Bucks eyes mental health court, police co-responder program

Bucks County could see a new mental health court and other police changes in the wake of ongoing protests nationwide against police brutality.

County Commissioner Chairwoman Diane Ellis-Marseglia and District Attorney Matt Weintraub said recently the programs were aimed at changing how police and courts deal with mental illness and not aimed at defunding police departments.

Police reform has been a national discussion since the May death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in custody of Minneapolis police.

Video of Floyd’s death, which showed former officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, began months of protests against police brutality that continue today.

Weintraub said last week that not using this time to enact positive changes to the criminal justice system would be a waste.

“If we can use this rising clamor of awareness … as momentum to get something done, then we should,” said Weintraub.

Weintraub said the co-responder program he would like to implement is modeled after a recent program in Dauphin County.

The central Pennsylvania county announced at the end of June its Criminal Justice Advisory Board developed a “co-responder” program to aid police response.

The ultimate goal of the program is to reduce the number of mentally ill individuals sent to prison instead of treatment.

“I think that right now, the police have, by default, become the catch-all,” Weintraub said.

The program creates a team of behavioral health professionals to respond to calls where a person may be suffering from a mental health issue, but could include a number of other situations as well.

Once police officers determine there’s no immediate threat or danger to anyone involved, the co-responders would take over to try and address whatever the underlying issue may be, Weintraub added.

“I think it will reduce the pressure on the police, it will reduce the tension between the police and the public, and it will allow people with non-police emergencies to get the focused attention that they require,” the county’s head prosecutor added.

Dauphin County received a $180,548 grant through the state’s Department of Human Services to help costs associated with bringing on two co-responders, including paying for protective equipment.

While the co-responder could help direct people toward treatment in day-to-day policing, a mental health court could offer an alternative to prison for those with mental illnesses who commit a crime.

Marseglia, a professional social worker, said the mental health court would operate similarly to the county’s drug court.

Drug courts give a person with an addiction a chance to enter treatment instead of prison, provided they do not relapse.

Under the drug court, Marseglia said a person would have a hearing with a judge to determine treatment and assign case workers and probation officers to them.

“There are people struggling with mental illness and they don’t know what to do,” Marseglia said Wednesday.

The court program would have added costs, but Marseglia said ultimately those costs were “easily offset” through money saved in housing, feeding and clothing prisoners.

“It’s cheaper for us to hire a couple case managers, a couple probation officers and what we need to get through the court process during the day for 20 people than for two people to go to jail,” Marseglia said.

“When someone is struggling with a. mental illness, they don’t realize sometimes how unwell they are,” added Marseglia.

Marseglia said Bucks County Senior Judge Rea Boylan has already taken the first steps in creating the court program in Bucks County.

A recent case involving a Bucks County woman jailed for 71 days in deteriorating mental health was the impetus for Marseglia’s efforts establishing a mental health court.

Kim Stringer, 28, was arrested on April 14 by Falls police after she allegedly punched a woman and threatened to kill a neighbor.

Stringer was previously diagnosed borderline personality disorder and a form of bipolar disorder.

A concerned inmate contacted Stringer’s family saying she was placed on suicide watch, subjected to pepper spray and other alleged mistreatment.

Stringer was also said to have also harmed herself as her conditioned worsened in prison.

Stringer’s parents, Martha and Paul, said the coronavirus prevented them from contacting their daughter previously, and that they were not told about their daughter’s deteriorating mental health.

Kim Stringer was transferred to Norristown State Hospital for long-term psychiatric care on June 17.

An investigation into Stringer’s alleged mistreatment by Weintraub’s office ultimately found no criminal wrongdoing by corrections officers, but he and Marseglia said soon after that Stringer should have been in a mental health facility instead of prison.

That investigation did find the county had “exhaustively” searched for an appropriate facility to treat Stringer, but could not find any place with an open bed willing to take her.

“The first and best line of defense is keeping the mentally ill from being incarcerated in the first place,” Martha Stringer wrote in a guest opinion to this news organization.

“Mental health courts serve to do that by partnering key justice system officials with leaders in the mental health system to divert offenders with severe mental illness into a judicially supervised program and includes community-based treatment,” Stringer added.

At least 20 counties in Pennsylvania have established mental health courts since 2002, including Montgomery County’s program established in 2009