As a Wake County sheriff's deputy, Dave Descourouez spends an awful lot of time on the road - in other counties. So do his colleagues.
"Oh, I've been to Ahoskie, and Rocky Mount, and Hickory, and Jacksonville," said Descourouez, who estimates he's taken 150 trips since joining the department six years ago. On these jaunts, he's not investigating crimes or transporting criminals.
He and his colleagues are carrying psychiatric patients from Wake County to mental health facilities with open beds. And the cost - in man-hours and, ultimately, dollars - of that duty for Wake and other sheriff's departments across the state is staggering.
In a survey of North Carolina's 100 sheriff's offices, departments statewide reported more than 32,000 trips last year to transport psychiatric patients for involuntary commitments. They reported devoting a combined total of more than 228,000 work hours to the job, according to the survey conducted by Wake County's chapter of the National Alliance for Mental Illness.
And the survey doesn't even include local police departments. Last year, for example, Raleigh police answered nearly 2,000 commitment calls, more than five a day, insidecity limits. In Gaston County, the Gastonia police handle transportation, even to far-flung psych units, during the day, while the sheriff handles commitments that occur at night.
But under state law, it's the counties that are responsible for the transports. And in most counties, it falls to the sheriff's office to transfer patients outside county lines.
Increasingly, as Descourouez can attest, these are not just short hops to Butner, where the state built a regional psychiatric hospital to replace Dorothea Dix. Instead, the deputies are driving out to Greensboro, Jacksonville, Charlotte. Even as far away as Asheville and Morganton. The Wake County Sheriff's Office estimates its average transport trip takes about four hours. But, according to the NAMI study, the median transport time for the state's 100 counties is double that.
4-hour trip costs $218
Wake Sheriff Donnie Harrison said transporting psych patients represents a massive commitment of time and money. A four-hour trip, at $27 an hour for a deputy, costs $108. To travel 200 miles, at 55 cents a mile, that's $110 in vehicle costs. Total: $218. And that's a short trip.
Still, Harrison acknowl edges, he's better off thanmany of his fellow sheriffs.
"Imagine being a sheriff out on the coast, having to send a deputy to Buncombe County [in Western North Carolina]," Harrison said. "They need to pack a lunch."
Or an overnight bag. Gerry Ackland, the Wake NAMI head who gathered the statistics, noted that 14 sheriff's offices reported having a deputy wait with a patient for five days or more until a bed in a psychiatric unit came open. That's part of the "transport" cost, too.
"It's appalling," Ackland said. In small departments, the burden is especially intense.
Pitt County Sheriff Mac Manning said that on a normal shift, he typically schedules 10 officers - one supervisor, one domestic violence officer and eight patrol deputies.
"If you've got two or three deputies dealing with a psych patient, that means only five deputies on the streets for the entire county," Manning said. Finally, Manning said, he hired a couple of retired officers who are on-call to handle mental health transports exclusively.
"I want to keep as many of my active officers as possible protecting the public safety," he said.
So do his fellow sheriffs. But with cuts in mental health services pitching more patients into crisis - and with fewer psychiatric beds available - there are no easy solutions.
Return trips, too
And remember, after a patient has been delivered to a facility hours away, he or she might spend three to five days there getting through the immediate crisis - only to need a ride home again. Guess who gets to pick the patient up?
Complicating the situation is a state law requiring that a female deputy accompany a female patient. Nearly half of all psychiatric patients needing a transfer are women. But only 12 percent of Wake deputies are female.
Not that this particular task helps with recruitment.
Harrison said some of his female deputies spend far toomany shifts carting patients back and forth to psych hospitals, rather than doing the law enforcement work they thought they were signing up for.
In Cabarrus County, Sheriff Brad Riley said he often has to call in off-duty female officers - on overtime pay - to make the transports.
For delivering female patients, Wake has looked at other solutions, including male deputies with cameras mounted in their patrol cars. But money's tight.
So, as the number of transports continues to increase, the sheriff has turned to Wake NAMI for another sort of help: volunteer riders. Female only.
About 20 women have volunteered to be on call to ride with patients. A core group has even volunteered to be ready in the dark of night.
Currently, Harrison's department is checking the volunteers' backgrounds. Then the department will train the volunteers. Harrison said he hopes to get them on the road with his deputies, and the patients, in the next month or so.
"I just hope it lasts," he said.
Riley, the Cabarrus sheriff, said something's got to give.
"This has been very cumbersome," he said. "There's just too much time spent in the car rather than here at home, responding to calls."
