ROCK ISLAND, Ill. — On Friday, the Geneseo Police Department collaborated with multiple medical service personnel, crisis teams and social workers to see how they can provide services to those in need.
Detective Jamie Shoemaker says it's important to bring awareness to these resources.
"We help spread awareness for help helping others in our community with mental illness, substance use, or any type of crisis that may come into our community," Shoemaker said. "If we can take an approach to be proactive in our communities to help them find resources, we'll be able to divert them from calls for service and be able to divert them from the criminal justice system in entirety."
According to the CDC, between Illinois and Iowa, nearly 2,000 suicides were reported. That same year, more than 4,200 deaths were caused by drug overdoses. With the "Impact Conference", Detective Shoemaker says she hopes it will help lower the number.
"It's about educating people on what mental illness is and what it looks like, and how it's in all of our communities," Shoemaker says. "It's one in five people, we need to start taking a proactive approach on it."
Detective Tim Steines says he works with students and tries to be a role model for them to follow.
"My job is to be the dad role for them," Steines said. "If I can't fix it at that level of being that dad or that friend or that mentor that somebody that they can look up to, I want to know who I can reach out to help them."
Steines added the conference isn't just for the police department, but "It's for every organization that's out there, you can find something in that as well and describe what we do and see how you can apply it everyday."
For a list of substance abuse resources in the Quad Cities, click here and for a list of suicide prevention resources, click here.
Watch more news, weather and sports on News 8's YouTube channel