The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office on Jan. 23 unveiled a new website to help law enforcement officials when they encounter people with mental or behavioral conditions that affect the way they communicate and behave.
Under the CARE Alert Program, people can use the website to enter information about their loved one or someone they know, with such data about what triggers them and what calms them down, what name they prefer and if they hate loud noises.
This can help prevent misunderstandings and ensure that individuals receive appropriate treatment during interactions with law enforcement, county officials said.
After the information is verified, it is sent to emergency dispatchers, who can relay it to responding law enforcement officials.
The website gives law enforcement officials another tool to help them effectively deal with people with mental challenges. That’s important, since sheriff’s deputies respond to roughly 3,000 of those crisis calls every year, said Santa Cruz County Sheriff Chris Clark.
“At the heart of all of this is just providing the best safety we can countywide,” Clark said.
The program has been successfully implemented in several cities on the East Coast, but Santa Cruz County’s is the first in California, said Lt. Ian Patrick, who is coordinating it.
The information on the website provides officers with “one more tool they can use when they have a contact with somebody, and the idea is to have that be safer and more efficient with that knowledge in hand,” Patrick said.
Santa Cruz County Supervisor Manu Koenig, who brought the idea for the system to the sheriff’s office, said it came from a woman whose son had a misunderstanding with the police and ended up in jail.
“That was probably a step backwards rather than a step forwards for his condition, and we really want to avoid those kinds of situations from happening again,” he said.
To register for the program, visit carealert.santacruzcountyca.gov.
