Safer Cities provides coverage and analysis on innovative efforts to deliver more safety for our cities and our country.

Matching the right expertise to the right issue provides better care to people in crisis and enhances public safety. As The Badger reports, “The rise and spread of [mobile crisis response teams] have the benefit of being both pro-police, by relieving stretched law enforcement agencies of a significant number of calls, many of them needing experts, and also being pro-patient, in which folks with mental health issues can have root causes treated rather than their symptoms.”

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) recently issued its 2025 National Behavioral Health Crisis Care Guidelines, offering local leaders a roadmap for expanding behavioral health support nationwide. These guidelines offer local leaders a comprehensive framework for delivering behavioral health support across the U.S., including detailed guidance on implementing Mobile Crisis Teams.

New Study: Mobile Crisis Teams Appear To Be More Effective Than Co-Response.

Policymakers are embracing the need for a trained mental health professional to respond to 911 calls that involve a person experiencing a mental health crisis. The question that remains, though, is whether to send armed law enforcement and mobile crisis response teams—or send the mobile crisis response teams alone? A new study from researchers at Wayne State University in Detroit tackles that question.