Date
10-14-2026
Department
School of Behavioral Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD)
Chair
Patrick Slowinski
Keywords
co-responder model, police, crisis response, CIT, behavioral health
Disciplines
Law | Psychology
Recommended Citation
Schwent, Austin D., "Law Enforcement Perceptions of an Integrated Co-Responder Model: A Qualitative Case Study at the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office" (2026). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 8971.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/8971
Abstract
Law enforcement personnel often serve as first responders to behavioral health crises, yet limited research has examined agency-based co-responder models staffed by embedded mental health professionals. This descriptive, non-evaluative, site-specific generic qualitative case study examined commissioned personnel’s descriptions of the benefits and challenges of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office Crisis Response and Mitigation Unit (CRMU) and perceived operational differences from external partnership models. The anonymous PowerDMS questionnaire served as the primary participant-derived source and produced 91 routing-item responses and 528 nonblank narrative response units; three organizational artifacts supplied procedural, historical, and structural evidence concerning the bounded case. The researcher manually coded the questionnaire data in NVivo 15, organized open codes into nine analytic categories, completed Context, Input, Process, Product (CIPP) indexing and Framework charting, developed six provisional candidate themes, and tested them through artifact pattern matching, a thematic-saturation assessment, and negative- or boundary-case review before confirming five final themes and completing a SWOT synthesis. Respondents described the CRMU as a specialized co-response resource, associated its involvement with communication, de-escalation, and favorable perceived crisis outcomes, identified staffing and after-hours limitations, generally perceived the embedded model as more practical than external partnerships, and framed broader adoption as a staffing, resource, and implementation decision. Agency leaders may use these context-specific results for planning and carefully evaluated replication; the researcher did not infer causal program effectiveness.
