Communities across the Bay Area are finding ways to deal with mental health crises without involving police. The city of Antioquia created its own civilian crisis response team, and 12 months later the mayor said the results were positive.
Exactly one year has passed since the city of Antioch. has set up a “community response team.”
Measuring success in areas like this can be difficult, but the numbers look good. One number stands out from the rest.
zero. This is the number of people who have died in police custody since the creation of community response teams. Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe said that’s exactly the outcome he wanted.
“In my first month as mayor of Antioquia, I died in custody, which led to this situation. A month later, I died in custody again. It hasn’t died. It’s been dead since we launched this,” Hernandez-Thorpe said. “That to me is a sign of success.”
The program is contracted through the nonprofit Felton Institute.
To highlight Monday’s one-year anniversary, the mayor also rode a horse with his team. Their first stop was a strip mall, where crews said they received multiple reactions throughout the day.
Program manager Nick Jenkins said most of the calls are about disturbances by homeless people in the area.
“We have no access to customers at all,” Jenkins said. “All we can do is deal with the situation. ‘Hey, guys, can you turn down the music? Can we move on?’ It’s either yes or no, but we… treat everyone with the respect they deserve.”
A business owner named Tony came in to complain about the lack of police response and the small size of the crisis management team.
“Two people can’t solve these problems! Three people can’t solve them! You need more bodies, you need help! I need help, you need help, he too. We need help!” he told the response team and the mayor.
In fact, one of the goals of the program is to reduce police non-emergency responses, and the mayor said that’s another area of success. Police resources have been reduced following the alarming racist text scandal, with crisis teams already receiving 500 calls a month. This frees up the remaining officers to tackle more serious issues.
“Initially, we didn’t know if these 911 calls were going to come in right away,” said Curtis Penn, division manager at the Felton Institute. “But to our surprise, the numbers are starting to go up there. We knew there was a need, but the relationship with dispatch is really important, and 500 calls a month is a lot. This is a good number and we expect it to continue to grow.” ”
Police have now notified the crisis management department. On Monday, they called for help trying to evict a group of homeless campers on Railroad Avenue.
A police officer at the scene said: “We are trying to do everything we can to evict them…”
There, two team members approached the campers, first to talk, then offered water and snacks. The idea is to act as an intermediary and calm the situation to prevent a more aggressive reaction by either the subject or the police.
“They depend on us PD as much as we depend on them, so it’s a support issue,” said Gina Peterson, community response specialist. “Yes, I have a great relationship with PD.”
Hernandez-Thorpe said she believes the program is working, but the first $1 million in federal funding is running out.
“If we have to get money from somewhere to continue operating and we have to restructure our budget, we will do that,” he said.
The names of the community response teams are: angelo quintoa young Navy veteran who was killed in 2020 after police were called to deal with a mental health crisis.
For now, they plan to ask the City Council to allocate funding to continue and expand response teams to prevent someone’s personal crisis from becoming a community tragedy.