After over a decade-long battle, Doña Ana County will be getting a new mental health facility to treat people who have been taken into police custody.

"The jails have become the mental health hospital," Doña Ana County Commissioner for District 4 Scott Krahling said.

That's exactly why the county approved a $2 million mental health facility called the Crisis Triage Center.

The Crisis Triage Center will sit next to the Doña Ana County Detention Center and will treat people who pose a danger to themselves or to others because of a mental disorder, but haven't committed any actual crime.

The way it stands now, police have two choices in how to handle people who are mentally ill and may be a threat to others or themselves. Police can either take them into custody and arrest them, or bring them to an emergency room. Usually, Krahling said, the individuals are brought to jail to avoid the hours-long wait in the hospital.

"That may exacerbate their delusions," Executive Director of the Forensic Intervention Consortium of Doña Ana County
Ron Gurley said.

Gurley has been a long-time advocate for the center for nearly 12 years. His daughter has been in and out of the county system for years because of mental illness and Gurley said the Crisis Triage Center will give these people the help they deserve.

According to the Doña Ana County Sheriff's office, there were 234 mentally ill people arrested in the county in 2011.

"Now, they can get them settled down, get them stabilized," Gurley said.

Krahling said that in the event that someone actually fakes a mental illness, the center will immediately catch the fraud.

"I think if someone is taken to the Crisis Triage Center, they'll meet with the case worker and the case worker will be able to identify whether or not they're really suffering from a mental illness," Krahling said.

Treatment for patients at the center will be publicly funded.

The county said it hopes to have the center up and running within six to ten months.