Jo Freedman

Jo Freedman earned a Masters in Clinical Counseling from University of Southern Maine in 2006. Jo is currently the Mental Health Liaison at the Westbrook Police Department. Prior to her current role she was a co-responder with Portland Maine Police Department for 15 years. Jo was also an adjunct professor with the Criminal Justice Department at SMMC teaching Crisis Intervention for the Law Enforcement Practitioner for years. During her tenure at Portland, she developed the PPD program into an internationally recognized Learning Site for co-response models through Council of State Governments and the Bureau of Justice Assistance Law Enforcement and Mental Health Collaboration, being recognized as a subject matter expert. Jo is known for her training, co-response and consulting with agencies in specialized policing response programs: embedded co-responder development and implementation, internationally. She is also deeply committed to officer wellness and its relationship to effective response models. As a peer support member Jo is Critical Incident Stress Management trained and has been honored to co-facilitate numerous debriefs for first responders over the years for multiple agencies.