FREMONT — Jon Thomsen stood in the doorway of a Fremont home, offering calming words and open ears. Moments earlier, the man inside the home had threatened to kill his family and himself.

Thomsen had rushed to the scene to ensure that wouldn’t happen.

Thomsen isn’t a cop, and he’s not a licensed therapist. He is a peer support specialist.

In recent years, police departments across Nebraska and beyond have increasingly turned to mental health professionals to better serve people in crisis and minimize interactions with law enforcement. But those efforts have stalled in some instances due to a lack of practitioners, especially outside the larger metro areas.

That’s a problem the Fremont mental health co-responder program set out to address. Rather than rely on a therapist, Thomsen fills

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