ATLANTA – Albany Police Department’s new co-responder team: Trysh Godwin, Corporal Irene Christian, and Tiesha Howard (photo courtesy Aspire Behavioral Health)
A new law championed by Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan taking effect July 1 is expected to boost efforts to reduce the number of mentally ill Georgians landing in jail cells.
Local law enforcement agencies are increasingly turning to “co-responder” programs to deal with the number of mental health-related emergency calls. When a call comes in, mental health experts are sent out with police officers to help people suffering from mental illness or substance abuse.
About 40% of calls to law enforcement agencies are related to mental health, several police chiefs said in recent interviews.
Though statewide data is difficult to find, at least seven departments have established such programs. DeKalb County’s program has been around since the 1990s, while Albany started a new program just weeks ago.
Brookhaven, Gainesville, Forsyth County, LaGrange, Athens-Clarke County, and Savannah also have co-responder programs.
Senate Bill 403 requires community service boards (CSBs) to establish a co-responder program that will provide consultations to law enforcement officers responding to people with behavioral health problems. There are 22 such CSBs across the state providing behavioral health services to Georgia communities.
The law also clarifies that mental health professionals can advise law enforcement agents on whether the person needs immediate emergency treatment or subsequent referral to services instead of arrest.
And CSB mental health staffers can look at arrest records and recommend that people in jail be provided with behavioral health treatment instead of remaining in the criminal justice system.
Duncan said he was inspired by a program in Forsyth County, where he lives.
There, the sheriff’s office teamed up with the local community service board, Avita Community Partners, to help stem the tide of mentally ill people in the criminal justice system.
The Forsyth team includes three members: a police officer, a licensed clinical social worker, and a peer specialist. The police officer and licensed clinical social worker respond directly to police calls to help people on the spot.
“Examples … have included simply talking with people until emotional distress has subsided, setting up crisis plans with individuals and their families, setting up appointments with care providers, and occasionally involuntary commitment for an emergency examination,” said Stacie Miller, public information officer for the sheriff’s office.
Hundreds of miles away, Albany started a similar program just a few weeks ago.
The Albany program sends a peer co-responder out on calls with a mental health clinician and police officer. The peer co-responder has personal experience with mental health issues, substance abuse, and incarceration and helps the person in crisis get follow-up care.
“Their main goal really is to prevent individuals from having to be both hospitalized and/or incarcerated,” said Lisa Oosterveen, deputy director at Aspire Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Services and a moving force behind the new program.
Albany Chief of Police Michael Persley said even though his department is short-staffed, he thought it was well worth the investment to provide an officer to focus on mental health calls.
“You’re either gonna pay now or pay later,” he said. “And the pay later can come in the form of an incident that turns fatal. … There’s too many examples where people say, ‘Hey, this person, I needed the police to help, but I didn’t want the police to kill [them].’ ”
The Forsyth County program saw a 25% decrease in the number of people suffering from mental illness booked into the county jail in the first year of the program.
But success is more often measured in individual stories and community feedback than cold, hard numbers.
“I cannot tell you how many family members have thanked us, with tears in their eyes, because we helped calm an inflamed situation or helped a loved one in crisis get to a hospital for stabilization,” said Sgt. Terry Hawkins, the team leader in the sheriff’s office.
Hawkins said other law enforcement officers also are grateful because his dedicated mental health team lets them focus on their core law enforcement duties.
However, the needs of people with behavioral health issues face are complex, and Georgia communities frequently lack the full complement of resources needed to achieve sustainable progress.
Much wider changes are needed, said LaGrange Chief of Police Louis Dekmar, who also sits on the state’s Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission and is a past president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
“There’s no resources that really reflect a commitment to really help these people,” Dekmar said.
“If you’re judged by how you treat the least among us, which are children and our elderly and our folks that are affected by mental illness … I’m afraid in all three areas we as a society don’t rate very high.”
Still, the co-responder programs are a step toward fixing a much larger problem and preventing the criminalization of mental illness.
Gainesville Chief of Police Jay Parrish described his department’s successes with its two-year-old-program as a series of small victories.
“It’s not about how many we save but the ones we do save,” Parrish said. “Any program is better than no program.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
A Georgia State University study shows racial segregation housing in metro Atlanta has eased since 1970.
ATLANTA – Racial segregation in housing in the 10-county Atlanta area has eased during the last 50 years, according to a new study from Georgia State University.
Research by economists at the school in downtown Atlanta shows a combination of population growth and federal legislation have resulted in substantial changes in Black residential patterns – particularly in the last 20 years – in a metro region that had been deeply segregated.
Black residents were largely concentrated in a few in-town Atlanta neighborhoods east and west of Atlanta’s Central Business District in 1970. But over the next two decades, Black families and individuals began expanding into south Fulton, southeast DeKalb and northern Clayton counties.
The Georgia State study attributes those changes in part to the impacts associated with congressional passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
By 2000, the Black population had expanded into other areas of the region, particularly in the north, and by 2020 substantial numbers of Blacks could be found throughout the entire region.
“When Blacks began locating in white neighborhoods, many whites moved out, many outside the I-285 perimeter,” said Lakshmi Pandey, a senior research associate at Georgia State’s Fiscal Research Center.
“However, whites recently have increased their share in many census tracts that were predominately Black in 1970. Although there were no large increases of white residents in any of these tracts, their presence in many areas of Atlanta is significant in the last decade compared to trends prior to 2010.”
The study also concluded that immigration of Asians to the U.S. – and therefore, Atlanta – increased significantly after passage of the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act. With “other races” comprising just 0.2% of the region’s total population in 1970, the share of the Asian population rose to nearly 7.2% in 2020.
Pandey and Georgia State economics professor David Sjoquist also explored four factors that might explain the observed changes in where Atlantans live — Black population density, Black living preferences, white avoidance and income differences — with mixed results.
“Our findings offer encouraging evidence of a positive change in racial residential segregation and the underlying dynamics,” Sjoquist said. “[But] a positive conclusion must be tempered by the fact that racial residential segregation is still high, particularly in Fulton and DeKalb, and that in the past decade the white population in the 10-county region decreased.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia teachers are struggling to cope with the impacts of the pandemic on education to the point that many are likely to leave teaching, according to a new report from the Georgia Department of Education.
“The teachers I know don’t want to walk away … but too many teachers I know are running on empty,” Cherie Bonder Goldman, the 2022 Georgia teacher of the year, wrote at the start of the report.
The task force behind the report conducted focus groups with teachers across Georgia last winter.
About a third of educators said they were unlikely to remain in the profession for the next five years, according to a survey cited in the report.
Georgia should reduce the emphasis on test scores as a marker of teacher success, the new report contends.
“There were so many tests from every angle, district and state required, that the students were numb,” said one middle school science teacher quoted in the report. “These scores fall on us.”
“The unspoken message that if a student isn’t successful then it’s the teacher’s fault needs to go away,” an elementary school teacher added. “There are so many factors outside of a teacher’s control that impact student achievement.”
Teachers also need time and support to help their students return to pre-pandemic levels of engagement and performance, the report contends.
“Coming out of the pandemic, the desire to ‘return to normal’ has also come with an unrealistic expectation … without giving teachers the time, support, resources, and compassion to meet students at their current level,” the report notes.
The state Department of Education recently said it would use 2022 data, rather than pre-pandemic data, to evaluate school improvement going forward.
Class sizes should be reduced so teachers can “meet the individual needs of students,” the report says.
The report also recommends hiring additional school support staff, including counselors and psychologists, school nurses, and paraprofessionals.
School systems should streamline paperwork and reduce unnecessary meetings so teachers have more time to focus on teaching, the report states.
“The workload is nearly impossible to tackle during the hours we are actually at the school,” said an elementary school teacher. “So many of us have to ‘volunteer’ our time simply to do what is required of us.”
Gov. Brian Kemp and the General Assembly gave teachers a $3,000 pay raise in 2019 and provided another $2,000 this year. Teachers and support staff also received bonuses totaling $3,000 during the pandemic.
But teachers still need more pay if they are to battle burnout and remain in the profession, the report contends.
Georgia should “fund step raises at every stage of a teacher’s career” to encourage teachers to stay in the profession. The state should also protect teacher health-care and retirement benefits, according to the report.
“Teachers always seem to go above and beyond their call of teaching but are hardly compensated or acknowledged for their efforts,” one high school math teacher told the task force.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams recently said she would revise the teacher pay scale so that all teachers make at least $50,000 a year. Her revised pay scale would increase teacher pay across the board.
Those who are making decisions about what teachers do should either be teachers themselves or have significant recent classroom experience, the report states.
“So many decisions are made regarding what should be happening in a classroom by people who are no longer in a classroom and have been out for a long time, or by people who have never been in a classroom,” one elementary teacher quoted in the report states.
Finally, like all other Georgia workers, teachers need mental health support and work-life balance.
“Recognize that teachers are people … and treat them accordingly,” the report recommends.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Georgia Commissioner of Transportation Russell McMurry
ATLANTA – Car traffic in Georgia is at an all-time high despite rising prices at the pump, state Commissioner of Transportation Russell McMurry said Thursday.
The cost of gasoline has soared across the state to an average of $4.48 per gallon, up from $2.87 a gallon in June of last year, McMurry told members of the State Transportation Board.
Gas prices were as low as $1.84 a gallon in Georgia as recently as June 2020, during the early months of the pandemic, down from $2.40 a gallon in June 2019.
Normally, rising gas prices tend to drive commuters toward using public transit as an alternative, McMurry said. But that’s not the case now, he said.
“About two weeks ago, there was more car traffic on Georgia’s roadways than there’s ever been despite gas being as high as it’s ever been,” he said. “It’s not playing out the way it traditionally has in the past.”
Despite the amount of driving Georgians are doing, state gasoline tax revenues through May were about $71 million below the first 11 months of the last fiscal year, McMurry reported to the board.
McMurry cited the suspension of the state gas tax as the reason for the decrease in tax receipts.
The General Assembly passed legislation in March temporarily suspending collection of the tax through May 31. Lawmakers acted as prices at the pump jumped past the $4-per-gallon mark and continued climbing.
Gov. Brian Kemp issued an executive order last month extending the suspension through July 14.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp endorsed trucking executive Mike Collins Thursday in next week’s Republican runoff for Georgia’s open 10th Congressional District seat over Donald Trump ally Vernon Jones.
Collins, son of the late GOP Congressman Mac Collins, finished first in last month’s crowded Republican primary, winning 25.6% of the vote in a district that stretches from Butts County and a portion of Henry County north and east through Athens and Elbert County to the South Carolina line.
Jones, a former state representative, came in second with 21.5% of the vote, qualifying him for Tuesday’s runoff to decide the GOP nominee in the heavily Republican district.
Kemp, who maintains a residence in Athens while occupying the Governor’s Mansion, said Thursday he will cast his ballot for Collins next week.
“As a conservative small businessman, Mike knows firsthand how the disastrous policies of the Biden administration are hurting hardworking Georgians and communities all across our state,” the governor said. “Mike is strongly pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment, and will fight hard to put Georgians first in Congress.”
Jones, a former Democrat who once served as DeKalb County CEO, was running for governor against Kemp until last February, when he dropped out of the race and threw his support behind former U.S. Sen. David Perdue. Jones then entered the race in the 10th Congressional District, a seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Greensboro, who was defeated in last month’s Republican primary for secretary of state.
Trump remains angry with Kemp for refusing to go along with the then-president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Trump, who endorsed Perdue in last month’s unsuccessful effort to wrest the GOP gubernatorial nomination away from Kemp, is endorsing Jones in the congressional runoff.
The former president released a recorded robocall Wednesday accusing Collins of attacking Jones with “vicious political ads that aren’t true.”
For his part, Jones responded to Kemp’s endorsement of his opponent by positioning himself as a political maverick.
“Throughout my political career, I have never been the Establishment’s favorite,” Jones said. “That’s something to be proud of – not ashamed of – and is exactly why President Trump endorsed me. I’m not running for Congress to join the Establishment. I’m running for Congress to destroy it.”
Collins said he’s honored to have Kemp’s trust and endorsement.
“Governor Kemp has led the fight to create jobs, lower taxes, support our rural communities, defend our 2nd Amendment, protect the unborn, and stand up to champion our conservative values and deliver results for Georgia families,” Collins said Thursday. “That’s exactly what I plan to do as the next congressman from the 10th District.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
