- City Of Minneapolis Pledges To Double Volume Of 911 Calls To Alternative First Responders—Like Mobile Crisis Response Teams—To Ease Reliance On Law Enforcement. As Renée Cooper reported for KSTP News, local leaders in Minneapolis set a goal “to double the number of diverted calls to 20%” to first responder teams, like the Behavioral Crisis Response team, the city’s mobile crisis response division, “over the next ten years”—a dramatic shift that is a “first of its kind for a major city.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a champion of the mobile crisis responder program, told Fox9 news that the shift is possible because “we have entirely revamped our safety system… when we get a difficult [mental health] call in now, it’s not just about sending officers with a gun to this particular problem.”
The shift arrived last year following researchers from NYU School of Law who took a deep dive into the city’s emergency response services data and found that the city was “redirecting roughly 9% of its calls for service” (the city gets roughly 600,000 emergency calls annually) related to mental health emergencies, low-level traffic issues, and animal control, but found areas where the city could expand that volume of calls. “The idea here is this is long-term and sustainable— that’s why we’re moving the way that we are,” Community Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette told the news station about the shift. - NYU Projects: If Top 100 Cities Joined Minneapolis Milestone—12 Million Calls For Service Could Be Handled By “Specialized Alternative Response Systems” To Help “Overburdened Police Departments.” As The New York Times reports, NYU is now offering “technical assistance and research and policy support, including in identifying diversion-eligible calls, as well as access to a growing community of practice,” to any municipality that is interested in achieving this goal.
In recent years, city leaders have launched mobile crisis response teams—there are “now more than 130 alternative response programs operating across the country”—as NYU’s Barry Friedman writes, because “it has become clear that police officers cannot be expected to resolve every social issue or solve every dispute or problem, whether it’s homelessness, a public health crisis… [and] local police leaders have become increasingly vocal about their rank and file being asked to do too much… argue[ing] that sending the police to nearly every 911 call is unnecessary, ineffective, wasteful and dangerous.” More from Friedman on what his researchers, and the cities they work with, are finding:
“Over the past five years, a movement of local alternative response programs that don’t involve the police has flourished and redefined what the 911 system and municipal emergency response can do. The use of trained alternative responders for situations that don’t require the police would mean safer communities for everyone…. [with] the police focus[ing] on serious crimes, and more appropriate responders would deal with mental health crises, fender benders and quality-of-life issues like noise complaints… early published studies show the possibilities… alternative response teams have the potential to reduce crime, ease the burden on the police and better meet the needs of 911 callers.”
Related: As Safer Cities has previously reported, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government also offers technical assistance to municipalities looking to modernize their public safety infrastructure, through “helping participating jurisdictions test and demonstrate methods of developing, improving, and expanding the use of unarmed emergency response teams that can be directly dispatched to 911 calls… jurisdictions receive customized support which can include short-term active coaching for local government staff, access to adaptable implementation template materials and peer government examples, and real-time support from staff and monthly jurisdiction-to-jurisdiction troubleshooting.” The Harvard researchers have already helped roughly two dozen emergency response systems in 35 jurisdictions, across the country.
- Experts Urge Cities To Develop More Mental Health Response Teams. Researchers at the Bazelon Law Center for Mental Health and the Legal Defense Fund released two new toolkits last week to “provide an overview and guidance for community-based services and strategies” for cities interested in launching mental health focused responders, like mobile crisis response teams. The full toolkits are worth reading, but here are the key takeaways, encouraging local leaders to:
- Modernize “Emergency Call Centers [with] staff with mental health expertise who can handle mental health-related calls.”
- Ensure “that where an in-person response is needed, Emergency Call Centers can dispatch mental health professionals.”
- Aid in the “prevention of future mental health crises… [by] helping people secure and maintain housing and find and maintain employment.”
- Provide “training to 911, 988, and police staff about when calls involving people with mental illness or who are experiencing a crisis can and should be handled entirely by the behavioral health system.”