Non-Police Crisis Response: Explained

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We have a lot of exciting things planned for 2024. For now, let's get back to our regularly scheduled programming with this story about non-police crisis response (and as always, a round up of criminal justice news). See you again next week!

Non-Police Crisis Response: Explained

by Meg O'Connor

Over the past three years, tens of thousands of people in crisis have been met with behavioral health specialists and social workers instead of police officers. Interactions like these are taking place across the country more often today compared to previous years. While unarmed crisis responders have existed for decades, public outrage over the 2020 police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daniel Prude, and many others prompted cities to create new ways to respond to people in crisis.

Police are often called to respond to situations involving people experiencing mental health crises—with disastrous results. According to The Washington Post's database of fatal police shootings, at least 1 in 5 people fatally shot by police since 2015 were experiencing a mental health crisis at the time. More than 40 percent of the people incarcerated in state prisons nationwide had a history of mental health problems, according to data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. In the absence of better healthcare, municipalities often turn to police and jails to house and "care" for people in crisis—big-city jails like New York's Rikers Island and Los Angeles County's Twin Towers Correctional Facility are often referred to as some of the largest mental health institutions in the country, for example. Experts say criminalizing people for their health problems only makes things worse.

"We're just catching and releasing," said Mariela Ruiz-Angel, director of Albuquerque, New Mexico's Community Safety department, which sends health professionals to certain 911 calls. "If anything, people come out of the jails more drugged up than they came in."

To break that cycle, dozens of cities nationwide have launched alternative crisis response programs. While these programs can take many different forms—and typically work best when they are tailored to the needs of the local community—they generally involve sending mental or behavioral health professionals to respond to certain kinds of emergency calls, such as welfare checks or calls involving suicidal ideation.

Courtesy of the Dayton Mediation Response Unit

How They Work

Albuquerque created its Community Safety department in 2020. Community Safety is its own city department, like the fire department or the police department, and is considered the city's third branch of public safety, Ruiz-Angel said. It is one of the largest crisis response programs in the country, with 130 employees. When a call comes into 911 that the Community Safety department is eligible to respond to, dispatchers will send one of three types of Community Safety teams.

In Dayton, Ohio, the city established a Mediation Response Unit (MRU) in 2022 to respond to low emergency 911 calls, such as calls involving disputes between neighbors, child custody exchanges, or barking dogs, Raven Cruz Loaiza, a coordinator for the program, said in an interview. The MRU is small—just seven members—and is a program under the umbrella of the Dayton Mediation Center, a city agency. MRU members are unarmed and wear black pants and maroon polos with "Mediator" written on the back. The goal is to resolve conflicts between community members without police involvement.

"We might show up for the barking dog, but then we get there and there's like seven years of issues between the neighbors," Cruz Loaiza said. "We try to get people to come together and have conversations[…]Once, I ended up sitting on someone's front lawn while I held this man, rocking him as he sobbed. Everything in his life had just caught up to him."

In other cities, community members have created non-police crisis response teams without city involvement. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the Anti Police-Terror Project, an organization dedicated to ending police violence, founded M.H. First Oakland, a community-led crisis response program. MH First Oakland has seven volunteers and is available on Fridays and Saturdays, Cat Brooks, one of the organization's co-founders, said. Between 2 p.m. and 2 a.m., community members can call a hotline to receive help with issues like intoxicated people, mental health crises, or domestic violence safety planning.

Early Results

While many crisis response programs are new, they're already delivering results. Since it began operating two years ago, the Albuquerque Community Safety (ACS) department has diverted more than 33,000 calls from the city's police department, according to data shared with The Appeal. In a significant portion of ACS calls, the department connected the person in crisis to service providers—such as shelters or substance use programs—instead of jail cells. A 2022 Stanford University study of Denver's crisis response program found that reports of low-level crimes fell by 34 percent in neighborhoods where the city's Support Team Assistance Response (STAR) program operated. The study also suggested that the crisis-response team saves taxpayers money, as incarceration is more expensive than treatment and support services.

Interviews with seven experts leading crisis response programs and a review of such programs nationwide identified common factors that help crisis response programs flourish. Effective crisis response programs are tailored to their communities' needs, created with input from residents, have buy-in from both community members and the police department, often start slow with small pilot programs, and rigorously collect data to build confidence among stakeholders and the public.

Experts from several crisis response programs interviewed by The Appeal said that their programs began with a small set of eligible calls but have been so well received that they have already been able to—or are looking to—take on more.

"We started out with nine call types, now we're up to 21 call types," Dayton's Cruz Loaiza said.

In North Carolina, the city of Durham established its crisis response department about two and a half years ago, said Ryan Smith, director of the city's Community Safety Department. The 50-person department runs the city's Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Teams (HEART) program, which it launched in June 2022. HEART has several components, Smith said: there's crisis call diversion, which puts mental health professionals in the 911 call center and allows mental health responders to de-escalate crises over the phone. Smith said HEART employees also follow up on these calls and check in on people later.

The city also has community response teams, which are three-person units consisting of a licensed clinical social worker, an emergency medical technician, and a peer support specialist. These teams are dispatched through 911 and handle calls for issues including trespassing, intoxicated people, welfare checks, and suicides without a weapon. Smith said these teams often transport people and carry supplies like snacks, clothing, tents, and sleeping bags.

This is an excerpt. Click here to continue reading the story on our website.

IN THE NEWS

Florida deputy Michael Kunovich approached 18-year-old Vergilio Aguilar-Mendez in the parking lot of a motel for allegedly trespassing. Bodycam footage shows deputies yelling at the teenager, who does not speak English, throwing him to the ground, and tasing him. Kunovich collapsed after arresting Aguilar-Mendez and later died at the hospital from heart problems. Aguilar-Mendez, who lived at the motel, is now being charged with aggravated manslaughter. [Marilyn Parker / News4Jax]

Medical staff at a California jail let Nicholas Overfield’s HIV-positive diagnosis devolve into AIDS by denying him life saving medication—even though they had his prescription and knew he needed it to survive, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Overfield’s family. [Jason Kandel / Law and Crime]

In more than 700 cases over a five-year period, Georgia reported inadequate housing as the sole reason for removing a child from their family. Advocates say it would be less expensive and more effective to simply help families get housing instead. [Stephannie Stokes / WABE and Agnel Philip / ProPublica]

The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that people under the age of 21 cannot be sentenced to life without parole, becoming the first state in the country to do so. [Jonnette Oakes / Jurist]

A new initiative by Adams State University in Colorado employs incarcerated people with graduate degrees as college professors—and ensures that they are paid the same rate as adjunct professors teaching on the university’s pain campus. As a result, incarcerated professor David Carrillo is paid $3,600 for every class he teaches at the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility. [Jason Gonzales and Charlotte West / Chalkbeat and Open Campus]