When Bill and Faith Piersing called 911 last November, they believed they were doing the right thing. Their son, 23‑year‑old Bailey, who has bipolar schizoaffective disorder, was in crisis. The family had previously called for emergent help and officers had taken him to a hospital. This time, the two deputies who arrived “insisted on making contact,” Bill Piersing told Bridge Michigan/Associated Press, and the situation escalated.
“They came in the house and made him a felon,” he said.
Bailey was charged with two felony counts of assaulting, resisting or obstructing a police officer causing injury. Through a plea agreement, he was sentenced this week to 10 months in jail and 30 months of probation on a single count, with credit for 148 days already served. His parents say he bit an officer during the confrontation — “that was it,” Faith Piersing said — after officers had him on the ground.
The scene in the Piersing home is one of thousands of mental‑health‑related calls Michigan law enforcement answers every year. Detroit police alone responded to more than 16,000 such calls in 2024, about 40 a day. Researchers estimate that at least 10 percent of the nearly 12.5 million annual 911 calls statewide involve behavioral health crises.
Advocates say the Piersings’ experience points to a system that funnels people with severe mental illness into courts and jails rather than providing consistent, trained help. “All I know is the results of my efforts have been futile,” Bill Piersing said. “A lot of people understand, but nobody can do anything.”
Milton Mack, a former Wayne County probate judge who helped draft recent reform proposals, likened the current process for accessing mental health treatment to telling someone with cancer to “come back when you’re stage four.”
Some communities are trying to make improvements. Ottawa County, where the Piersings live, has operated a crisis intervention team since 2021 and a co-response program — pairing mental health clinicians with law enforcement — during business hours. Tim Piers, the county’s director of crisis services, said the goal is to expand coverage to 24/7 by the end of 2026, eventually handling the thousands of annual behavioral-health calls the county currently receives.
Statewide, a state-funded office launched last year is working with law enforcement agencies to adopt the crisis-intervention-team model, which provides 40‑hour blocks of in‑person training on mental health disorders, de‑escalation tactics and partnerships with people who have lived experience. Kevin Fischer, who directs the office and also runs NAMI Michigan, points to research showing communities that adopt the approach see lower rates of officer injury and better utilization of behavioral health resources.
“You can’t afford not to invest in this,” Fischer said. The office, however, operates on a $500,000 annual budget and will close in October unless the Legislature renews it. “A half million dollars is a drop in the bucket compared to the return on investment,” he added, noting that incarcerating a person with mental illness costs three to ten times more than getting them services through the community mental health system.
Despite widespread support — more than 80 percent of local sheriffs and police chiefs endorse alternative response programs, according to the University of Michigan survey — adoption lags. In rural counties, where dollars and personnel are already thin, the barriers are largely practical: few behavioral specialists are available, safety protocols for unarmed responders are unclear, and funding for ongoing programs is uncertain.
Debra Horner, the survey’s senior program manager, said the concentration of resources in urban centers makes alternative response “relatively easy to envision” there, but “in the places in which it’s relatively easy to develop and initiate this, they’ve done it.”
Against this backdrop, two dozen bills are moving through the Michigan Capitol. The legislation, supported by both parties, would make it easier for families to initiate involuntary treatment earlier, extend court-ordered outpatient care, and allow some misdemeanor defendants with mental illness to be diverted into treatment rather than jail. Mack, the former probate judge, believes the measures would be “a substantial improvement” and says previous reforms have been proven to work.
The Piersings have lost faith in the system. They plan to move out of Ottawa County once Bailey’s legal situation is resolved, searching for a place with robust mental-health services that can help their son live on his own when they are gone. They will not call 911 again.
“If this is their help, yeah, I don’t want it,” Bill Piersing said. “We were having a crisis and trying to get help, and that didn’t do anything but throw gas on the fire and get us in this predicament that we’re in right now.”