Handling over a hundred calls a month as the Grinnell Police Department’s mental health liaison, Faith Repp has come to embody what Chief Michael McClelland called “the future of policing.”
Repp, 39, has worked with Grinnell’s Police Department since March 2022. Repp emphasized the variability of her job. “No day is the same,” she said.
Typically, Repp begins her day by listening to calls that came in from the night before. She then completes follow-ups, either through the phone or in person with an officer, and attends meetings with schools, providers, and other organizations.
Repp usually responds to 100 to 120 crisis calls per month.
“65 percent to 70 percent of those calls are me doing some form of either in-person or follow-up with the subject in particular, their family, or connecting with those resources,” Repp said.
Repp is very involved with the community. She says that this allows her to build partnerships with people.
“We can have those open communications and partnerships, then we’re able to try to come up with a better care plan for that person,” she said. “If a person is willing to seek the help, we can offer it and then they have to do a part of that follow-through on their own in order to get those things aligned. But we recommend it and encourage it.”
A large part of Repp’s responsibilities is appointing those who call to different resources.
“Locally, like if they’re looking for housing, that would go to Kate Slater for the Housing Authority. We have MICA [the Mid-Iowa Community Action]. The city has the Campbell Fund. We have a lot of partnerships with the Ministerial Fund and partners through the churches that assist with various things.”
McClelland said that Repp’s position isn’t all daisies and roses either.
“We have run into a lot of walls, and we still do almost on a daily basis, and that’s not because of her. It’s because the state of Iowa is 47th in the nation for mental health resources. We just don’t have them,” McClelland said. “It is awful, and we are rural Iowa, so we have nothing out here, so we always have to reach out to Cedar Rapids or Des Moines or out of state to find the proper help that these people need.”
McClelland emphasized the heavy workload of the position. “Take a truancy case … She’d have, I don’t know how many [calls] a week, and that could be connected to the alcoholic father at home or the abusive mother at home, so now you went from one to three to four,” said McClelland. “She’s reaching out to Social Services, juvenile court officers, the hospitals, providers, everything.”
Another issue, McClelland said, is when medical providers don’t believe drug and alcohol addiction or mental health is a medical problem.
“We’ve had some very tedious meetings between us and the hospital when it comes to this stuff. They say we should just take them to jail, we don’t have the resources to take them to jail and the jail isn’t going to do anything to serve them. So there are huge obstacles that we still have to face,” he added.
McClelland was a strong advocate for Repp’s position as Mental Health Liason.
“When I got to Grinnell, it didn’t take very long to realize that a large percentage of our calls for service … were for mental health reasons,” he said.
Plans for the existence of a Mental Health Liaison were laid out in the Grinnell Police Department 2021 Annual Report.
According to McClelland, repetitive calls to the police station concerning specific individuals experiencing a mental health crisis decreased as Repp’s time in her position lengthened.
“Within 2023-2024, finally, I convinced the city that we needed her full-time because her numbers were going through the roof, and they still are,” said McClelland.
