A $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice will enable Little Rock police to expand their use of mental health crisis response teams that pair social workers with specially trained officers, part of a partnership with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, police announced Friday.

The money from the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance, a part of the Justice Department, will provide for the hiring of more social workers for Little Rock police’s Community Response Teams, a news release states.

The three social workers and four officers who make up the teams now have been working together since early October, said Mallory Visser-Pardee, a social worker with the police department. With the grant money, the goal is to hire two more social workers and have two more officers assigned to the teams by early 2024, Visser-Pardee said.

The creation and rollout of the teams, which police officials have previously referred to as behavioral response teams, has been an expansion on work Visser-Pardee and other police social workers have been doing in recent years, she said.

Since at least 2021, Visser-Pardee and the department’s other social workers have focused on seeking out people who have frequent low-level contact with police, she said in interviews last year. These people, who often suffer from homelessness, mental health issues, addiction and other problems may not be committing serious crimes, but they are

frequently arrested and jailed on low-level offenses.

Getting resources to them helps keep them out of trouble and jail and could be the first step to them getting off the street and finding solutions to the problems that plague them, Visser-Pardee said at the time.

Including police officers in the teams can allow for social workers to intervene in scenarios where there is more potential for danger, Visser-Pardee said Friday, giving them a chance to head off a problem without resorting to an arrest while still having backup close by.

Officers assigned to the teams have been specially trained in crisis intervention, and the grant money will allow for additional mental health care training,

Visser-Pardee said, as well as provide money for mental health outreach programs geared toward the city’s Black residents.

It takes a certain kind of officer to want to get involved and take the additional steps for this kind of work, Visser-Pardee said, and she’s been able to weigh in on the hiring process for the police that have joined the teams.

The creation of the specialized teams is a first for the city, and police officials see it as being a way to reduce crime in the city in a way that a beat cop may not be able to.

“The effects of mental illness are having a tremendous impact on the communities in which we police,” Little Rock Police Chief Heath Helton said in the news release. “As the incidents stemming from mental health issues continue to surge, our efforts to serve and protect must evolve and adapt.”