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

Mobile Response and Stabilization Services teams are composed of “social workers, peer support, and other trained [medical] professionals who work with the young person and their family” during a mental health crisis.

Portland is poised to form what other cities around the country are calling a “third branch of public safety” co-equal with the police department and fire department, often called a Community Safety Department, which houses a city’s civilian responder teams.

When a call for mental health service came in, Portland Street Response team takes the call, but if that person needed additional services—perhaps transport to treatment facility or a shelter—the team used to have to call in other first responders like the Portland Police Bureau, taking up additional police resources and slowing down the medical services that a person in crisis needed. But that changed this month when city officials transferred those duties to Portland Street Response—elevating the team with the capabilities that other first responders like police, fire and EMS deploy.