Westfield Police Department Partners With Mental Health Council

WESTFIELD, NJ — Working in conjunction with the Westfield Mental Health Council, the city’s police department announced on Friday that it will prominently include a new logo on its vehicles as a sign of union to help promote compassion, acceptance, kindness and empathy in and around the community.

Westfield Police Chief Christopher Battiloro announced the effort, which coordinates with the mental health council’s C.A.K.E. initiative. The council was formed in 2018 by Westfield Mayor Shelley Brindle with the goal of bringing members of the community together with various organizations and stakeholders.

The goals of the council are to help provide mental health services to the community, to create awareness for existing community resources, to break the stigma that exists around mental health issues, to help identify best practices and crisis prevention measures and to help establish additional mental health programs for the community’s families and young people.

The C.AK.E. initiative was unveiled recently, city officials said, in an effort to encourage the four legs of the program — compassion, acceptance, kindness and empathy — and to help create a stigma-free community. The police department’s involvement in including a logo that was created to promote the initiative with the department and the community it serves.

“The Westfield Police Department will strive to demonstrate all of these behaviors in its interactions with the public,” Battiloro said in the news release which announced the addition of the logo to all police vehicles.