As part of our Return on Response campaign, a coalition-founded initiative highlighting the life-saving, cost-effective impact of partnerships between behavioral health providers and first responders, we’re spotlighting programs that are making a difference in communities across Washington state. One of these programs is SOUND Behavioral Health’s co-response model in Tukwila and Burien, which embeds Mental Health Professionals alongside law enforcement to deliver more timely, appropriate interventions to community members struggling with mental health and substance use challenges.
For the past five years, a SOUND Mental Health Professional (MHP) has been embedded in the Tukwila Police Department to provide behavioral health support on mental health- and substance use-related 911 calls.
What began as a one-year pilot program, launched by former Tukwila Police Chief Bruce Linton to bring mental health professionals into a support role and help connect some of the community’s most vulnerable members to appropriate resources, has since grown into a lasting partnership and critical part of the local crisis care continuum.
And it has continued to evolve. Today, two MHPs are embedded in the Tukwila Police Department, responding alongside officers to assess needs, de-escalate crises, and connect people to care and support that can help stabilize their situations and promote recovery.
The model has expanded beyond Tukwila, as well. SOUND also embeds an MHP within the Burien Police Department, a role that has been in place for more than three years.
Joe Vela, crisis services director at SOUND, attributes the program’s growth and success to the trust built over time with the law enforcement agencies and to SOUND’s shared commitment to showing up for community members and officers alike when support is needed most.
“We have strong relationships with both the Tukwila Police Department and the Burien Police Department, and those partnerships have allowed us to not only sustain the co-response program, but also to expand its reach,” said Vela. “Both departments have long recognized the benefit of having behavioral health professionals as part of local emergency response, and that has led to stronger collaboration and better outcomes for many people in the community.”
Taking a Different Approach
The co-response partnership in Tukwila grew out of a goal set by department leadership to address the recurring cycle of repeat contacts with individuals whom officers knew would be better served by connection to behavioral healthcare than by continued interactions with emergency departments or the criminal justice system.
By having an MHP respond on-scene with officers, the aim was to create a greater level of trust and understanding that could help individuals accept care and give officers the right support to make those connections to services possible.
The same is true in Burien, where an embedded MHP has played an important role in reducing unnecessary law enforcement interventions and helping connect people to more appropriate care.
In each community, SOUND MHPs respond with accompanying officers on calls involving a mental health or substance use concern. That can include individuals experiencing a behavioral health crisis, people in emotional distress, or those threatening to harm themselves or others.
On these calls, MHPs arrive alongside police and focus on assessment, de-escalation, and care coordination. Once any immediate safety concerns have been addressed, officers are often able to return to other calls for service, while the MHP continues working with the individual.
This approach allows each responder to focus on the role they are best equipped to play, makes more effective use of community resources, and helps save time and money while improving access to quality care.
Recent data from SOUND’s co-response program in Burien offers a closer look at the community need these teams are responding to. In 2025, co-responders documented 917 dispatches, reflecting the consistent demand for behavioral health support alongside law enforcement.
The data also highlights the complex needs of the individuals served. More than one-third of those reached (322 individuals) were experiencing homelessness, pointing to the critical intersection of behavioral health and housing instability. At the same time, others were living in permanent or temporary housing, reinforcing that behavioral health crises impact people across a wide range of living situations.
Leveraging the Continuum
What makes co-response especially effective is the network of resources that surrounds it. Local hospitals, school districts, care providers, community partners, and other behavioral health services all play a role in helping people move from crisis toward stabilization and recovery.
SOUND offers many services that its co-response teams can tap into, including outpatient and intensive outpatient therapy, residential services, supportive housing assistance, and additional Mobile crisis services that extend the continuum of care available to co-responders and law enforcement partners across King County.
One such service is SOUND’s Mobile Rapid Response Crisis Teams, or MRRCT (pronounced “meerkat”), specially equipped two-person units made up of behavioral health professionals and certified peer counselors. Like co-responders, they are designed to de-escalate mental health and substance use crises, provide immediate support, and connect individuals to care.
MRRCT works alongside the co-responder teams in Tukwila and Burien, and responds to needs across South, East and North King County, providing a bridge to immediate crisis care and ongoing recovery support.
More recently, SOUND has also expanded this work through partnerships with additional law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Way Police Department, where a Mobile Rapid Response Crisis Team works directly out of the department. This model reflects a broader effort to deepen collaboration with local jurisdictions, including ongoing work with the Redmond Police Department and social services partners to strengthen coordinated, community-based responses to behavioral health crises.
Unlike a traditional co-response model, the MRRCT in Federal Way does not require law enforcement to accompany every response. Instead, by being embedded with the department, the team can closely monitor the dispatch system and respond to behavioral health-related crisis calls more directly and more quickly.
That location has helped the Federal Way MRRCT achieve an average 26-minute response time. And that speed is making a meaningful difference.
“In crisis, minutes matter,” said Vela. “The faster we’re able to get to someone, the better the opportunity for a positive outcome. That’s the value of both our co-responder teams and MRRCT. By embedding these behavioral health resources within local first responder agencies, we’re integrating care into the response system itself, and that is incredibly powerful.”
Vela strongly believes in the model and has high hopes for continuing to expand MRRCT and similar partnerships across the other communities SOUND serves. Again, he points back to trust and the importance of strong relationships.
A Return on Response
What SOUND is accomplishing across King County is transforming crisis response, saving time, money, and lives through innovative care models that prioritize the right response at the right time.
“Return on Response is about recognizing the real value of partnership,” said Katrina Egner, CEO of SOUND. “By working alongside first responders, our teams are helping create a crisis response system that is more connected, more responsive, and better equipped to serve people and communities over the long term.”
Learn more about the Return on Response campaign here.