- Across the Texas border in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a more established version of Harris County’s HART program has recently responded to its 10,000th call. Albuquerque Community Safety Department (ACS) is “a city cabinet-level agency [and] the first in the nation to provide a non-law enforcement response to non-emergency incidents involving homelessness, mental health, and substance abuse incidents—dramatically freeing up both law enforcement and fire department resources,” Joseph Kolb described last week in The Crime Report.
- KRQE, a local news outlet, explained ACS’s origins and how it works: “Billed by Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller as a professional training civilian force with a ‘public health approach’ to public safety, ACS now has dozens of unarmed social workers who respond to various behavioral health crises. The city said the team would likely respond to mental health, drug addiction, public inebriation, homelessness, ‘down-and-outs,’ and other low-priority calls like abandoned cars and traffic management.” (Listen to the full KRQE podcast on how “social workers are responding to crises in Albuquerque.”)
- The program counts Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina as a fan: “This innovative new department is already helping to free up our officers so they can respond to high-priority calls. This third branch of public safety bridges a gap, and provides residents with the response they deserve,” the chief wrote last Fall.
