WASHINGTON (AP) — Police responding to a person gripped by a mental health or drug crisis can lead to tragic results. Now a government health program will help communities set up an alternative: mobile teams of behavioral health practitioners and paramedics trained in de-escalating such potentially volatile situations. The effort to reinvent policing after the death of George Floyd in police custody is getting an assist from Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people. President Joe Biden’s recent coronavirus relief bill calls for an estimated $1 billion over 10 years in federal payments to states that set up mobile crisis teams, now locally operated in only a handful of places, including Oregon.
