VBT approves Behavior Clinician, FUSUS for police department

After a 34-minute workshop session on June 6 to discuss embedding a Behavior Clinician in the Van Buren Township Police Department, the township board went into regular session and approved the expenditure.
The clinician is part of a corsortium involving the Van Buren police department, the Wayne Police Department and the Romulus Police Department with Hegira Health Inc.
The Behavior Clinician from Hegira will be embedded in the consortium and the cost shared by the three departments. The clinician would be employed and insured by Hegira.
Hegira will be reimbursed by the communities of $8,746.25 per month that includes salary, benefits, equipment, travel, insurance, supervision and program administration. That amounts to $104,955 annually.
The cost to VBT is $17,493 starting July 1 through the rest of 2023. It would be $34,985 annually in 2024.
The clinician would be available to co-respond on mental health calls with officers, follow up with individuals in crisis, and provide for ongoing crisis intervention services.
Deputy Police Chief Joshua Monte said the township gets about one mental health call a day where an individual is in some sort of crisis. He said they drop off the person at Beaumont Hospital. He said the person is back into society within hours and there is no follow-up.
He said the township has from 300 to 400 calls a year. Deputy Monte said mental health can’t be cured, but the clinician will follow up on the calls and make sure they are getting treatment.
He said officers see the same person over and over on calls and the clinician could see they get the necessary treatment and assist those people in crisis. This would limit the calls for services that put officers and residents in danger.
Monte said they have talked to police departments in Livonia, Northville and Canton to see what is working for them.
Trustee Donald Boynton said it sounds like more than one person would be needed for three communities, with 300-400 calls for Van Buren Township alone.
“If all three need this person at once, who will decide the priority?” Trustee Boynton asked. “There are glaring holes in the plan. “What if the person goes out there and things go south – really, really bad. How do we take care of the liability for the township?”
Monte said there is a transfer of liability to Hegira. He added the service of the clinician would be mainly referral for follow ups.
“We need two … actually a staff of about five people,” Boynton said.
Monte said there are grant opportunities out there and Van Buren is one of the few communities that doesn’t have one. He said Plymouth and Plymouth Township share one, and Northville and Northville Township share one. Canton has its own.
“We should have our own,” Boynton said, asking police to move cautiously.
Trustee Kevin Martin asked what would be next after the clinician checks on the individual. Would Hegira take care of them?
Monte said police officers are not trained in mental health. He checked with other departments and some said they felt the clinician was under-utilized.
He said the clinician would deal with substance abuse and any other sort of mental health contributing to domestic violence.
“Are we training officers to assess mental health issues?” Boynton asked.
Monte said officers are sent off to de-escalation training, autism training, and crisis intervention training and they are working to have multiple layers.
“Having more may be necessary in the future, but this is a start,” said Treasurer Sharry Budd, who was chairing the meeting in the absence of Supervisor Kevin McNamara who was in a legal session. Also absent were Clerk Leon Wright and Trustee Bryon Kelley.
Trustee Martin said it would have been nice to have someone from Hegira present at the meeting to answer questions.
Chief Jason Wright said they looked at the experiences of Northville and Northville Township, Plymouth and Plymouth Township, and Canton who tried it and then it blossomed.
“It had a lot of uses,” Chief Wright said, adding that the person was able to follow up on treatment and find out why a person was having domestic violence at a house.
He also said they are more likely to get a grant if they are applying as a consortium with other communities.
Chief Wright said very rarely would they go on the scene and they do not take clinicians into a hot scene. Most of the work would be follow ups.
Boynton said he was a reserve officer in Detroit and he thinks it would be a good idea to have the Hegira person train as a reserve officer to get an inside idea of police work.
Trustee Martin said this should help to cut down on the repeat calls from the same people.
Chief Wright said with domestic violence they find alcohol and drug abuse and the clinician provides other resources the police don’t have. He said the Plymouth police chief said it has been very useful and people got help.
During the regular one-hour meeting that followed the work/study session on June 6, the board:
• Approved a three-year contract, at $75,000 per year, with FUSUS for the police department. The Downtown Development Authority has agreed to contribute $25,000 annually for three years. The program provides a platform to view public and community video sources for incidents. Part of the brief presentation was a 1.5-minute Fox News video from Atlanta, GA, where the chief of police praised FUSUS for helping them find the shooter from a medical center shooting. The Atlanta chief also praised Flock, which the township uses. Chief Wright said, “We will have the same technology as large cities”;
• Held a public hearing on the establishment of the Homestead Condominium Special Assessment District and then approved the SAD and set a June 20 hearing on the SAD assessment roll;
• Established fees for residential collection of solid waste by Waste Management. There is a five-year contract and fees go up 5% a year. The cost will be placed on the property taxes, half in the summer and half in the winter. For households it will be $82.92 each time this year. Annual household cost is $165.84 per year; Cape Condos, $127.14 per year; and Woodbury Green Condos, $145.40 per year;
• Approved purchase of a new bingo display system from United Novelty for $4,389.95, with the expenses to be split between Senior Endowment and Senior programming. The current system is 20 years old and reportedly on its “last legs”. The Friday-afternoon Penny Bingo is a popular event at the Senior Center;
• Approved purchase of two vacant parcels on Denton Road from Wayne County for an amount not to exceed $10,000 for right of way for the Iron Belle Trail. The parcels are near Waverly apartments and are in tax foreclosure. They are the last two properties needed by the trail in that area;
• Approved the purchase of a 2023 Chevy Tahoe for the fire department for $52,000, which includes lights and siren equipment. The money is in the budget for the emergency response vehicle, but the line item has to be moved around. The older vehicle it replaces was second-hand to begin with and will be used for fire prevention. The 2013 Ford Explorer will be retired;
• Removed from the agenda a proposed approval of the Senior Endowment Committee Bylaws; and
• Heard the tale of a woman who lives on 10 acres in Willis and has owned and paid taxes on a house in Van Buren Township for 45 years that she rents and maintains. She said she pays $4,000 a year in taxes. She said she grew up in Quirk subdivision and works at the Lincoln Consolidated Schools and owns another house in the Upper Peninsula. She said she always was able to get a free pass to the VBT dump over the years as she maintained her house. She said two weeks ago, she was denied a pass because her driver’s license address wasn’t in Van Buren Township. She said the clerk in that department told her the tenant could get a pass and take the things to the dump, but the property owner said that wouldn’t be right to make the tenant do that. The clerk also told her she makes a profit on the rental, but she said she has shown a loss every one of the 45 years she’s owned the rental. She said the township needs to look at its policy and to show more respect to property owners. She said she took the yard debris home to Willis. Treasurer Budd asked her to give her name to the Deputy Clerk and the director of that department will call her and, “Work you through it.”