as the Attorney General investigates a deadly police shooting in Fort Lee Advocates are pushing for a new approach to handling mental health calls in the burrow and around the state arrived together the program that pairs mental health professionals with police officers is not implemented in forly and Advocates argue this weekend's violence could have been prevented with the appropriate response to a mental health crisis Ted Goldberg spoke to Residents and Advocates about the shooting and the push to expand arrived together I was shocked that a shooting actually happened and I was even more shocked that it happened in my building nothing really happens in Fort Lee people in Fort Lee are still stunned by last weekend shooting at the Pinnacle apartment complex fared perago Brown has lived here for 3 years it's like super like supportive and calm and everybody helps out each other so I was like sh shocked to learn that something happened he was sleeping on Sunday morning when a woman was shot and killed by a police officer five floors below him it's still scary to like know that someone that I could have known that lives in this building could be gone now police were here responding to a 911 call the Attorney General's office which is now investigating the shooting says a man called 911 to report his sister having a mental health crisis no body cam footage has been released and we don't know the name of the woman who was killed I feel like I need to know like what exactly happened so I can like have a perspective cuz I don't know if anybody's life was in danger so I can is like I wasn't there to I don't know what happened my initial concern was where was mental health in this picture Carolyn bamp leads the Mental Health Association in New Jersey she wonders if there would have been a different outcome if mental health professionals responded along with police a partnership between law enforcement and mental health is so essential and each system has operated separately for a long long time um the arve project is an attempt to bring those two together she's in to arrive together the Statewide program that pairs mental health professionals with police to respond to certain 911 calls while the state pays for expenses individual municipalities must opt in and Fort Lee has not the nonprofit Care Plus is a partner for arve together in Bergen County but they don't provide service for Fort Lee specifically if arve together was present in in Fort Lee uh we likely wouldn't be here today Jason Williams is an associate professor of Justice study at Monclair and a big proponent of arve together the public probably even thinks that police officers are trained in these matters but that isn't the case and and I think what the arriv together program does is it brings together police officers who are sort of retrained on these issues alongside with mental health workers people who are trained and knowing how to respond to these individuals Williams believes this police shooting may be the Catalyst for implementing arve together everywhere I think this will probably uh caused the attorney's general office to sort of think about how we might want to expand that fully Statewide and not just cherry-picking certain municipalities where we perceive these issues to be most prevalent Williams says Fort Lee could use arrive together and that a major obstacle is getting local law enforcement to sign on and they have to have the will right to to be able to admit that okay we we have these problems you know and when we think about Fort Lee we've not seen Fort Lee if you will the news around matters of police malpractice so forth and so on so I I understand the inclination to probably suggest that okay Fort Lee doesn't need this but this incident shows that they in fact need the arve together program in Fort Lee Fort Lee police did not offer comment for this story bamp says if people see someone suffering from a mental health crisis they should try to call the suicide and crisis Lifeline 988 rather than 911 we have a call center and people on our call center are 988 strictly 988 people who answer those calls and mental health centers and entities across the state are having these 988 people embedded there so that you always have someone if you call 988 anytime night or day somebody will speak to you who will understand a mental health background or substance use background the AG's office did not respond to our request for comment before our deadline in Fort Lee I'm Ted Goldberg NJ Spotlight News