This article reports on a research study to identify high-risk places of mental health calls for service in urban settings compared with police response settings; it provides details regarding the data collection and research methodology, and discusses findings which suggested that there was an association between spatial factors and MHCFS that were responded to by CIT-trained officers.
Police officers often find themselves responding to calls that do not involve criminal behavior, but calls related to individuals experiencing emotional distress or mental illness that requires police response. This research aims to identify high-risk places of mental health calls for service (MHCFS) in an urban setting and compare place features of these locations by police response (locations where a CIT-trained officer is dispatched versus a non-trained officer dispatched). The authors’ research uses Atlantic City Police Department’s calls for service data from 1 January 2019 through 30 December 2022, including the incidents of mental incompetence with location components. After removing the calls that were not coded as mental health, a total of 2229 incidents involving perceived mental illness were geocoded and compared. The authors used RTMDx software to generate risk terrain models for MHCFS in Atlantic City, NJ. The RTM analysis yielded no association between places of interest and MHCFS for calls involving non-CIT-trained officers. Yet, they identified five high-risk activity spaces of MHCFS where officers with CIT training were involved. Grocery stores (RRV = 2.873), places of leisure (RRV = 2.764), Health & Wellness Facilities (RRV = 2.624), Eateries & Restaurants (RRV = 2.547), and Convenience & Variety Stores (RRV = 2.280) are the risk factors identified by the RTM analysis. Given the characteristics of places identified by risk-terrain modeling, the authors reason that the characteristics of these places indicate that individuals experiencing perceived or actual mental health problems hang out in spaces with ease of access and in spaces where they can stay relatively longer with minimal attention. This research suggests that there is an association between spatial factors and MHCFS that are responded to by CIT-trained officers. City officials should consider deploying additional resources and mental health staff to these places to address the issue of mental health in urban settings. Future research should consider testing whether the places identified in the authors’ analysis are also high-risk places for MHCFS in other urban environments. (Published Abstract Provided)