What if 911 dispatched mental health responders
[Music]
call me weird but i love a good
ride-along
like love them i’ve been on ride-alongs
across the world
in amsterdam and canada and boston and
even right here in denver
and what i’ve learned is that people
call the cops for a number of reasons
anything from a lost cat to a neighbor
they just want to know more about
to maybe a loved one or a stranger
having a mental health crisis
but really at the heart of it people
call 9-1-1
because they just don’t know what else
to do
what i’ve learned though is that
sometimes when you call 9-1-1
it can make a bad situation even worse
maybe a loved one is arrested or they’re
placed on a 72-hour hold
there are fines and fees and criminal
charges
and sometimes calling 9-1-1 can be the
beginning
of the end of someone’s life now
you might think i’m here to talk about
abolishing the police
not exactly actually here to talk about
a different solution
a solution that takes care of a person
keeps our communities safe and helps the
police
to focus on what they do best enforcing
the laws
for me it all started with a visit to
eugene oregon
you see i had just passed a ballot
measure here in denver called caring for
denver
to provide more mental health and
substance use services
for people in crisis right here in
denver
when a friend tipped me off to a program
in eugene
normally when you call 9-1-1 you get a
firefighter
a police officer or a paramedic but in
eugene
there’s a fourth option a mental health
professional
and an emt who ride along in a van and
respond
to mental health calls the program is
called cahoots
studies show that nearly 50 percent of
victims of police brutality
have a disability predominantly a mental
health disability
we have a huge problem with mental
health in this country
the fact of the matter is police simply
don’t have the tools
to respond to a mental health crisis
and we’ve seen that when we don’t
adequately fund
mental health and substance use services
and use our jails in our prisons
as de facto mental health clinics we
actually end up
in much worse situations and people’s
mental health
is no better for it so i went along to
eugene to learn more
i went through a training and yay
finally another ride-along
i got in the van and went with the
cahoots team
about 20 minutes into our call we were
called to respond to a man in a mental
health crisis
immediately i was shocked at how nice
the neighborhood was
middle-income neighborhood kids out
playing
there was even a young boy on a tricycle
in the driveway
it was just a normal day we met up with
a woman who was the wife
and we asked her what was going on she
informed us that her husband
was locked in the bathroom and he was
talking about
ending his life he had box cutters we
went inside to talk to him
and he explained to us through a closed
door that
he simply couldn’t do it anymore he was
erratic he said he wasn’t going to put
his family through these burdens
anymore and he just wanted to end
we talked him through that closed door
for nearly an hour
and in the end he just wouldn’t come out
so we left about 30 minutes after
leaving we were called to come back on
scene
you see the police had been called he
had box cutters
a weapon but they knew we had been there
first
so the police they waited for us
we got there and the police were able to
convince the man
to turn over his box cutters he got
dressed
and he came out of the bathroom and then
something magical happened you see the
police started to retreat down the
stairs
the cahoots team they stepped up
they’d got the man to sit on the couch
and talk to them and then
they knelt down to his eye level because
he wasn’t a threat
and neither were they we sat there
and we talked for about three hours
now i was back a little bit and i could
see
on a desk that they had in the hallway
piles and piles of papers
unpaid medical bills i knew what he was
going through
the cahoots team talked him about his
financial burdens they talked to him
about resources
and they eventually made a plan to get
him to help the next day
he even ate a sandwich and they took his
vitals the entire time
when we left he was a different person
and so was i
sadly the situation is all too familiar
for me
you see my sister has been in and out of
the criminal justice system
for about 30 years you know
we thought she was just an addict later
we found out that she had
untreated trauma from a sexual assault
we didn’t know what to do we didn’t know
how to help her
so when i flew back to denver i thought
about my sister
i thought about this man and i knew we
could do better
in denver you see what intrigued me so
much about eugene
is that the police and the mental health
crisis team they work together
in cahoots an elite team of specialists
trained to respond
to people having a mental health or
substance use crisis
see it was the police that convinced the
man to surrender the box cutters
but it was the cahoots team that stepped
up connected the mandar resources
and listened you see i have been
fighting for criminal justice reform
my entire career and sometimes
it can seem so daunting there are 7 000
prisons and jails across the united
states
2.3 million inmates
for millions of americans judges
attorneys correctional officers cops
mass incarceration is a livelihood to
fix the criminal justice system
we must look critically at every piece
of the puzzle
find out what’s working and fix what’s
not
if there is one thing that’s clearly not
working
it’s the one size fits all approach
outside of eugene oregon that man would
have been placed on a 72-hour hold he
could have been incarcerated
he might even have died he would have
been under
more financial stress and burden
and his mental health would have been no
better
two million people are booked into jails
and prisons
every year and the national alliance for
mental health
they’ve reported that 83 of these folks
don’t have access to mental health care
a well-functioning criminal justice
system uses the
right tool at the right time why are we
asking our police in our prisons
to fix our mental health crisis that’s
not what they do
eugene uses a standard system of triage
what’s happening
right now and what does a person need
right now
but then they have the tools to back it
up
a team of trained professionals who have
the time
resources and energy to get the person
to the services they
need denver launched our co-response
model in 2016.
we launched star baby cahoots in june
today we have 22 co-responders mental
health professionals
who ride along with law enforcement
officers we have 11 caseworkers
in addition we dispatch the star team a
paramedic
and a mental health professional in a
mobile crisis unit
who are trained to deal with someone in
a mental health emergency
they stabilize them they de-escalate the
situation
and they connect someone with the
resources that they need
ongoing care
so far the results have been nothing
short of miraculous
star has had a thousand calls since june
they have had to call the police for
backup zero
times additionally the co-responder
model
has led to a less than two percent rate
of tickets or citations
and the best part the cops love it in
fact the thing i hear the most
is why don’t we have star in my precinct
yet
cops are even working alongside of
co-responders
to deal with their own mental health
traumas they’re talking through their
issues with people that they actually
trust
and we found this not only makes law
enforcement officers safer
but it keeps the profession safer as a
whole
we call the foundation caring for denver
because caring is at the heart of it
we care about the people we listen to
their concerns
and we connect folks with the resources
that they need
it’s a kind approach to criminal justice
yes
but it’s also a logical one not every
problem can be solved by the police
and not everyone should go to jail when
we talk about criminal justice
what we’re really talking about is
people people are at the heart of it
we deserve a better approach one
with empathy and humanity so let’s be
smart about criminal justice
and use the right tool at the right time
thank you