Concord Police Department: Reducing involuntary psych holds by 27% through co-response

KEY IDEAS:

• Integrated crisis response works. As of December 2024, the Concord Police Department had reduced involuntary psychiatric holds by 27% and mental health-related 911 calls by 41% through its partnership with the county co-responder program.
• Data tells the story. Using real-time analytics in Peregrine, the Concord Police Department can track mental health calls and their outcomes, verify the accuracy of call diversions, and visualize crisis trends.
• Collaboration eases workloads. A3’s data-supported co-response model relieves overburdened law enforcement officers while connecting residents to timely behavioral healthcare.
• Evidence supports effectiveness. Reliable data supports ongoing investment by demonstrating measurable success. Using data in Peregrine, the Concord Police Department and Contra Costa County illustrate A3’s positive community outcomes.

“We have the actual stories from the streets, from the officers, from the clinicians that we're partnering with here in the county, but we also have the data to support that the A3 program through Contra Costa is effective."

Capt. James Nakayama

Concord Police Department

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, Calif. — In 2021, the Concord Police Department began a process of screening and diverting mental health-related calls to an existing Contra Costa County behavioral health services program, which was limited in capacity. During that same time, the county spearheaded a large-scale effort to develop a comprehensive co-response model with additional wraparound services for those experiencing mental health crises.

Two years later, the county launched a robust co-responder program to address residents’ demands for improved mental health crisis response across Contra Costa County. Now titled A3 — which stands for “Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime” — the program has reduced involuntary psychiatric holds and mental health-related 911 calls throughout the county.

Because the law enforcement agencies involved with A3 operate using siloed data across disparate information systems, they were unable to consistently track mental health-related calls for service and their outcomes — until the Concord Police Department, an A3 partner, tasked Peregrine to measure the program’s success in Concord. The agency has since used Peregrine to illustrate A3’s positive impacts and support the program’s processes to divert mental health calls.

Keep reading to learn about the implementation and impact of Contra Costa’s co-responder program, including how Concord’s data-driven approach has helped A3 thrive and increase in community use.

💡 WATCH THE VIRTUAL ROUNDTABLE → Building Responsive Systems: Human Services, Community Care, and Crisis Coordination

What is the co-response model?

“When somebody is having a problem, when there's an emergency, people call 911 — and who goes? It's the police officers, maybe the firefighters, EMS. But there wasn’t that fourth system.” —Capt. James Nakayama, Concord Police Department

Co-responder programs bring together law enforcement officers and health and human services organizations to provide a joint response to calls for service involving mental health crises, substance use, and other quality-of-life issues. By pairing clinicians and other behavioral health experts with law enforcement officers, co-responder programs aim to:

• De-escalate crises
• Reduce arrests
• Relieve strain on first responders
• Comprehensively address mental and behavioral health issues

Jurisdictions that have deployed co-responder programs report fewer arrests and hospitalizations and reductions in use of force and officer time spent on scene, according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center. However, it can be difficult to measure programs’ long-term success, as outcomes data is often unstructured and fragmented across various agencies and siloed information systems.

An effective data integration solution brings together those disparate data sources to provide reliable, real-time reporting on the impact of co-response initiatives.

READ MORE → Community Co-Response 101: How Integrated Teams Reduce Arrests and Improve Care

Why co-response matters in modern public safety

Without an emergency response organization dedicated to behavioral health, many mental health-related calls for service fall to law enforcement agencies, which are already stretched thin.

“When somebody is having a problem, when there's an emergency, people call 911 — and who goes? It's the police officers, maybe the firefighters, EMS. But there wasn’t that fourth system,” said Concord Police Department Captain James Nakayama. ”Law enforcement has been burdened with being the frontline first responders, by no fault of their own, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Nakayama estimated that his department responds to around 115,000 calls for service each year, more than one-third of which are behavioral health-related. Partnering with A3 and diverting some of those calls to clinicians instead of law enforcement has been a game-changer for Concord’s police officers, he said.

“We’re proud to be a part of it, to divert those calls for service,” Nakayama said.

READ MORE → Building and Scaling a Co-Response Program: Challenges and Solutions

Inside Contra Costa’s A3 program

Traditional emergency response involves three arms: law enforcement, fire-rescue, and medical services. However, people don’t just call 911 for fires, crimes, and medical emergencies — they also call for mental health crises, homeless services, and other behavioral health issues.

Contra Costa Health argues that behavioral health should be the fourth arm of emergency response, and local governments need the resources to provide timely, clinically appropriate response to behavioral health calls for service. A3 makes that response possible in Contra Costa County.

"Behavioral health crisis care is more accessible than ever before in Contra Costa County, thanks to the vision and hard work of our A3 team and community partners, including people with lived experience, family members, advocates, community groups, law enforcement, cities, fire and emergency medical responders, and behavioral health professionals," said Contra Costa Health in a press release.

💡 BEHAVIORAL HEALTH IN CONTRA COSTA COUNTY

• 1 in 5 county residents experience behavioral health issues
• Of all calls for service that receive ambulance response, behavioral health issues are the third-most common type countywide
• Contra Costa County sees more than 8,000 psychiatric emergency service visits annually

Source: Contra Costa Health

How A3 works: Step-by-step crisis response process

• A client calls to request service. Clients can reach A3’s call center through several avenues, including 911, 988, and 211. Dispatchers route calls to A3 as needed. Clients can also reach A3 by calling a community health provider or a A3’s call center directly at (844) 844-5544.
• Clinical staff provide care. As soon as a client reaches A3’s call center, staff begin providing support. They triage crisis situations and determine which calls require an in-person response. Contra Costa Health reports that three-quarters of callers’ needs are resolved on the phone.
• A3 staff respond as needed. For needs that cannot be resolved by phone, staff determine the type of in-person response needed and dispatch a mobile team to provide care accordingly. Depending on the nature of the crisis, the mobile team may include peer support specialists, behavioral health clinicians, or law enforcement officers.
• The mobile team connects the client to resources. For in-person responses, each team assesses whether the client requires additional services and connects the client to those services as needed.

💡 A3 RESPONSE LEVELS

Level 1: Stable

• Low-risk
• Requires a welfare check
• Mobile team includes a peer support specialist and a social needs expert

Level 2: Urgent

• Serious crisis
• Requires further assessment
• Mobile team includes a behavioral health clinician and a peer support specialist or substance use counselor

Level 3: Emergency

• Serious crisis
• Presents the possibility of escalation or safety concerns
• Mobile team includes a behavioral health clinician, a peer support specialist or substance use counselor, and a law enforcement officer

Results: How A3 reduced psychiatric holds and mental health calls for service

The Concord Police Department reports that A3 has led to significant reductions in involuntary psychiatric holds and overall mental health-related calls for service. Notable statistics include:

• As of December 2024, involuntary psychiatric holds by the Concord Police Department had decreased by 27% since A3’s rollout.
• In the same time frame, patrol officer response to mental health-related calls for service declined by 41% since the department was able to transfer callers to A3 for mental health crisis services.
• Between August 2023 (when the agency began tracking A3-diverted calls) and December 2024, utilization of A3 by patrol officers increased by 180%.
• In 2024 alone, 878 calls for service to the Concord Police Department were diverted to A3, of which:
  • Clinicians handled 713 calls on their own.
  • Officers co-responded to 117 calls.
  • Mobile teams were unavailable for 25 calls.

💡 COUNTYWIDE USAGE: Contra Costa Health reported that A3 fielded more than 20,000 calls in 2024, with 1 in 4 callers requiring an in-person response. The organization dispatches more than 85 mobile teams each week.

Why good data matters for co-responder programs

In the early years of A3, the Concord Police Department and Contra Costa County did not have a comprehensive, reliable way to measure the program’s success and demonstrate that it was an effective use of resources. Although law enforcement agencies anecdotally claimed to be flooded with mental health calls, those calls for service were often miscoded, misclassified, or not coded at all, so agencies couldn’t back up their claims with data.

Challenges with classifying mental health 911 calls

Success metrics were a challenge in part because it was difficult to flag and categorize mental health-related calls for service. Because dispatchers had such limited time and information to work with, 911 calls involving behavioral health issues were often classified as:

• Disturbances
• Welfare or safety checks
• Assaults
• Property crimes
• Medical crises
• Threats to self or others
• Public nuisance or quality-of-life issues

Moreover, unless a dispatcher manually noted in the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) narrative that an incoming call was diverted to A3, there was no standard process for tracking call diversions or their outcomes.

Real-time data dashboards for mental health response

To improve reporting on A3 usage and outcomes, the Concord Police Department — one of Peregrine’s earliest partners — used CAD data in Peregrine to build a crisis response dashboard. Here’s how it works: Peregrine first identifies which calls for service involve a mental or behavioral health issue — even if the CAD narrative did not explicitly specify that the call was mental health-related — by applying predetermined qualifications for mental health-related calls to the information in each call’s CAD narrative.

That data then feeds into the crisis response dashboard, which updates in real time to answer the following high-level questions:

• Which calls for service are being routed to A3?
• Which calls are being handled by A3 independently?
• Which calls are Concord Police Department officers co-responding on?
• How often are A3 personnel unavailable to respond to calls?
• How many calls result in involuntary psychiatric holds?

Peregrine also creates an A3 process verification report that identifies CAD calls that may have been mislabeled or miscoded.

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Combining stories and data to prove program effectiveness

Capt. Nakayama said his department uses the crisis response dashboard in Peregrine to track the volume of mental health-related calls for service over time, including geographical hotspots. Now, the Concord Police Department can supplement anecdotal stories with data to illustrate how often the agency uses A3 and how the program has led to fewer mental health calls over time — resulting in a “huge time savings for our department,” according to Nakayama.

“We have the actual stories from the streets, from the officers, from the clinicians that we're partnering with here in the county, but we also have the data to support that the A3 program through Contra Costa is effective,” Nakayama said. ”Within our city government, we have the metrics to show them that the program is effective, that we’re utilizing it.”

In January 2024, A3 announced that it would expand to 24/7 operations, further enhancing mental health crisis services in the county.

💡 KEY TAKEAWAY: Reliable evidence demonstrates effectiveness and strengthens continued investment. By drawing on data available in Peregrine, the Concord Police Department and Contra Costa County highlight A3’s positive community outcomes.

Building a better understanding of mental health-related calls for service

In addition to a high-level view of A3’s usage and effectiveness, Peregrine provides a comprehensive, detailed understanding of every individual mental health call. Users can click into any given CAD incident in Peregrine to explore the call on a more granular level, reviewing information such as location history, person history, networks, and evidence.

“We can drill down at a map level to identify, who is this individual?” Nakayama said. “Then we can look at the call details. We can look at who called in, what time of day, who is the officer that responded. We can go back in and look at the body-worn camera footage if we need to.”

The above image contains notional data.

Merging duplicate records for a complete person history

Before Peregrine, it was common for historical data on an individual to be fragmented across multiple person records due to variations in the individual’s address, how they spelled their name, and other identifying details. Now, Peregrine applies a proprietary algorithm called Match to deduplicate person records across all integrated sources, creating a single, merged record for each individual in the Concord Police Department’s system.

Concord’s officers can pull up any person’s record in Peregrine to quickly understand whether they have a history of mental or behavioral health issues, in which case they might need additional care.

“Is it a one-off, or something that happens maybe once or twice a year?” Nakayama said. “If this is a person who is spiking in our system, it triggers us to be able to do some additional follow-up to try to get this person into services and get them the help they need prior to being in crisis.”

Get started with data-driven co-response

Effective co-response can change lives, save resources, and revolutionize mental health crisis response. But without good data to tell their stories, even the most successful programs face uncertain futures.

A high-quality data integration and analytics solution like Peregrine can bring together disparate organizations and siloed data sources, provide a single source of truth for measuring a program’s success, and enable data-driven conversations with stakeholders and community members about mental and behavioral health. Schedule a demo to learn how Peregrine can support co-response initiatives in your community.