What if mental health workers responded to emergency calls Leslie Herod
Transcriber:
Call me weird,
but I love a good ride-along.
Like, love them.
I’ve been on ride-alongs
across the world –
in Amsterdam, in Canada, in 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.
I’m actually here to talk
about a different solution,
a solution that takes care of a person,
keeps our community 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 and 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 then – 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 it to end.
We talked to 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 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 to 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.
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 man
to 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 percent 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 and our prisons
to fix our mental health crisis?
That’s not what they do.
Eugene uses the standard system of triage.
What’s happening right now?
And what does the 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-responsemodel 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 called 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.