HAMPTON, Va. — Where many people see an empty shell of a building on Marcella Road, Hampton’s city leadership instead sees a fix to a growing dilemma.
At the soon-to-be-built BJ Roberts Behavioral Health Center, more than one dozen beds and patient intake chairs are coming to temporarily house patients suffering through a mental health crisis in the region.
It's an addition that Hampton Police Division Chief Jimmie Wideman believes can’t come soon enough.
"We give it our best efforts, but there is always going to be a gap in the ability to provide services they’re truly in need of," Wideman explained to 13News Now. "We’re not mental health professionals."
Virginia's 'bed of last resort' law could leave those in crisis far from home
In calls for crisis when someone is a risk to themselves or others, police officers often bear the burden of the first emergency response and have to place patients under an Emergency Custody Order (ECO). After eight hours, an ECO may become a Temporary Detention Order (TDO) if it's believed care is still needed for the patient.
But Virginia law, often referred to as “The Bed of Last Resort,” requires state psychiatric hospitals to accept a patient under a TDO if a private bed can’t be found, no matter how far away that bed may be from the patient's place of origin.
In 2023, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee published a report outlining how Virginia's psychiatric hospitals are often completely full or operating at a capacity not deemed "safe." This supply and demand dilemma may mean in some cases, police officers sometimes have to travel away from the cities they serve to drop off patients at an open bed.
"Until that occurs there needs to be a law enforcement officer with them to facilitate that transport. We averaged at one point 700 hours a month where officers are with someone in a mental health crisis," Wideman said.
When asked if he believes there's a solution that can lift that burden:
“I don’t have an answer. I just know there is a need and the way the law is written, it limits officers. But unfortunately, it takes us away from a great deal of other responsibilities."
Custody orders have risen in some Hampton Roads cities, declined in others
13News Now obtained data on both emergency custody orders and temporary detention orders across the seven cities over the last two years.
Hampton
Hampton is one of several police agencies in Hampton Roads that experienced a rise in that period. The city saw a rise of almost 200 patient cases among emergency custody orders, with 462 in 2022 and 654 in 2023. According to Wideman, TDOs rose from 663 to 778 between 2022 and 2023.
The hours spent on those calls rose from 6,743 in 2022 to 8,077 in 2023.
“For us, the numbers have been rapidly increasing and our resources have not, so there is a dilemma that we can’t provide all those services because we’re providing these services for mental health," said Wideman.
Newport News
Similarly, in Newport News, the department saw an increase of 71 cases when combining both ECOs and TDOs. It increased from 851 in 2022 to 922 in 2023, a data request shows. The qualifier is that those numbers only reflect subjects taken to Riverside Regional Medical Center.
Suffolk
When combining ECOs and TDOs, the City of Suffolk saw a drop from 457 in 2022 to 437 in 2023. The total hours on those responses dropped from 9,194 hours in 2022 to 7,217 hours in 2023.
Norfolk
In Norfolk, a spokesperson for Norfolk Police Department noted that NPD does not track hours spent on these calls. However, according to data they gathered from the local Community Services Board, ECOs dropped from 689 in 2022 to 589 in 2023. Temporary detention orders also dropped from 931 in 2022 to 692 in 2023.
Chesapeake
According to a request completed through the city's FOIA office, emergency custody orders dropped from 698 in 2022 to 655 in 2023. The department does not track temporary detention order data or hours spent on those cases.
Virginia Beach
Virginia Beach Police Department provided a thorough breakdown of these custody orders in the department, which saw a decrease of ECOs in 2022 from 334 to 293 in 2023.
Virginia Beach Chief Paul Neudigate issued caution against seeing the numerical drop in Virginia Beach as a full representation of that dilemma. While the number of ECOs dropped for the Virginia Beach Police Department, TDOs increased from 477 incidents to 607 incidents in 2023. This accounted for a 28% rise in cases, with an increase of roughly 2,000 manhours spent on those calls, too.
"ECOs and TDOs only account for 2 percent of total calls from 911, but they tie up our officers 10 percent for dedicated time," Neudigate said.
Portsmouth
The Portsmouth Police Department is the one police department that could not complete the data request without manually going through court records.