What Is This?

Mobile crisis teams are mental health professionals dispatched through 911 to behavioral health emergencies — suicidal ideation, psychotic episodes, substance use crises — instead of law enforcement.¹ Sarah Henrickson, co-founder of Madison, Wisconsin’s CARES crisis program, describes the logic: “You wouldn’t call your plumber to fix your teeth. You want the expertise to match with what the issue is.”²

What Actually Happens On A Call

A mother in Harris County, Texas calls 911.³ Her teenage daughter has taken pills from the medicine cabinet and locked herself in her bedroom. The mother needs help, but she’s afraid of what happens when a sheriff’s deputy arrives.

In Harris County, the 911 dispatcher has an option that didn’t exist before 2022. Instead of a deputy, the dispatcher sends HART, the county’s mobile crisis response team. HART is based in the county’s public health department and composed of crisis intervention specialists, clinicians, and case managers.⁴ The team arrives without sirens, without weapons. They talk to the teenager. She comes out. She gets the care she needs.

That’s the first response, but it’s not the only response. In the days and weeks after, HART’s case managers follow up. They connect the teenager to mental health treatment. They work with the family to resolve the immediate crisis and help prevent the next one.⁵

Other programs describe the same approach to follow-up. In St. Petersburg, Florida, the CALL program “never closes a case,” according to Police Special Projects Manager Megan McGee. “They do as much follow-up as needed so that the client engages with long-term services.”⁶ In Austin, Texas, EMCOT provides up to 90 days of transitional crisis services after the initial response.⁷ In Guilford County, North Carolina, a specialized team reduced one group’s non-emergency 911 calls from 344 to 4 in a single month.⁸

Who’s On The Team

The core responder is typically a licensed mental health clinician at the master’s level (a social worker, counselor, or psychologist) paired with a peer support specialist, someone with direct personal experience of mental illness, substance use recovery, or homelessness.⁹ Durham, North Carolina added peer support specialists to its HEART crisis teams because, as program leaders described, the specialists “include people in recovery or who have lived unhoused in Durham and understand social service systems that often seem opaque and inaccessible. That’s been essential to building trust.”¹⁰ In Portland, clients of the city’s crisis program described the difference in direct terms: mobile crisis responders “treated us like humans.”¹¹

Some teams also include paramedics or EMTs with behavioral health training. Oklahoma City’s program, housed in the fire department, pairs “trained social workers, peer support specialists and paramedics” on every team; the team “tackles overdose response, providing treatment, support and follow-ups to people struggling with substance use.”¹² Several programs add dedicated case managers for follow-up after the initial crisis.¹³

These teams arrive in plain clothes, in unmarked vehicles, without weapons.¹⁴

Both police and fire are usually on a time crunch. We’re designed to be able to stay on the scene as long as needed.

Seattle CARE team member, KOMO News¹⁵

Austin’s crisis team members “typically stay on scene for about an hour, then follow up within 24 hours,” according to KVUE.¹⁶

Where These Teams Sit

Several cities now operate mobile crisis teams as what Durham, North Carolina’s Community Safety Director Ryan Smith calls a fourth option alongside police, fire, and EMS: “We only had three buckets to put 911 calls: police, fire, and EMS. But there’s a whole bunch of other reasons people call 911. And a lot of those calls have historically been sorted into the police bucket.”¹⁷ Albuquerque created the first cabinet-level Community Safety Department in the nation, which Police Chief Harold Medina described as a “third branch of public safety” that “bridges a gap, and provides residents with the response they deserve.”¹⁸ Other cities house teams in fire departments, health departments, or as standalone programs. Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis framed the approach: “This is about which expert should respond to a 911 call. When it’s a robbery in progress, or a shooting, then obviously we need to send an armed sheriff’s deputy. But if we are talking about a person sleeping on a sidewalk, or a teenager who is suicidal and swallowed pills, then we need a behavioral health expert to respond.”¹⁹

NYU’s Barry Friedman reported “more than 130 alternative response programs operating across the country” as of 2024.²⁰ A National Research Institute survey the same year identified over 1,800 mobile crisis teams nationwide, a broader count that includes individual teams within multi-team programs. According to American Police Beat Magazine, “14 of the 20 most populous cities in the United States are in the process of implementing or exploring programs, with combined annual budgets exceeding $123 million.”²¹

The Safety Record

Three data points from documented programs illustrate the safety record. Minneapolis reported that “not a single unarmed responder has been seriously injured.”²² In San Diego County, “over 98% of calls have been diverted from armed law enforcement.”²³ In Denver, police have never been called for backup during STAR interventions.²⁴

What Happens After The Crisis

In King County, Washington, the Seattle Times reported that mobile crisis teams bring people to facilities offering “everything from 23-hour observation to 14-day residential stabilization,” with “guaranteed acceptance” for anyone brought by first responders.²⁵ The 2025 SAMHSA National Behavioral Health Crisis Care Guidelines reported that mobile crisis services produce “23 percent lower average cost” compared to other crisis services and “reduced inpatient hospitalization costs by approximately 79 percent.”²⁶

The Bottom Line

Mobile crisis teams send licensed mental health clinicians and peer support specialists to behavioral health emergencies through 911 instead of police. They arrive without weapons, can stay on scene for extended periods, and follow up for days or weeks. Programs vary by city in team composition and institutional home; some operate as standalone departments, others sit within fire or health departments. More than 130 programs (over 1,800 individual teams) now operate nationally, including in 14 of the 20 largest U.S. cities. Documented safety data from cities like Minneapolis, San Diego, and Denver shows zero or near-zero serious responder injuries and minimal police backup requests.