Don't Call the Police

Across the country, hospitals are embracing intensive intervention programs to help victims of violence — including those who have criminal histories — after they have been brought in for treatment of injuries. Such programs can help prevent retaliation, reduce the chance a patient will be violently injured again, and put people on track for success.

Based out of the city of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, a live radio show is tackling the stigma around mental health care by combining their platform with those in the mental health care field. Not only does the radio show discuss psychological issues on air, but it also offers free and reduced-cost mental health services to those that serve as guests on the show.

More than 2,700 police departments in the U.S. have crisis intervention teams aimed at responding to mental health crises with fewer arrests and less violence, but the death of Daniel Prude in Rochester police custody offers clear lessons in the shortcomings and misuse of the CIT model. A lack of adequate mental health services across the country, coupled with superficial training of the police, too often means a police response to a crisis will not de-escalate the situation or lead to meaningful help for the person in crisis. A recent study found CITs have not shown they will lower violence.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic limited access to health care facilities, health specialists across Africa were already beginning to turn to technology-based mental health services to offer care with fewer barriers for patients. Despite its growth in use during the pandemic, some doctors caution that it does not necessarily replace in-person consultations, but is still very useful.

An early-stage startup with big plans to change bicycling culture and commuting habits has notched one victory already, with its first secure-parking pods in New York City: Out of 60,000 times they've been used, the pods have only suffered one theft, at a time of rampant bike theft. Startup Oonee provides an alternative to locking up bikes and scooters on the street during work hours. Parking in an enclosed shelter is advertising-supported, so it's free to users. Ultimately, Oonee hopes to surround parking with a suite of services useful to two-wheeled commuters.

Although Eugene, Oregon's long-running, successful CAHOOTS program serves as one model for the new Portland Street Response, a more relevant model can be found in Denver's STAR program. Like CAHOOTS, STAR responds to mental-health and other crisis calls with medics and counselors rather than police officers. But Denver's size, demographics, and homelessness make it much more analogous to Portland. In STAR's first six months, it handled nearly 750 calls without a single arrest. Both STAR and PSR are starting small, so more resources are needed if the pilot projects succeed.

Tucson Police Department's Substance Use Resource Team reaches out on the streets to people with substance-use disorder, offering them treatment instead of arrest and jail. The team is an extension of the department's mental health support team and was started in response to the opioid epidemic. Officers talk to people they find on the streets, or follow up on 911 calls for overdoses. Not everyone accepts the offered help, and some end up arrested on warrants. But, at a time of rising overdose deaths, the officers and the peer support specialists who accompany them often can get people into treatment.

Thunder Bay police formed IMPACT (Integrated Mobile Police Assessment Crisis Team), pairing crisis responders with mental health expertise with police officers to respond 24/7 to people experiencing mental health crises. Instead of defaulting to police responses, which risk the use of force and often land people in custody or a hospital, the teams often are able to get people connected to needed social and health services. So far the team has managed to divert about 40 percent of calls to helping services.

The Institute for Nonviolence Chicago is working to reduce gun violence by reaching out to victims and perpetrators immediately after the violence. The organization negotiates peace and offers cognitive behavioral intervention services to help them develop strategies to keep negative emotions from turning into violent actions.

Durham, North Carolina, instated an alternative crisis response program that dispatches social workers to respond to 911 calls about people in mental health crises. The team’s successes earned the support of an initially skeptical police department.