Police Chief James Joyce addresses the Saranac Lake Village Board of Trustees on Monday. (Enterprise photo — Amy Scattergood)

SARANAC LAKE — At Monday night’s meeting of the village Board of Trustees, the police took center stage. Police Chief James Joyce addressed the 5-member board and the near-capacity, physically distanced audience on the subject of police response to mental health calls.

The issue had been brought up two weeks ago at the first in-person board meeting since both the pandemic and the national outcry in response to the murder of George Floyd. At that meeting, High Peaks DSA, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, and Sunrise Adirondack, a local climate change advocacy group, called for the creation of a community health worker program. Currently, mental health crisis calls are made to 911.

In the last 10 years, the Saranac Lake Police Department received 851 calls categorized as mental health calls, said Joyce, who further noted that the number was likely under reported. Many of those calls came from friends or family members of the person in crisis, as well as area facilities coping with people who threatened violence to self or others.

“These are emergency interventions,” said Joyce, not situations where people are confusing the police with counselors. Joyce then detailed how police officers are trained to deal with mental health calls, both at the academy and on the job.

“It’s not always an ideal situation, but it’s an important part of the safety net,” Joyce said. “It’s something that we deal with so frequently that the officers get pretty good at it.”

The meeting soon segued into a discussion of police reform, a subject that was on the agenda because of a vote on the spending of more than $11,000 to hire a company called Lexipol to assist in village police training.

In the wake of Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and the national protests demanding police reform, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order requiring local police departments to reinvent and modernize, putting plans in place by April 2021 in order to be eligible for future state funding. Lexipol, a for-profit contractor based in California, has been brought on to help smaller municipalities restructure their police departments, using templates to rewrite police policies and manuals.

During the public comment period, a long line of people directed ad hoc and prepared statements in response to both Joyce and the trustees, most registering opposition to hiring Lexipol. The two issues quickly dovetailed, as many of the commenters pointed out that there were low- and no-cost alternatives to hiring an outside company, and that some of those alternatives, including trained volunteers, could help address mental health issues.

“Half of the police calls are necessary because there’s no one else to call,” said Erin Cass, who is High Peaks DSA co-chair. Cass called for any working group considering the hiring of Lexipol to be open to the public.

“Village police reform should be community led,” said Sam Balzac, whose father Fred is running for a seat on the board in the upcoming Sept. 15 election. It was an opinion further repeated by others in the audience, who asked that any vote be tabled.

“We’re getting our feet on the ground,” said village Manager John Sweeney after everyone finally sat down and the public comments were closed. “There was no intent not to have public comment. I do see additional community involvement in this.”

There will be two board elections — in September and March — before the governor’s deadline on police reform implementation.