Photo: From left, back row, Melbourne Police Department Cmdr. Mark Renkens, Officer Mark Lang, Chief David Gillespie, Abby Pease, LCSW, Sgt. Marty Miller, Randy Goebel, Sergeant Ben Slover, Lieutenant Steve Sadoff; from left, front, Faith Hartsock, Marleigh Fallon, RCSWI, Teresa Parnell and Marjan Naghavi, RMHCI.

City of Melbourne/Cheryl Mall/For Hometown New

MELBOURNE POLICE DEPT
Mobile Crisis Co-Responder Team is a success
Program was launched in June 2022
  • By Chris Bonanno For Hometown News
  • Updated

Melbourne Police say their Mobile Crisis Co-Responder Team (MRT) has exceeded its expectations in its first year of operation, according to a release.

The program was launched last year after the Melbourne City Council approved a three-year partnership with both Central Florida Cares Health System Inc. and Brevard Family Partnership/Brevard C.A.R.E.S. By January, the team was comprised of two care coordinators and a program manager, therapist and peer support specialist and an additional therapist was added in May.

Previously, services from such individuals to those in need were not available. “Having MRT available has a level of training and expertise that we don’t have in patrol especially to deal with the issues of mental health in our community….we get the repeat callers and before we had MRT, we were just trying to piece it together as we could with limited services available,” said MPD Sgt. Ben Slover. “Now that we have MRT available, we have trained people that come out and help.

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