Socorro, Texas is located on the north bank of the Rio Grande about 10 miles southeast of downtown El Paso and has about 34,000 residents.
The Socorro Police Department (SPD) adopts a community policing philosophy. Within that approach, SPD plans to implement a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) by hiring two full-time mental health professionals and providing training, overtime, and equipment for officers to establish a co-responder CIT model within the city. The co-responder team includes an SPD officer and a qualified mental health professional who will be deployed into the community to provide mental health and social service resources during crisis calls. Cohort 2021.
Program Goals
The grant funding allows SPD to reduce the number of individuals with mental health conditions that enter the criminal justice system.