What Is This?

A 911 dispatcher in Albuquerque pulls up a call: an intoxicated man slumped outside a gas station, unresponsive to passersby. Three years ago, that call went to police. Two officers would arrive, lights flashing, hands near holsters, and try to rouse a man who needed water and a ride, not a badge and a command voice. Now the dispatcher routes it to the city's Community Safety Department.¹ A trained community responder arrives in a branded vehicle, no weapon, no arrest authority. The responder sits with the man, checks for medical distress, connects him to a sobering center or shelter. No force. No arrest. No emergency room.

That shift, replicated across more than 120,000 calls in Albuquerque alone,² is what a Community Safety Department does. The distinction from other crisis response programs is organizational: a CSD is not a program. It is a department.

A Department, Not a Program

Civilian crisis response programs now operate across the country. Denver sends civilian crisis teams to mental health calls.³ San Diego County fields 44 civilian crisis units across the region.²² Portland dispatches unarmed responders to behavioral health emergencies.⁴ These are programs, each with a specific scope, each housed inside an existing department (public health, fire, or police) or run by a nonprofit contractor.

A Community Safety Department is structurally different. It is a cabinet-level city agency, co-equal with police and fire, with its own director, its own budget line, its own training academy, its own headquarters, its own HR pipeline, and direct accountability to the mayor and city council. Where a program is one team doing one thing, a department houses multiple teams doing multiple things under a single chain of command.

What a CSD Is Not

Five distinctions matter for anyone evaluating this model:

Not "defund the police." CSDs operate alongside police departments, not instead of them. In Albuquerque, the police budget is more than twenty times larger than the CSD budget.¹⁵ Polling conducted among 2,400 registered voters found that 89% agree these departments "allow police departments to focus on solving serious crimes."¹⁶ The argument that drew the broadest agreement in polling:¹⁶ "Community safety departments are about sending the right responder to address every problem. When the call is for a robbery in progress, we should send the police. When the call is for a mental health crisis, we should send trained mental health professionals." That language drew 82% agreement in national polling.¹⁶

Not co-response. Co-response programs pair a clinician with a police officer. CSD responders arrive independently, without armed accompaniment, as the primary and often only responders to their designated call types. These are structurally opposite models: co-response keeps police as the primary responder with clinical support; a CSD removes police from the encounter entirely. Some CSDs maintain a small co-response capability for the narrow set of calls involving weapons or threats where both clinical and security presence are needed, but the default model is civilian-only.

Not privatization. Polling shows 68% of voters want CSD staff to be city employees, not private contractors.¹⁶ Durham's model reflects this preference: Department staffers work for the city rather than a private contractor, "so they can't refuse calls that fall within the program's criteria."⁸ Polling also found that 80% of voters agree there is "more accountability and transparency when the city hires and manages community safety departments staff directly."¹⁶

Not traditional social services. Social service agencies provide ongoing case management from offices. CSDs deploy field teams that respond to live situations. The responders are dispatched through 911. They go to the person, in the moment, wherever the person is.

Not any single program type. A city can run a mobile crisis team without building a department. Many do. Denver's crisis team lives in the Department of Public Health and Environment.³ Harris County's program lives in county public health.¹⁷ A CSD creates a purpose-built department rather than tucking a team inside an existing agency. Polling shows voters prefer the unified model over separate programs.¹⁶

The Two Existing CSDs

Two cities have built functioning Community Safety Departments — departments with multiple programs under unified command, city-employed staff, co-equal institutional standing with police and fire, and integration with 911. A handful of others have pieces of the model and are building toward it.

Albuquerque, New Mexico, built the nation's first standalone Community Safety Department in 2021 under Mayor Tim Keller. Albuquerque Community Safety (ACS) is a cabinet-level agency now led by Director Jodie Esquibel.⁵ Founding director Mariela Ruiz-Angel was promoted to Associate Chief Administrative Officer, overseeing ACS, the Office of Emergency Management, the Office of Equity and Inclusion, and Health, Housing, and Homelessness.⁵ The department has three divisions: Field Response, Violence Prevention and Intervention, and Administrative.¹⁹ Within Field Response, the department deploys Behavioral Health Responders to mid- and low-acuity behavioral health calls, Community Responders to lower-acuity nonviolent calls, and Street Outreach Responders to encampments and people experiencing homelessness.¹⁹ A small Mobile Crisis Team of independently licensed clinicians co-responds with police to high-acuity mental health calls involving weapons or other safety concerns, but the vast majority of the department's call volume is handled by civilian-only teams.¹⁹ The department also operates a Violence Intervention Program with a 91.8% success rate in preventing repeat offenses, and in August 2025 opened New Mexico's first Trauma Recovery Center.² The department employs 140 staff.² It runs a training academy, now partnered with Central New Mexico Community College, that produces cohorts of new responders.⁶ It occupies a dedicated 10,800-square-foot headquarters deliberately located in a neighborhood with high concentrations of addiction and behavioral health needs, and in July 2025 opened a second field office on the city's west side.⁷ ²⁴ Mayor Tim Keller called the headquarters a "massive symbol that we are never going to give up on anywhere in our city."⁷ No other city is close to this level of institutional development. From the array of programs under one roof to the training academy producing credentialed responders to the branded vehicles and dedicated facilities, ACS is the reference implementation for the CSD model.

Durham, North Carolina, built its Community Safety Department with four functional areas housed under the Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Teams (HEART) program: field teams for non-violent behavioral health calls, a co-response unit for calls involving weapons or threats, a dispatch division with clinicians embedded in the 911 center, and a follow-up case management division.⁸ In July 2025, the department reorganized these into two direct-service divisions: 911 Crisis Response Teams and Stabilization Services.⁸ All staff are full-time city employees with benefits, including enrollment in the North Carolina State Retirement System.⁸ The department reports directly to the city manager, co-equal with police, fire, and EMS.⁸ Director Ryan Smith described the original four functional areas as "pieces of a larger idea."⁹ Durham is the only CSD with multiple published independent evaluations.¹⁸ᵃ It has responded to more than 32,000 calls and freed more than 10,000 officer hours.¹⁸ Durham is a legitimate CSD — multiple programs under one roof, city-employed staff, co-equal institutional standing, integrated with 911 — but its scale and scope remain well behind Albuquerque's.

Cities Building Toward a CSD

Several cities have elements of a Community Safety Department and have articulated aspirations to build one. What separates them from the hundreds of cities that simply operate a crisis response program is that they have either established multiple programs under a single community safety umbrella or secured formal co-equal status with police — and they have stated intentions to build further.

Portland, Oregon, formalized Portland Street Response as "an equal branch of the city's public safety system" through a June 25, 2025 City Council resolution, with plans to expand toward 24/7 service citywide and a directive to explore granting staff full designation as first responders with associated employment benefits.¹⁰ The co-equal status is real. But as of early 2026, Portland Street Response operates one primary program — crisis response — with a $10 million annual budget and 52 staff, and responded to more than 15,000 calls in 2025.²³ It is a department with institutional standing but not yet the multi-program breadth that defines a full CSD.

Seattle, Washington, invested $26.5 million to establish its Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) Department, modeled after Albuquerque, with three divisions: emergency call takers in the 911 center, behavioral health field responders, and violence intervention specialists.¹¹ Under a new police contract signed in late 2025, the city removed limits on crisis responder hiring, enabled direct dispatch of CARE teams to 911 calls without police accompaniment, and allocated $9.5 million to double the number of crisis responders.²⁵ The structure on paper resembles a CSD, and the department has been made permanent. Whether it develops the operational depth and institutional infrastructure of Albuquerque or Durham remains to be seen.

Richmond, California's Office of Neighborhood Safety is an older model that predates the current CSD wave. Created in 2007, it operates its own violence intervention programs with city staff — including the Operation Peacemaker Fellowship, which has been associated with a 55% reduction in gun homicides and assaults in an independent evaluation, and Neighborhood Change Agents who conducted over 5,200 street outreach engagements in 2023 alone.²⁶ ²⁷ Its scope is narrower than a full CSD (it focuses on gun violence prevention rather than the full range of non-police 911 calls), but it operates programs directly rather than just administering grants — a meaningful distinction from most Offices of Community Safety.

Other cities — including Fayetteville, North Carolina, which launched an Office of Community Safety in summer 2025 with four planned teams (community violence prevention, homelessness response, mental health response, and youth initiatives),¹² and Cambridge, Massachusetts, which stood up a Community Safety Department that handled 200 emergency 911 mental health calls in its first year²¹ — have taken early steps. The distance between launching an office and building an operational department with multiple programs, dedicated staff, training infrastructure, and co-equal institutional standing is substantial.

What Happens on the Ground

Durham Director Ryan Smith calls the operational philosophy "drawing near."⁹ Where police response is built around rapid clearance — resolve the call, get back in service — CSD responders spend extended time with a person. Smith described what the department looks for: "What many, maybe all of us, have experienced in life is, we're walking downtown, we see someone in crisis and the instinct is to go to the other side of the street, stay away. What we're looking for are people who will draw near to people at that moment of crisis, that sense of physical proximity, of not othering or judging or being afraid."⁹

Durham deliberately calls the people it serves "neighbors" rather than "clients" or "consumers."⁸

In the field, department responders carry no weapons and have no arrest powers.¹ The calls they handle include mental health crises, substance use emergencies, welfare checks, public intoxication, trespassing, non-injury traffic accidents, abandoned vehicles, needle pickups, and neighbor disputes. Durham's dispatch protocol draws the line clearly: "Suicide threats, welfare checks, public intoxication, behavioral health problems, and trespassing, yes. Anything with a weapon or threat of violence, no."⁸

In Albuquerque, Division Manager Joshua Reeves described a call in which a man threatened to jump from a bridge. Reeves and his team talked the man down over an extended encounter. "Officers now are learning to defer to us," Reeves said, "as sort of the people who might de-escalate."¹³

The safety record across these departments is consistent. Albuquerque's program data shows police backup was needed in fewer than 1% of more than 120,000 calls.² Durham's program data is even more striking: law enforcement support was needed on just 0.02% of calls, and responders reported feeling safe after 99% of their encounters.¹⁴ ¹⁸ These are program-reported figures, not independently verified.

The Scale Reality

Established departments remain small relative to the systems they complement. Albuquerque's CSD handles roughly 3% of the city's million-plus annual calls.¹⁵ The department has operated 24/7 since September 2023, but capacity still falls short of demand. Former director Ruiz-Angel described the demand pressure before the 24/7 expansion: "We have calls pending when we get to the office at 7am and we have calls that we have to unfortunately sometimes kick back to the police department at 8pm."¹⁵ Even after achieving round-the-clock coverage with 140 staff, the department's 3,000 calls per month represent a fraction of eligible volume.²

Durham has expanded to handle more than 32,000 calls and saved officers more than 10,000 hours.¹⁸ But even after a $2 million expansion adding 17 positions for citywide 12-hour daily coverage and a target of 13,900 calls annually, that represents roughly 10% of the city's 911 volume.⁹

The calls these departments handle are calls that do not require an armed officer.

Where This Stands

Two cities — Albuquerque and Durham — have built functioning Community Safety Departments. A handful of others, including Portland, Seattle, and Richmond, have pieces of the model and are building toward it. Fayetteville and Cambridge have launched offices at smaller scale. National polling shows 75-82% public support for the concept,¹⁶ but the implementation gap is stark.

Law enforcement leaders in cities with established departments have publicly endorsed the model. Albuquerque then-Police Chief Harold Medina described ACS as a department that "is already helping to free up our officers."¹⁹ Commander Jeff Barnard went further, publicly calling for the department to receive additional funding and resources.¹⁹ Durham Police Chief Patrice Andrews (retiring May 2026) acknowledged the rocky start: "There was this cloud that hung over the Community Safety Department" from the political fights accompanying its creation, and "many patrol officers were initially skeptical, believing they'd have to constantly rescue amateurs."¹⁴ Now, she said, "I've heard officers on the radio asking for the department's teams. So there is that change."¹⁴ Minneapolis Deputy Chief Erick Fors said "Feedback from the rank and file has been very positive."²⁰

Then-Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz: "This could be a model for the country."¹¹

The Bottom Line

A Community Safety Department is a city agency, co-equal with police and fire, that deploys trained civilian responders to 911 calls that do not require weapons, arrest authority, or emergency medical transport. It is not a program, not an alternative to policing, and not a philosophical statement. It is an organizational structure that houses multiple response capabilities under one institutional roof. Two cities have built one. A handful more are building toward it. Albuquerque has fielded more than 120,000 calls with police backup needed less than 1% of the time.² The evidence base is almost entirely reported by the programs themselves, not independently verified; Durham is the exception, with two published independent evaluations.¹⁸ᵃ No independent randomized evaluation of the CSD model as an institutional form has been published. Polling shows 75-82% public support across partisan lines.¹⁶ Actual implementation remains rare.