County of Prince William issued the following announcement on Sept. 25
The Mental Health Awareness Response and Community Understanding Services. Or Marcus, alert is a data base set up for people who have voluntarily registered their personal information with the Prince William County Public Safety Communications Center.
The information people might disclose could include information related to their mental health and medications they are taking in case they need to call 911. If first responders have certain information, they can better aid the people who call for help.
“It’s very important because it allows us to triage the support we’re sending,” said Eddie Reyes, the director of the public safety communications center. “Someone with a mental health crisis would be better served with a mental health clinician rather than a police officer. That information is very crucial to the first responders because when they arrive there, they already know all that from the profile … and they don’t have to ask you those questions and take a lot of precautions because they already know before they arrive.”
“The Marcus alert system is a set of processes and policies that will be rolled out across the state to better the response to behavioral health crisis in our communities,” said Heather Baxter, Prince William County Community Services behavioral health program manager. “It involves creating mobile crisis response teams, regional crisis call centers and a voluntary database for 911. Marcus Alert legislation focuses on individuals in behavioral health crisis and individuals with substance use disorder, mental health disorders, or developmental disabilities.”
While MARCUS alert focuses mainly on mental health issues, it is a mechanism of self-reporting people can use to share personal information with the public safety communications center. “Residents are encouraged to share as much personal information as they are comfortable with,” said Michelle Surdam, a public safety communications assistant director. “This includes health issues, occupants of the residence, to include pets, anything that they feel is important for first responders to know to most effectively handle calls for service.”
In Fiscal 2020, Prince William County completed 3165 evaluations for people in crisis. Those evaluations showed that 954 people in crisis required a temporary detention for inpatient hospitalization. “People who are experiencing a crisis need to be connected with services as early as possible,” Baxter said. “First responders are often the first to interact with a person in crisis and need to have the training and information to best help that person.”
Legislation introduced by the Virginia General Assembly in 2020 requires that jurisdictions across the state assemble data bases and Prince William County aims to have everything in place and implemented by Dec. 1.
Residents can go to smart911.com to register their information.
See a quick video on Marcus alert here.
Original source can be found here.
Alerts Sign-up