LAS CRUCES, N.M. (KVIA) — The Las Cruces Fire Department launched a Mental Health Crisis Response Team last March, and officials say they now want to expand the program because of last year’s success.
At a May 13 City Council work session, Battalion Chief Matthew Hyles outlined the past year’s numbers for Project LIGHT, an acronym for “Reducing the Incidence of Grief, Harm, and Trauma.”
The Fire Department’s two Project LIGHT teams, comprised of firefighter-paramedics and social workers, have the goal of defusing mental health crisis situations on the scene and providing resources and transportation to mental health facilities as needed.
Since March 1, 2023, there have been 1,251 calls seeking mental health intervention, 455 visits and 416 interventions conducted by the Project LIGHT team.
Police Chief Jason Smith said that in the first six months of the project, about 20 percent of those calls led to police transport to the emergency room or other facilities.
In the past six months, that number has fallen 75% to 5%.
Smith says so far the public response to the project has been overwhelmingly positive, and the numbers will only continue to grow.
“There is a lot of support on the team, they see the team as a resource, and the community reaches out to us directly if they run into problems with family members or friends who have been in crisis in the past,” Smith said. he said.
However, due to the project’s limited resources, 656 calls went unanswered, something Smith said he wanted to improve.
The first step, he said, is to hire a project coordinator to oversee social workers and fill in gaps.
“If someone is off sick that day, on annual leave or one of our fire teams has already received a call for service, our dispatcher, who is a firefighter-paramedic, can respond to the call,” Mr Smith said.
“We hope this will reduce the number of unanswered calls and improve the level of service we provide,” he added.
Expansion plans are set to go even further than that.
Smith said the original Fire Station No. 3 building on Valley Drive, located directly next to its replacement building when it is constructed in 2021, is scheduled to be demolished and replaced with a building dedicated to Project LIGHT and the Mobile Integrated Healthcare program.
“They’ll have a purpose-built building where they can do all of their response, patient care, appointments and all that,” Smith said.
Both units currently work out of the former Fire Station No. 1 conference room, so it can get a little crowded.
Mayor Eric Enriquez also told ABC-7 he hopes those expansion plans go ahead.
“These are all steps we are taking to ensure the safety of our city,” Enriquez said.
Smith said funding for the expansion has already been secured and he hopes to begin interviewing for the coordinator position in July.
