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Tacoma-Pierce County PACEs Connection (WA)

Keeping people out of crisis: Unit combines law enforcement, mental health worker [The Spokesman Review]

 

By Arielle Dreher, July 19, 2019

Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputy Dan Moman and Frontier Behavioral Health mental health clinician Holly Keller were riding around on their shift this summer when they got an urgent call.

The family of a man who had run into traffic before had called 911 to report he was running away from home, and deputies who had already responded to the situation said he was not following commands.

Moman and Keller rushed to the scene. When they arrived, the man was standing in the road. But when he saw the two members of the Spokane County Sheriff’s Community Diversion Unit, he recognized them immediately.

“Dan and Holly!” Moman recalled the man calling out to them.

They were familiar to the man because they had been in contact with him at least eight times before.

They approached him and listened.

He was agitated, but eventually they got him out of the road and gave him water, food and a bus pass. The man went from a flight risk to being considered no immediate safety risk at all. He used his bus pass to go stay with a friend.

Without Moman and Keller, however, the outcome could have been very different.

[Please click here to read the full story.]

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