When it came to ending the standoff that closed Highway 97 near Orondo for several hours Monday night, playing a big part in that was Chelan County's Behavioral Health Unit. Chelan County Sergeant Rob Huddleston calls it an unbelievable resource that relieves a lot of pressure on him and the deputies:
Anna Johnson heads the Behavioral Health Unit; she says Monday night's standoff put the unit is a different role than it usually involved in:
Many cities and law enforcement agencies are looking at the unit as a model for their own agencies. Johnson says the number of contacts it has made in the past two years has exploded, from more than 35-hundred in 2022 to 6-thousand, 770 last year.