WESTFIELD – Mental health professionals are now responding to some emergency calls in Westfield, as part of a new initiative at the Westfield Police Department.

Capt. Stephan Dickinson said Westfield’s police have been trying to undertake an initiative on their own for a while, even before the recent passage of a statewide police reform law. Even before the widespread protests against police brutality in 2020, a chief ask of police reform advocates was that certain emergency calls be handled by mental health professionals instead of the police themselves.

“We have begun working with other departments on this. They had already started, so we piggybacked off of them,” said Dickinson.

The police contracted with Springfield-based Behavioral Health Network to have two of its mental health professionals available to respond to calls where a counselor would do more good than a police officer. In the city of a little more than 40,000 people, Dickinson said there are calls like this every single day.

Previously, the only real avenue police had to deal with someone having a mental health crisis was a Section 35 or Section 12, which are court orders mandating that a person be involuntarily committed for mental health or substance use issues.

One benefit of the mental health professionals being from a local organization, Dickinson said, is that they already have a foothold in the community, and are often familiar with the people involved in situations they are responding to.

“Mental health correspondents know most of these people, they know who their clinicians are, and they have more options than we do,” said Dickinson, “When we Section 12 someone, we bring them to hospital where they are evaluated by a clinician. These guys can do it in the field.”

Currently, both workers are part-time, but Dickinson said they would like to add a full-time position to further bolster their support.