Three Things To Read This Week
1. Seattle Set To Launch Its “Third Public Safety Department.”
For The Seattle Times, Sarah Grace Taylor reports on Mayor Bruce Harrell's announcement that the city will invest $26 million to establish the “Community Assisted Response and Engagement department” as “a new branch of the city’s public safety response—along with the police and fire departments.”
The CARE Department aims to “improve public health and safety by unifying and aligning Seattle’s community-focused, non-police public safety investments to address behavioral health, substance abuse, and [other] low-risk calls for service through diversified programs that are equitable, innovative, evidence-based, and compassionate.” The department will have three divisions:
“Emergency call takers and dispatchers in the 911 Center;
“Community-focused public safety responders including behavioral health professionals;
and violence intervention specialists.
What Seattle’s leaders are saying about CARE:
“Building on lessons learned locally and from around the country, we will build a stronger public safety system and a safer Seattle for all residents,” Mayor Bruce Harrell.
“This could be a model for the country,” Police Chief Adrian Diaz.
CARE will “deliver rapid civilian public health assistance to community members in crisis and frees up police to focus on preventing and solving crimes.” Councilmember Andrew Lewis.
Seattle’s CARE Department is “modeled after the one in Albuquerque, N.M.,” as The Seattle Times reported. Launched in 2021, Albuquerque’s first-in-the-nation Community Safety Department houses the city’s mobile crisis response, violence intervention program, and street outreach responders program that assists people experiencing homelessness. And, like Seattle’s CARE Department, Albuquerque’s Community Safety Department has earned praise from the local leaders, including the police chief (“This innovative … third branch of public safety … provides residents with the response they deserve [and] frees up our officers so they can respond to high-priority calls.”) and the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico (“hundreds, thousands of folks that are experiencing mental illness episodes and homelessness … [now] are greeted first by somebody who is not carrying a badge and gun, but instead by somebody who is equipped to handle their issues.”)
Community Safety Departments Enjoy Overwhelming Bipartisan Support:
Three-in-four voters nationally (75%) support “creating a community safety department that would function as a separate and coequal city department alongside the police and fire”;
Nearly nine-in-ten voters nationally (89%) “strongly agree” that “community safety departments would make their city safer and free up the police to focus more resources on solving serious crimes.”
A robust majority of voters nationally (62%) believe that unarmed civilian responders programs such as community violence intervention, security ambassadors, and mobile crisis response “should be part of one city department, which could be called a Community Safety Department.”
Fact Sheet: Here’s a short-guide to community safety departments, which includes a more comprehensive list of the programs and services that fit under this centralized civilian first responder agency.
2. Momentum For Sobering Centers Keeps Growing.
For the DesMoines Register, Virginia Barreda reports on the city’s new sobering center which will serve as “a one-stop-shop” resource center and “a safe place for people seeking support and treatment for alcoholism and other types of services.” Polk County Supervisor Angela Connolly told the newspaper that the center, which will include “a walk-in mental health clinic and crisis observation center,” “is really the last piece [of mental health infrastructure] that our community is missing …. We’ve got the 23-hour crisis and behavior health clinic … We’ve got mobile crisis … but this Sobering Center we have not had, so that’s the last missing piece that we’ve always wanted to get at.”
What’s A Sobering Center? Sobering Centers give people who are intoxicated a place to sober up until they are not a danger to themselves or others. They also provide a safe place to receive mental health treatment, including medically-assisted detox, peer support and aftercare.
Cities around the country are creating sobering centers:
Washington, D.C. opening two sobering centers “designed to divert drug users from emergency rooms and jail cells,” as Jenna Portnoy reports for The Washington Post. D.C.’s new facilities will “be the first of their kind in the District, which is suffering the second-highest rate of fatal opioid overdoses in the nation with an annual death toll more than twice that of homicides.” The centers will “operate 24/7” and give residents a place to “get a bed and other wrap-around services [including] medically-assisted treatment with buprenorphine, mental health counselors and peer support specialists [who will] keep in contact with people after they leave.”
Butte County, California “to spend opioid settlement toward sobering center… to divert people from jail,” Michael Weber reports for the Enterprise-Record. Staffed by trained nurses and counselors, the facility will provide services like “medical triaging, access to naloxone, rehydration, food, shower, laundry, substance use education, and facilitation of warm handoffs for substance use treatment centers.”
Austin’s Sobering Center “effective in diverting people away from the hospital or jail,” Sam Stark reports for Austin’s local NBC affiliate KXAN. Travis County’s sobering center “opened as an alternative to jails or hospitals for intoxicated people and has been successful in diverting around 2,700 people from hospitals and over 5,224 people from going to jail” while “saving taxpayers [over] $50,000 in [what would have been spent on jail] booking fees.”
Research demonstrates that sobering centers are effective. A recent study published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine found that sobering centers are “excellent alternatives to the emergency department for care of acutely intoxicated patients and provide an opportunity to address the social aspects of alcohol use disorder while simultaneously reducing healthcare costs.” More from the study on why sobering centers work:
“Excessive alcohol consumption accounts for an estimated $24.6 billion in healthcare costs and patients are often referred to the emergency department for expensive care. Current literature suggests sobering centers are an alternative to acute hospitalization and are safe, relatively inexpensive, and may facilitate more aggressive connection to resources such as longitudinal rehabilitation programs for the acutely intoxicated patient.”
3. Minneapolis Launching Transit Security Ambassadors Team.
For Governing, Jared Brey reports on Minneapolis’s new Transit Rider Investment Program, or TRIP, an “ambassador-style [team] to help improve the transit experience [that will] check fares, enforce codes of conduct and help connect people experiencing homelessness and addiction with social services agencies.” A recent presentation from city officials gave a helpful look at where residents want the teams deployed and what their core duties will be:
Minneapolis is just the latest city to establish a Transit Security Ambassador team:
In Los Angeles, California the Metro Transit Ambassador Program placed 300 unarmed, uniformed transit ambassadors to watch over the county’s trains and buses to “create a culture in which the ambassadors [act as] the front line, managing the lion’s share of incidents in transit [and] reserve law enforcement and armed responses to those incidents that truly warrant it.”
In Cleveland, Ohio the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority launched its unarmed “highly visible, uniformed civilian force created with the goal of preventing violence and disruptive behavior, providing assistance during medical emergencies and maintaining a vigilant watch over rail stations, transit centers and bus lines … [The] team includes crisis intervention specialists who are trained and have expertise in using conflict resolution skills to help people experiencing mental health crises.”
In Washington D.C., the Metro Ambassadors “tamp down on crime spikes [and] boost security without hiring or deploying more police officers.” D.C. Metro’s General Manager Randy Clarke said the ambassadors help to “provide great service [and are] another additive layer to make sure we have more visibility for safety, security and more thinking about the customer in everything we do.”
Transit Security Ambassadors Are Likely To Deter Crime Due To The Sentinel Effect. Lesley Kandaras, Metro Transit’s general manager, lauded the creation of the Transit Safety Ambassadors as “an opportunity to increase official presence on our system, to add more eyes and ears.” That’s the same sentiment that the director of a similar program—Deputy Chief Angela Averiett, who oversees the public transportation ambassador program for Bay Area Rapid Transit—recently expressed “just them being in a train may stop someone from smoking crack or from defecating in a train car…I think it really makes people kind of think twice before they do something that’s illegal or harmful to themselves or others.” What these leaders are expressing is known as the sentinel effect—clearly visible eyes and ears make crime less attractive—is more important than even the power of apprehension. There is a solid body of evidence for the sentinel effect, and the theory that cities are putting into practice is that security ambassadors can serve this role.
Transit Security Ambassador teams enjoy robust public support. A recent Safer Cities poll found 75% of voters support “the creation of an unarmed transit security ambassador unit where they live.”
