At the Boulder County Jail, incarceration means an immediate mental health evaluation, and it begins at the booking desk.

When a detainee is suffering a mental health crisis, Rio Grande county deputies and staff keep watch from a desk just steps outside the holding cells. Periodically, they enter the cell to check on the person and offer calming words. But they are not trained mental health professionals.

Forrest Williams spent more than a year in the Arapahoe County jail -- not for any crime, but awaiting mental health treatment so the 25-year-old could be deemed competent to face charges of threatening Judith Wilson, Williams' mother.

A jail deputy suffered permanent injuries and lost his career after an attack by a mentally ill inmate. But remarkably, he says he holds no grudge against the man who nearly killed him and never wanted him to be prosecuted.

A woman who attacked a deputy while suffering through a mental health crisis said the incident saved her life by giving her access to the treatment she needed.

Hundreds of people are in Colorado jails, presumed innocent while awaiting trial, but are stuck there because the state has failed for nearly a decade to provide mental health services, including mental competency evaluations.

A Pueblo police officer used his crisis intervention training to save an armed man who seemed determined to die in a suicide-by-cop.