Nashville Tennessean
Updated June 26, 2026, 2:34 p.m. CT
It was late one night in 2021 when Nashville police got a call about a car accident.
The car was crumpled, and the man behind the wheel was thrashing. Officers realized he had a knife in his hand — and it was bloody.
He’d stabbed himself 40 times.
An officer slowly approached the open window and asked if they could help him, if he’d like to speak with a counselor.
“There was surprise in his face,” Michael Randolph, director of co-response services with the Mental Health Cooperative, said. “The officer asked him to drop the knife, and they brought our clinician to him.”
And that was it.
It wasn’t a particularly grand, heroic moment, Randolph said, just an officer recognizing a man in crisis, and Partners in Care being there to help him in that moment. The incident took place in the first two months of the Mental Health Cooperative’s pilot program.
Nashville officials held a news conference June 26 to recognize and reflect on the impact of the Partners in Care program on its five-year anniversary.
“Almost immediately we saw we were on to something,” Nashville Police Chief John Drake said. “We saw how the safety of Nashvillians was being protected and enhanced by just working on these calls.”
Partners in Care is now celebrating five years with the Metro Nashville Police Department. They said they have helped nearly 9,700 people over 15,000 calls in that time. Only 4.7% of those calls ended with an arrest.
What is Partners in Care?
What started as a small summer project quickly gained Metro Nashville Council support and was approved for expansion across the city’s remaining precincts.
The program pairs mental health workers with on-duty police officers responding to calls that may involve a person in crisis.
It aims to divert people in crisis to intervention and offer them resources outside of the legal system. People who need extra care are sent to local emergency rooms, an inpatient facility, or the cooperative’s Crisis Treatment Center.
Metro Council approved the permanent project, expanding to all police precincts, in 2022.
Officers in the program complete 40 hours of Crisis Intervention Team training, while clinicians take 16 hours of job training to prepare for the work.
The program was so successful, the Mental Health Cooperative took the concept and applied it to the Nashville Fire Department, launching Responders Engaged and Committed to Help in 2023, known as REACH.
How Partners in Care hopes to continue expansion
When the program started, there were only four mental health clinicians in cars with 16 police officers.
In five years, there are now two clinicians per police precinct, officials said.
While the number may still seem small, more than 700 officers have gone through the crisis intervention training provided by the Mental Health Cooperative, Capt. Anthony Brooks, who oversees the police side of the Partners in Care program, said.
Mental health professionals work with the department on day and evening shifts, Monday through Friday. That leaves overnight shifts in the hands of officers. But through the partnership and extra training, they better recognize when someone needs help rather than handcuffs, Brooks said.
“If you have an interaction Monday through Friday with one of our clinicians, if you’re getting plugged into that level of care, we’re actually reducing crises on the weekends as well,” Brooks said. “Just because we don’t have that full coverage yet doesn’t mean that it’s not making a difference 24 hours a day and seven days a week.”
So now local leaders are asking whether there’s capacity to expand the program around the clock.
“We know that there are always capacity issues,” Mayor Freddie O’Connell said. “I think what the data is showing us right now is that this program is effective and we should continue to sustain and expand.”
Tennessean: Nashville Police Chief John Drake on 5 years with Partners in Care
Partners in Care kicked off their partnership with the Metro Nashville Police Department in 2021, pairing mental health clinicians with officers.
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