Thurston Sheriff’s Office launches program aimed at helping with mental health calls

After a year of behind-the-scenes work and planning, a new Thurston County program aimed at better responding to mental health-related 911 calls is about to be launched by the Sheriff’s Office.

The Sheriff’s Office is launching the Sheriff’s Community Outreach Utilization Team (SCOUT) program. It’s the culmination of a partnership between the office, Thurston Mason Behavioral Health Administration, and Olympic Health and Recovery Services.

According to a news release from the Sheriff’s Office, the SCOUT program will consist of two two-person teams of a crisis clinician and a peer specialist. They will spend the next several months riding along with deputies and meeting staff before they’re deployed with their own vehicles to start answering calls.

The program is being overseen by Timothy Lewis. The two crisis clinicians are Billi Schmitt and Joshua Santiago; the peer specialists are Seth Gerken and Chris Lybbert.

The program is being funded through county treatment sales tax dollars, which was approved by the Board of County Commissioners in January.

Ty Vinson

The Olympian

360-357-0201

Ty Vinson covers the City of Olympia and keeps tabs on Tumwater and other communities in Thurston County. He joined The Olympian in 2021. Before that, he earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism at Indiana University. In college, he worked as an intern at the Northwest Indiana Times, the Oregonian and the Arizona Republic as a Pulliam Fellow. Support my work with a digital subscription