Crisis stabilization centers, which provide “substance use disorder and behavioral health support services” for people experiencing acute mental illness or intoxication, give first responders an alternative to bringing a person in crisis to a jail or emergency room.

Our new poll finds broad bipartisan support for Quick Response Teams that deploy experts trained to prevent overdose deaths.

Last year, Albuquerque, New Mexico, launched the country’s first community safety department—an unarmed civilian force that takes a public health approach to protecting public safety. Albuquerque Community Safety deploys different types of first responders, including a “community responder” division, which “responds to minor injuries or incapacitation, abandoned vehicles, non-injury accidents, needle pickups, or other calls for service in the community.” Safer Cities conducted a poll to gauge how the concept of a community responder unit would be received by voters across the country.

Community Violence Intervention—What They’re Saying; Three new mobile crisis response programs launched this Fall; An Update From Columbus, Ohio responders program.

“We want to return the vibrancy, the beauty, the healthy feeling of the streets of the Mission, but we want to do that without criminalizing poverty… and we believe the community ambassador program is the way to do that.”

Over the summer, Los Angeles County announced that it will add 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.” As these novel approaches to transit security launch, Safer Cities conducted a poll to gauge public support for civilian transit ambassadors.

There’s an emerging bipartisan political consensus that cities need to get Narcan—a life-saving drug that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose—into the hands of as many people as can responsibly administer it. And a new Safer Cities poll with Data For Progress (methodology) shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans would welcome that change.

Lawmakers, researchers, advocates, and journalists use different names to refer to a space that provides people with a safe and supervised place to use drugs in an effort to curb overdose deaths. Does it matter what you call them? The results: Yes, what you call these facilities matters.

Our results show there is also a strong, bipartisan support for unarmed security ambassador programs. Cities and counties should consider replicating West Hollywood's program. But we also suspect there is a broader lesson to learn here: there likely is a healthy public appetite for a range of innovative programs that solve real problems for residents and do so without forcing armed encounters or wasting critical law enforcement resources.

In the two years since George Floyd’s murder, America has made significant progress towards re-envisioning the role that first responders, including the police, play in keeping communities safe. Minneapolis is further along than nearly anywhere else—having added a range of new unarmed public safety responders and related services, which collectively are shifting the city’s public safety ecosystem.

Oregon is the first state to be approved for 85% Medicaid reimbursement for mobile crisis response services. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “strongly encourages other states to follow Oregon’s model …”

Our suggested readings this week revolve around a central theme: as opioid deaths reach historic highs, promising new overdose prevention programs are taking shape—and federal funds and opioid litigation settlement dollars could help launch more of them.

“This is about which expert should respond to a 911 call,” Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, who helped spearhead HART’s creation, told Safer Cities: “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. That’s the kind of crucial work that HART’s crisis intervention specialists do everyday, and this is what it looks like to fully fund public safety in Harris County—we’ve got law enforcement, we’ve got mobile crisis response, and we’ve got community violence intervention. We are sending the right experts to solve the right problems.”

Data For Progress has a new national poll on gun violence produced in partnership with the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention. Here’s what you need to know.

“This is going to be very positive for law enforcement because it does two things: One it frees up the police officers so they can do police work, so they can go out there and look for the burglars, robbers, things that we are trained and know how to do. And the other part of it is, we are getting healthcare professionals who can help law enforcement help people through their crisis … when people are calling 911 and they are going through a mental crisis then we can send a professional there to help them through their mental crisis instead of just sending an officer there with a badge and a gun.”

For context: San Diego County has 16 mobile crisis teams responding to calls involving acute mental health crises. Each team includes a mental health clinician and two other healthcare experts. The two authors of this opinion piece are the director of the city’s Health and Human Services Agency and the director of the agency’s Behavioral Health Services Division. They help oversee the county’s mobile crisis response program.

Over the past two years, mobile crisis response units have transformed from theoretical idea to functioning program in cities across the country. Here are two key findings from a new national Safer Cities survey that capture the widespread public support these programs continue to enjoy.

Mental health crises, including suicide, have risen significantly on college campuses over the past decade. But a police response can inadvertently heighten trauma for students, healthcare professionals say. That’s why a number of universities are launching mobile crisis outreach teams, led by mental health experts, to serve as first responders for students in crisis.

Scaling public safety programs, reducing crime with mental health care, second-chance hiring, and effective safe consumption sites.

988 is not just a more user-friendly crisis hotline, but a catalyst for a desperately needed transformation in how the country responds to acute mental health issues.