There are many superlatives that could be applied to the Lyndhurst Police Department. But of them all, perhaps the most important of them all is this — the department is well ahead of the curve in the world of policing. So it should come as no surprise as the state Attorney General released its guidelines for civilian mental health experts to be involved in situations where police officers might not be fully equipped that the Lyndhurst PD already has such a program in place and has for more than two years.
Last week, we had an opportunity to sit down with various representatives of Lyndhurst’s forward-thinking program — including Chief Richard L. Jarvis Jr., Capt. Michael Carrino, Lts. Paul Haggerty and Vincent Auteri and Margaret Lenino, a licensed clinical social worker who is employed by Comprehensive Behavioral Healthcare — or as it’s known today, CBH Care.
Lyndhurst’s program debuted Feb. 28, 2022, but Lenino has been working in Lyndhurst with the police for about a year. Her role is multifaceted but it extremely important work that, quite frankly, is well ahead of what the state proposes.
Once a week, usually Mondays, she spends the entire day at LPD headquarters — another day of the week if a holiday falls on a Monday — and is available during the week on an as-needed basis. Her work is divided into categories. The first, co-response, where she’d be brought out to a scene to help in a mental-health crisis. The second, is the follow-up and referral when a person who is in a non-emergent mental health crisis. There are other models deployed in other departments, but this is the one Lyndhurst follows most closely.
The follow-up model, Lenino says, is the most commonly used. However, it’s not entirely rare that she could be called out for a co-response.
“The referrals we receive, we’ve helped a lot of residents get involved with mental-health treatment, we connect and provide linkages to counseling, psychiatrists, substance-abuse treatment — whatever the families need for support. (This includes) family counseling or family support groups.”
Why a co-response?
One of the times a co-response was required was in 2022 when a township resident held police at bay for 20+ hours after he barricaded himself in his home and also deployed a flame thrower. This all happened after the man had appeared — and didn’t like what happened — at a court appearance. Now mind you, this all happened just two months after Lyndhurst’s program — which is known as “Arrive Together” — began.
“It helped us to know whether our negotiators were saying the right things, what they perceived about the individual — and as it turned out, this was not a person with a mental-health issues, he was a person who stuck to his values. They didn’t think it was a mental-health crisis, but they helped us to check that box off that this was not a mental health crisis — this was a person who was going to stick to it. But they told us we were doing a good job that was a long, drawn-out situation we had to be patient with.”
Another situation where Lenino would spring into action is if someone, with police on scene, where someone may be experiencing paranoia or perhaps simply wouldn’t want to speak to a cop, her presence would be required since, by nature and by being out of a uniform, would be less threatening to someone having a rough go of it.
“If I am available, I would help talk to the person. I could provide support and provide empathy and just talk to them about what is going on. So something like that would constitute me going on a call,” Lenino said.
But before any of these scenarios, the police are required to ensure Lenino’s presence is deemed fully safe. The situations are assessed individually before she’s called out.
“She can only enter into the so-called ‘hot zone’ after officers deem it safe,” Haggerty said.
An officer — or perhaps more than one — would stay with her the entire time she speaks with the person in crisis. If getting too close is prohibitive — like say if a crisis develops somewhere with long hallways — ballistic shields could be used where Lenino would be kept a distance away, but where she could be heard clearly.
When referrals are used
Haggerty said the LPD experiences a mental-health related call, on average, once every three days. Sometimes, there are more, sometime, fewer. But it is those same officers who are the ones who determine whether a referral is required. Lenino gets a paper referral from the department with the person who experienced a crisis’s contact information and an explanation as to what happened — “as soon as possible,” Lenino said.
Last week, she said she had a few weekend referrals, so she contacted those folks the next working day, which, because Labor Day was on a Monday, happened to be Tuesday, Sept. 3. It’s not always possible for immediate contact, she said, because sometimes, the person is in hospital. So that contact could be delayed. But she’d follow up with them for up to a month in hopes of providing the help they need.
Sometimes, they come to HQ. Sometimes, it’s by phone or in a Facetime call. Sometimes, family members ask for help coping. But for the most part, some kind of personal contact will be made. And speaking of the families, Lenino has a work phone families may use to contact her during the week when she isn’t on duty in Lyndhurst (she also assists Hackensack, Rutherford and New Milford PDs).
What she won’t do is force her services on anyone who doesn’t want it — and this does, albeit rarely, happen.
She also assists with court-commitment hearings which would allow for a person to get 90 days of rehabilitation or treatment, depending on the need. She’ll also work to get more time in treatment, when needed — some do.
Lenino, via CBA, also assists with high school students in need, especially in cases where the person is 18 or older.
Now, Lenino is only on-site one day a week. So what happens if there is a crisis, say, on a Thursday, or perhaps even more so, one a weekend, when she isn’t on call? Since CBH, like most agencies of the sort, are spread thin, the subject would instead be taken to hospital. But officers like Haggerty and Carrino are able to reach out to Lenino on those off-times if absolutely needed.
The NJOAG
Everything the attorney general is proposing is already well in place in Lyndhurst and those other aforementioned towns. What happens next is anyone’s guess, since the AG’s directives take effect Oct. 1, 2024. What is not known is whether Lyndhurst may continue doing what is doing successfully — or if the new guidelines take precedent. Mind you, most of the state’s guidelines are mirrors of Lyndhurst’s.
All of this is happening in the state in response to a case in Fort Lee, where a woman experiencing a mental-health break was filled by a Fort Lee police officer. And once again, Lyndhurst has its own Crisis Intervention Team, something the state will implement next month.
So no matter how you look at it — whether it’s this, or use of energy-conductive devices, shields, weaponry, Lyndhurst is far ahead of the curve.
And the public’s response it it all has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, sometimes people and family who have taken advantage of the program stop officers are thank them, sometimes saying, “You were the first department to show us that kind of concern and care,” Haggerty said.
“We’ve just been ahead of the game since 2000,” he said. “Those other towns followed our lead.” And it’s led to the community trusting the LPD at mostly all costs when they see a crisis arise.
And this is all music to Mayor Robert B. Giangeruso’s ears.
“We are proud of our long-standing relationship with CBH Care and just as proud to have been chosen as a pilot agency under the ARRIVE directive,” the mayor said. “We knew earlier on that we needed to get ahead of the curve and better address the mental health needs of people in crisis and reduce the risk that encounters might end in violence.”
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Kevin A. Canessa Jr. is the editor of and broadcaster at The Observer, an organization he has served since 2006. He is responsible for the editorial content of the newspaper and website, the production of the e-Newspaper, writing several stories per week (including the weekly editorial), conducting live broadcasts on social media channels such as YouTube, Facebook, and X, including a weekly recap of the news — and much more behind the scenes. Between 2006 and 2008, he introduced the newspaper to its first-ever blog — which included podcasts, audio and video. Originally from Jersey City, Kevin lived in Kearny until 2004, lived in Port St. Lucie. Florida, for four years until February 2016 and in March of that year, he moved back to Kearny to return to The Observer full time. Click Here to send Kevin an email.