(Orlando, Florida) It’s been over a year since the Community Response Team pilot launched in Orlando. Last year, the Orlando Police Department partnered with Aspire Health to create Community Response Teams, which have trained mental health professionals who respond to non-violent calls that require mental health support. In the first year of the program, the teams responded to 956 calls and connected more than half of those people to local mental health care.

“We started off with the pilot and it was a very modest start, as you can see, they’ve done an amazing job with that start, however, what we know from our independent review is that if we had more teams able to utilize our current teams more, we can actually really, really make an impact on those different calls for services that come in that really don’t require a police response,” Quinn-Henry, a captain within the police department, said. More on this story here.