OCFD Looks To Add 20 Person Drug, Mental Health Crisis Response Team

The Oklahoma City Fire Department is working to create a 20-person crisis response team to better assist residents in drug and mental health emergencies in our city.

The proposal is part of the 2025 fire department budget, and it aims to address a growing problem in our city in an innovative way.

“In Oklahoma City there’s about 3 to 8 Narcan wake-ups a day,” OCFD Deputy Chief of Operations Mike Walker said. “We started looking at how would we address this.”

Last summer, OCFD launched a two-person overdose team specifically for drug overdose calls. OCFD paramedic Major Lance Jones and a certified peer specialist from Hope Community Foundation respond to overdose calls and follow up with patients days later.

“For someone who is hopeless, to give them hope is the biggest thing ever for success,” Jones said.

The new proposed crisis response team would assist not only overdose calls but a variety of calls, including suicide attempts, psychosis, and people who call 911 self-identifying as being in crisis or needing help.

“They’re listening to the radio, they’re looking at our calls as they are coming out,” Walker said. “They can arrive on scene with our crews and start seeing if that person is willing to accept help.”

The proposed 20-person Crisis Response team would include mental health professionals working in 911 call centers, crews of paramedics, and mental health professionals responding in person with police.

“What we want to be is a resource for the police department that allows them to disengage when it’s safe to do so, so they can then go back in service and respond to higher level of emergency,” Deputy Chief Walker said. “The crisis response team then can manage that situation and hopefully give them a better outcome.”  

Jones’s team follows up days later to connect with overdose patients, offering additional resources and transportation to certified community behavioral health centers.

“They’ll stop you and say ‘I didn’t know anybody cared’ and you go ‘Yeah your city, everyone around you, these people are here for you. They got things for you,” Major Jones said. “They’ll just shake their head and say I didn’t think anybody cared about me.”

The proposed team would be paid for using city opioid settlement funds and money set aside for community policing task force recommendations.

“I mean you can say you have a problem, but once you’re willing to step up and put resources to it, that’s what the city is doing right now,” Jones said.

If this line item is approved in the budget, Chief Walker said the Fire Department will begin hiring positions as soon as possible.