Violent crime in Detroit is on the decline, but police are dealing with a growing number of mental health crises. That’s what Detroit Police Chief James White told Mayor Mike Duggan during a conversation at the Mackinac Policy Conference this week.
White has established a mental health unit within the police force. It involves unarmed, non-uniformed officers who go on mental health-related runs, and try to de-escalate situations before they turn violent. They do carry weapons, but they are generally “less lethal weapons,” according to White.
White noted that the department has also started building a database of people with mental health issues who have frequent police interactions. He said that when an emergency call comes in involving one of those people, there’s a trained civilian professional on the line.
“So when that family member calls 911 and says ‘my loved one is in crisis,’ we've now got a mental health professional that can start the triage process right then and there,” White said.
White said he formed the unit not just for citizen safety, but for officer safety as well. “Because we know we're losing officers,” he said. “We've got officers that have been shot. We've had officers that have been killed by people who are in [a] mental health crisis. And so this was just a pathway to do something different.”
White said the program is showing promise. But he suggested there’s also a need for more state and federal support, including long-term care facilities for people with serious mental illness, and funding for people experiencing mental health crises in jail or prison.
Like most major U.S. cities, Detroit has seen a substantial drop in violent crime since the start of 2023, following a COVID pandemic-era spike. Duggan noted that “drug shootings [and] gang shootings have dropped dramatically,” but the city continues to be troubled by violence of an interpersonal nature, or driven by mental health issues.
Last year, Detroit Police fielded more than 15,000 mental health-related calls, with almost 1,500 of them involving potentially violent individuals. That amounts to 25-30 such police runs a week, Duggan said.
White, himself a trained mental health counselor, said dealing with individuals and families in crisis is now a major, routine part of the job. “I could not anticipate the impact of the mental health system on policing–what we're dealing with and what we're up against,” he said.
