City-county co-responder units, where police and mental health responders ride together, likely to expand

The co-responder units, where a mental health crisis specialist and a city police officer ride together, should be expanding after a vote Thursday by the La Crosse County Board.

It was a topic discussed Tuesday on La Crosse Talk PM with county administrator Jane Klekamp.

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La Crosse Talk PM airs weekdays at 5:06 p.m. Listen on the WIZM app, online here, or on 92.3 FM / 1410 AM / 106.7 FM (north of Onalaska). Find all the podcasts here or subscribe to La Crosse Talk PM wherever you get your podcasts.

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The city of La Crosse already secured a three-year state grant for $369,008.42, according to the agenda. After the county board’s vote Thursday, $156,331.49 of that will go to La Crosse County Human Services Department to expand the hours for the crisis specialists units to noon-9 p.m. Previous hours went to 4 p.m.

Some of the guidelines in securing the grant include:

• Increase Mental Health Crisis co-response with the City of La Crosse police department through additional operational time.
• Support increased diversion from hospital and jail by meeting consumers with the appropriate interventions.
• Increase community connection to support the overall Human Services mission to equitable services to consumers.

“If I’m remembering — I’m going by memory which isn’t always perfect — I think they’re going to be available from 10-11 (a.m.) to 11 (p.m.), which tells me that’s when most of the calls are,” La Crosse County Administrator Jane Klekamp said. “And I think it’s going to be seven days a week.”

The co-responder units began back in August of 2021, though the county has had a crisis program for decades, Klekamp said. She described those mental health professionals as working around the clock, and being on call to respond if needed.

Klekamp was also asked if this is something that other police departments have requested, because it would likely require the county’s health department to provide the crisis responders.

She wasn’t sure, but did interject that it might be something the La Crosse County Sheriff’s Department might be able to handle.

“I’m assuming that it would be helpful to other law enforcement if there was something like that,” she said. “My guess is, if it would be expanded, it might be that someone rides with a deputy, right? Because a sheriff’s deputy is all over the county, so that you could have something like that. Now are there even enough calls to support that? I don’t know.”

Klekamp said that could be evaluated and brought up in the future.