- Local Leaders In Iowa City, Iowa, Launch Pilot Mediation Team To Respond To “Calls About Noise Complaints, Disputes Between Neighbors, Loitering.” For The Gazette, Megan Woolard reports on a new 15-month pilot for an unarmed mediation responder team that “will serve as another response to 911 or other crisis line calls typically handled by local law enforcement… typically involving interpersonal conflict… such as noise complaints, disputes between neighbors, custody exchanges and loitering.” Dan Kornfield, who oversaw the creation of a similar team in Dayton, explained to the newspaper that there are a lot of calls for service that do not need an armed responder, a mobile crisis team, nor a fire department medic—that’s where a Mediation Responder Team comes in: “If you call 911 and it’s not a fire and it’s not a medical emergency, it’s [often] automatically police, even if the issue is kids are loitering on the sidewalk, or my neighbor’s trash can is touching my truck, a lot of things we wouldn’t imagine our 911 calls are.” Kornfield added that Mediation Responder Teams can “provide both a better fit response to nonviolent disputes and also helps law enforcement by saving them time and energy from having to respond to noncriminal calls…. having a badge and a gun is counterproductive to a lot of those calls.”
In Dayton, where the first mediation responder model was launched in the country and has now become integrated into the city’s 911 response system, the mediation responder team handles thousands of calls for service a year “that police officers in the past used to handle,” Dayton Daily News reported. The team largely handles complaints like “unruly or misbehaving youth; barking dogs or other pet issues; disorderly individuals; tenant and landlord fights; and assistance with child visitation or custody exchanges.”
- In Whatcom County, Washington, Mediation Team Responded To More Than 2,000 Calls For Service Just Last Year. Whatcom News reports on the county’s mediation team, called the Alternative Response Team, or ART—which the county describes as “a benefit [to] people having mental or behavioral health challenges, and benefit [to] our police personnel, allowing them to respond to other emergent calls requiring law enforcement intervention”—just last year responded to 2,410 calls for service, “acting as a vital alternative to law enforcement.” The team, dispatched via 911 to calls for service related to “welfare checks or disorderly conduct… fills the critical gap between jail and hospitalization.” The two-person teams average a 14-minute response time and focus on “de-escalation and connecting individuals to housing and mental health services” when needed.
