Portland Expands Its Street Response Team Into A Community Safety-Style Department—“An Equal Part Of The City’s Public Safety System, Alongside Police And Fire.”
For KGW8, Portland’s NBC News affiliate, Blair Best reports on Portland City Council passing a resolution last week to expand the Portland Street Response team, “formally establishing [it] as an equal branch of the city’s public safety system… to take some of the burden off first responders like police and firefighters.”
The department, which has been responding to mental health calls since 2021 when it first launched, will now be expanding its ranks and reach to 24/7 service across the city. Its staff receive the full “designation as first responders, with all the associated [employment] benefits,” and the team “will also get direct dispatch through 911.”
Here’s what local leaders are saying about the shift:
- Portland Police Bureau: A spokesperson for the city’s police department told the news channel that Portland Street Response “are a valuable piece of Portland’s public safety system, and we work with them regularly. We hear on the radio all the time officers asking for PSR, and it gives those officers another option for someone who doesn’t need police assistance but needs help in other ways … We’re happy to do our part and welcome an expansion of their program.”
- Portland Mayor: Keith Wilson told the news that he is “optimistic about the PSR expansion, especially as they now have the freedom to take someone to shelter or to sobering beds under recent policy changes. Previously, PSR staff had to sit and wait with someone until a cab could come pick them up… ‘PSR is an important resource in our public safety system.”
- Emergency Dispatcher: April Roa, a 911 dispatcher who now works as a program manager for Portland Street Response, explained that “I’ve had officers who have gone out [to mental health calls for service] because we needed to send somebody and they’ve gone out there and tried to connect with folks, and they came back to me saying, ‘’I felt ill-equipped to be able to handle that’ and ‘Why did I get assigned to that call?’… I was not always sending the right response to the right calls, and this was a gap that I saw… that’s why I joined Portland Street Response — is to be part of that solution.”
Related: In a recent national public opinion survey, Safer Cities found that voters overwhelmingly support Community Safety Departments, with 82% saying that they support their city creating a Community Safety Department that functions as a “separate but coequal department alongside police and fire departments.” Read the full results here.