"We'll deal with someone for a month straight. There'll be three calls a day for an individual and just nothing to do with them," LeClaire described. "We'll bring them to the hospital, they'll get discharged. We'll bring them to detox, they'll walk away."
He felt like they were putting on a bandaid rather than healing the disease. So when a position opened in the DPD's Mental Health Unit, he jumped on board.
"It's finding out the why and how to fix," he said.
The MHU is made up of two police officers -- LeClaire and Angela Robertson -- and two social workers, Patty Whelan and Frank Jorgenson. St. Louis County and the Center for Alcohol and Drug Treatment pay for the social workers. A grant covers one of the officer's salaries, and the other comes out of the DPD budget. They all work out of the Duluth Transportation Center downtown.
Whelan has been embedded with the department since 2017, before the MHU was officially created in 2018.
"So we had the flexibility to be able to be innovative in our approaches," she said. "We also know that sometimes people's symptoms get in the way of their accepting services."
She said she was surprised at the volume of calls that come in about people in crisis. And often, the patrol officers would be familiar with that person.
"So in the old way, it might be citation, citation, arrest, missed court date, warrant, picked up, jail, discharge," Whelan said. "The cycle goes on and on and on."
They get referrals from officers who see people caught in that cycle. And now, they take what Jorgenson calls a person-centered approach.
"Maybe I think that person needs inpatient treatment, but they don't want to go. So we work with where they're at," he said.
Officer Robertson said connecting people to the services they need to get well is a passion for her. And she sees results in the deep connections they make on an individual level. Recently, a woman she's been working with asked Robertson to go to some doctor appointments with her.
"It's just this amazing rapport and relationship that I was able to build with this gal who has experienced homelessness and addiction and some mental health issues," Robertson said. "And me, a police officer, she wants me to go to her appointments with her and advocate for her."
She said she got into this profession to help people. And she believes that's fairly universal among her colleagues and peers. She thinks the Mental Health Unit enhances that, helping people live better lives.
"I think regardless of what's going on out in the world today, I just think pairing mental health professionals and chemical dependency professionals with police officers to help people, I think that that's the best thing," Robertson said.
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DPD Mental Health Unit working to break the cycle - WDIO
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