Las Cruces officials on July 12 held a groundbreaking ceremony marking the start of construction on a $2 million facility — the first of its kind in New Mexico — meant to help Doña Ana County's mentally ill residents.  County Commission Chairwoman Karen Perez and Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima were among the public officials who turned shovels of dirt.  The 5,800-square-foot building is on the southeast corner of the county jail's campus and may be finished around February or March of 2013. 

The center will help stop the unnecessary criminalization of the mentally ill, said Ron Gurley in a Las Cruces Sun-News article. Gurley is a long-time mental health advocate in Las Cruces.  He said police will be able to drop a mentally ill person off at the center for a maximum 24-hour stay in which he or she will receive a mental evaluation; and, afterward, personnel will follow up with the person to connect them to the right resources, such as counseling, to reach long-term stability. 

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Dona Ana County moves ahead with triage crisis center  [orginally posted Dec. 29, 2011]

A $2 million project for the building of a 5,800-square-foot crisis triage center was approved recently by Dona Ana County officials. The center will be the only one of its kind in New Mexico. For more than a decade, it has been described as a missing link in the county's handling of the mentally ill. The county is hoping to bid out construction for the 12-bed triage center as early as February, said Health and Human Services Director Silvia Sierra. She is optimistic it will be built within six months. Design plans already are finished.

The center will house, for up to 23 hours at a time, mentally ill residents who aren't charged with a serious crime; but, have been taken into custody by police because they've posed an immediate threat to their own safety or someone else's. The proposed center will be staffed by a uniformed officer and psychiatric experts. It will give ill people a place to be taken that's not the jail. The goal will be to stabilize a mentally ill person in the short-term, while using caseworkers to route them in the best direction, whether that's toward the courts in seeking a longer-term, involuntary commitment of the person to the state's mental hospital, or maybe clearing the bureaucratic hurdles needed for them to get plugged back into treatment.

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