Hillsborough Cops Team Up With Mental Health Worakers Under ARRIVE Program

HILLSBOROUGH, NJ — Police departments in Hillsborough, Montgomery, Branchburg, and Manville will be partnering with mental health professionals in a statewide effort to provide a more compassionate response to individuals in crisis.

On Sept. 9 the four police departments are partnering with Bridgeway Behavioral Health Services to be the first multi-jurisdictional mutual aid partnership in Somerset County to participate in the Alternative Responses to Reduce Instances of Violence and Escalation (ARRIVE) Together Program, announced Montgomery Township Police Captain/Director Silvio Bet.

ARRIVE Together stands for Alternative Responses to Reduce Instances of Violence and Escalation. The goal is to de-escalate situations between police and the public when a person is experiencing a mental health crisis.

The ARRIVE Together team also follows up on these calls to ensure that the individual is doing well and does not need additional mental health support.

In the Somerset County partnership, a dedicated ARRIVE Together program will be provided for the residents of the participating communities. This co-response program will be staffed with an officer who has completed Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) and a Mental Health Clinician from Bridgeway Behavioral Health Services.

The four police departments will share an office and vehicle, which will allow the team to provide initial response and follow-up to mental health crisis and outreach services.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, these are the four important goals achieved with the co-response initiative:

1. Keeping residents and the community safe. The co-response ARRIVE team leads to fewer arrests, fewer uses of force, and fewer injuries.
2. ARRIVE is increasing the utilization of mental health resources to the communities
3. Fewer individuals will be unnecessarily taken to the hospital
4. ARRIVE is improving trust between law enforcement and the community

Bet stated that he and his colleagues Hillsborough Police Chief Mike McMahon, Branchburg Police Chief Richard Buck, and Manville Police Deputy Chief Craig Jeremiah along with ARRIVE Police Liaison Nicole Crowley of Bridgeway Behavioral Health Services "are committed to continually working to improve how our officers respond to members of the community experiencing mental and behavioral health emergencies and this initiative will support and enhance our response to those types of calls."

The ARRIVE Together program was first launched in 2021 in Cumberland County. It paired a New Jersey State Trooper with a mental health screener in an unmarked vehicle to respond to emergency calls involving "mental or behavioral health crises." The initiative has now grown to include all 21 counties in the Garden State.

— With reporting by Michelle Rotuno-Johnson

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