Albany Care Team launches to respond to mental-health crises

A 911 call for a mental-health crisis in Laramie no longer has to end with only a patrol car at the door. The Albany Care Team pairs the Laramie Police Department with the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, the University of Wyoming Police Department and Volunteers of America Northern Rockies, giving residents a new path from the first response to clinical follow-up.

For a department with 75 employees, including 47 sworn officers, the shift is practical as much as it is philosophical. Officers still answer the call first, but Brian Browne said they are expected to use de-escalation skills or Crisis Intervention Team training while the program moves people toward support instead of another loop through the system.

The program rests on a memorandum of understanding that took effect Nov. 15, 2023, and runs through June 30, 2025, with annual renewals possible for up to five years. The agreement sets the annual salary-and-benefits cost for the case manager at $80,000 and the initial-term total at $130,000, with the county, city and University of Wyoming each contributing to the effort.

At the center of that response is community crisis manager Heather Wiseman. The plan called for her to take phone calls and telehealth appointments through tablets, with the option to respond in person to some calls later on. VOA Northern Rockies has said its broader behavioral-health network includes 24/7 on-call support, daytime on-call case managers and after-hours therapists across all nine of its counties.

The referral path is meant to be broad enough to catch the problems that often sit behind a crisis. City materials showed the case manager embedded in LPD, UW Police and the sheriff’s office, with referrals flowing to community supports that include Interfaith Good Samaritan, the SAFE project, the Cheyenne Housing Authority, Family Promise, VOA supported apartments, VOA Serenity Place, the University of Wyoming Dean of Students Office, Wellspring, SNAP, Social Security and VOA quality-of-life funds.

City work-session materials said the Albany County Mental Health Board had spent several years analyzing mental-health calls, while a subgroup made up of police, sheriff’s, university and VOA representatives worked on a rural community first-responder program. By Jan. 29, 2025, a community crisis case manager had been embedded in the three law-enforcement agencies. By Feb. 11, 2025, the program had 73 total referrals and more than 60 active cases.

A March 2026 city presentation said the program logged 73 total referrals in 2024, 61 ongoing case-management cases and 107 direct contacts. Those are the numbers city leaders are watching now as the Albany Care Team tries to show it can cut repeat police calls, reduce unnecessary emergency-room or jail handoffs, and keep crises from spilling back into Laramie’s streets, homes and public spaces.