The Sheriff’s Office received a three-year grant to fund a Crisis Response Unit (CRU) from December 2022 to December 2025). The CRU is comprised of one sergeant and two deputies dedicated to respond to incidents involving persons in a co-occurring substance abuse and mental health crisis.  Responding to incidents county wide, the CRU works cooperatively with community stakeholders.  Partnering with the Oakland Community Health Network (OCHN), the CRU provides referral to applicable services and enhanced response to persons in crisis, to reduce opioid, stimulant, and substance abuse, along with treating mental health.

The Crisis Response Unit’s objective identifies potential needs of the community from calls for service that have a link to Opioid/substance abuse.  The CRU attempts to follow up with listed subjects and or friends and family, to connect them with appropriate resources provided to the community.  The intent is to slow the escalation of individual user’s Opioid abuse and reduce the likelihood of recurring calls for service and other related effects on the health and safety of the community.

Sgt. Chris Miller 248.240.3163

Dep. Kyle Hayes 248-934-8013

Dep. Josephine Fagan 248-892-5970

The Sheriff’s Office Co-Responder (CoRe) Program is a Mental Health Community Outreach Initiative, which contracts an Oakland Community Health Network (OCHN) mental health clinician with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.  CoRe’s commitment is to partner deputy response with community mental health/substance use disorder resources, to improve services to those impacted by behavioral health crises.  The program serves to supplement the overall response with a specialized approach to provide added support to first-responding officers before, during, and after a crisis occurs. 

The goal in an incident stemming from a behavioral health crisis is to utilize the least restrictive measures to secure the welfare of all those concerned, connect individuals to needed services, and divert individuals experiencing a crisis from the criminal justice system whenever possible. This cooperative initiative seeks to enhance community response to people in crisis by embedding a proactive mental health clinician in the field who provides services and resources for proper mental health follow-up.  By doing this, the need for repeated and emergency police involvement is reduced, minimizing the potential of force or response to resistance from being used.  The ideal resolution for a behavioral health crisis incident is to connect the subject involved with resources that can provide long term stabilizing support.