with mental illness or CMISA in the Atlantic City area, with a focus on female offenders who have histories of trauma,” explained Dr. Joanna Petrides, a RowanSOM psychologist who will lead Project COPE. “Our goal will be to implement a Co-Responder Team model in which crisis intervention trained police officers and a social worker will implement real-time interventions together during law enforcement encounters.”

Those interventions could include assessing the needs of adults with mental illness or CMISA, evaluating options for diversion, and connecting those adults to appropriate treatment.

Project COPE will develop in two phases.

• The planning phase will cover the first year of the grant and include the formation of the Co-Responder Team; development of the Project COPE training curriculum/toolkit; and training additional crisis intervention team police officers.
• The implementation phase will immediately follow the planning phase and will deploy Project COPE to the field, connecting individuals to treatment programs. Additional public messaging will build community awareness of the program and its benefits.

“Ultimately, we expect Project COPE will help law enforcement officers identify and reduce harm to individuals with mental illness or co-occurring mental illness and substance abuse, while also reducing mental illness-related arrests,” Dr. Petrides added. “We envision the best practices toolkit to be shared with other local, regional, and potentially national audiences to advocate for more appropriate responses to first responder calls involving a behavioral or mental health component, better supporting the needs of communities across the country.”

This project was supported by Grant No. 15PBJA-21-GG-04300-MENT, awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Office for Victims of Crime, and the SMART Office. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.