Police in St. Petersburg, Fla. were well aware that Jeffrey Harsma had mental-health issues. Officers visited the 55-year-old’s home at least 25 times a year before making an emergency call on August 7, 2020. But the officer who responded alone shot and killed the unarmed Hersma, as he had attacked her during one. Attempted arrest in a minor offense While Pinellas County officials later decided the shooting was justified, they also concluded that the call should have been handled as a mental-health issue rather than a criminal investigation.
Since that day, there have been nearly 2,000 fatal shots fired by police officers in the line of duty. Roughly 1 in 5 involved a police response to someone showing signs of mental illness. It doesn’t have to be like this.
The 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer responding to a 911 call over an alleged counterfeit bill and the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, have both drawn appropriate attention to police behavior. But what if they are called upon to deal with nonviolent emergencies? How we design our first response systems to deal with immediate incidents related to mental health and substance abuse should likewise be carefully examined.
least A third Regarding emergency calls that police respond to, health-focused emergency responders such as mental-health professionals, paramedics and social workers can be safely directed instead. Doing so is clearly humane as it provides proper healthcare to those in distress rather than arrest (or worse). Mental-health first responders can reduce the risk of tragic and violent escalation and the substantial financial cost of relocating mentally ill citizens to the criminal-justice system.
There should also be enthusiastic support from a broader political coalition to redesign first-responder systems to include mental-health expertise. Surveys of police officers indicate that they feel overwhelmed and frustrated by calls of mental illness, for which they have inadequate training. Similarly, voices for police reform do not want armed officers to respond to nonviolent calls for assistance. The reallocation of existing police resources to fund mental-health first responders will allow police departments to focus on their core mission of law enforcement.
A small but growing number of cities have introduced innovative programs that screen emergency calls by incident type or under the guidance of a specially trained dispatcher. The goal is to identify calls where trained health care professionals can support the police or serve directly as first responders. Boston, Pittsburgh and Seattle have adopted “co-response” models that allow police officers to inquire with mental-health experts for guidance or collaborate in person on field calls.
The more ambitious but less common “community response” models omit police involvement altogether on carefully scrutinized calls. The seminal program, which began in Eugene, Ore., more than 30 years ago, is 911 dispatchers direct nonviolent events involving behavioral health to a two-person team consisting of a physician and a mental-health crisis specialist. New York City and Washington launched similar community response initiatives last year and have recently expanded the scale of these actions.
We know very little about the effectiveness of these programs, the relevance of their design details, and how to address the challenges of implementing these programs well. Nonetheless, our recent study of the Community Response Initiative in Denver shows that their promise is compelling and extraordinary.
In June 2020, Denver conducted a community response program in the city’s mid-city neighborhood, which included a mental-health therapist and a man in a well-equipped van for nonviolent emergency calls related to mental health, substance abuse, and homelessness. Sent to paramedic. These teams most often responded to incidents involving trespassing, welfare checks and requests for assistance. In its first six months, Denver’s community responders handled 748 calls to the service, none of which resulted in arrests.
Our independent analysis found that in the eight police premises where the pilot was active, the Denver initiative reduced targeted, low-level crimes such as disorderly conduct, trespassing and substance abuse by 34%. These reductions also occurred during hours when community respondents were unavailable, a finding consistent with evidence that people in untreated mental-health distress are more likely to commit crimes. We also found that the program’s corresponding lack of police involvement did not lead to an unexpected increase in more serious crimes.
These results suggest that the direct cost savings of a community response program can be substantial. We estimate that Denver’s community response program cost only $151 per criminal offense avoided. This amount is only a quarter of the estimated cost of processing lower level crimes through the criminal-justice system.
We’ll never know for sure whether Jeffrey Harsma would still be alive if his serial engagement with the police included mental-health support. But the available evidence on the extraordinary promise and simple common sense of community response programs is a strong argument for studying this innovation across the country.
Mr. Dee is a professor at Stanford University and faculty director of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, where Mr. Paine is a research associate.
Wonder Land: Joe Biden prefers to talk about racism and guns rather than face the real problem. Images: AFP / Getty Images / Reuters / Shutterstock Composite: Mark Kelly
opinion | How to get the police out of the mental-health business
Police in St. Petersburg, Fla. were well aware that Jeffrey Harsma had mental-health issues. Officers visited the 55-year-old’s home at least 25 times a year before making an emergency call on August 7, 2020. But the officer who responded alone shot and killed the unarmed Hersma, as he had attacked her during one. Attempted arrest in a minor offense While Pinellas County officials later decided the shooting was justified, they also concluded that the call should have been handled as a mental-health issue rather than a criminal investigation.
Since that day, there have been nearly 2,000 fatal shots fired by police officers in the line of duty. Roughly 1 in 5 involved a police response to someone showing signs of mental illness. It doesn’t have to be like this.
The 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer responding to a 911 call over an alleged counterfeit bill and the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, have both drawn appropriate attention to police behavior. But what if they are called upon to deal with nonviolent emergencies? How we design our first response systems to deal with immediate incidents related to mental health and substance abuse should likewise be carefully examined.
least A third Regarding emergency calls that police respond to, health-focused emergency responders such as mental-health professionals, paramedics and social workers can be safely directed instead. Doing so is clearly humane as it provides proper healthcare to those in distress rather than arrest (or worse). Mental-health first responders can reduce the risk of tragic and violent escalation and the substantial financial cost of relocating mentally ill citizens to the criminal-justice system.
There should also be enthusiastic support from a broader political coalition to redesign first-responder systems to include mental-health expertise. Surveys of police officers indicate that they feel overwhelmed and frustrated by calls of mental illness, for which they have inadequate training. Similarly, voices for police reform do not want armed officers to respond to nonviolent calls for assistance. The reallocation of existing police resources to fund mental-health first responders will allow police departments to focus on their core mission of law enforcement.
A small but growing number of cities have introduced innovative programs that screen emergency calls by incident type or under the guidance of a specially trained dispatcher. The goal is to identify calls where trained health care professionals can support the police or serve directly as first responders. Boston, Pittsburgh and Seattle have adopted “co-response” models that allow police officers to inquire with mental-health experts for guidance or collaborate in person on field calls.
The more ambitious but less common “community response” models omit police involvement altogether on carefully scrutinized calls. The seminal program, which began in Eugene, Ore., more than 30 years ago, is 911 dispatchers direct nonviolent events involving behavioral health to a two-person team consisting of a physician and a mental-health crisis specialist. New York City and Washington launched similar community response initiatives last year and have recently expanded the scale of these actions.
We know very little about the effectiveness of these programs, the relevance of their design details, and how to address the challenges of implementing these programs well. Nonetheless, our recent study of the Community Response Initiative in Denver shows that their promise is compelling and extraordinary.
In June 2020, Denver conducted a community response program in the city’s mid-city neighborhood, which included a mental-health therapist and a man in a well-equipped van for nonviolent emergency calls related to mental health, substance abuse, and homelessness. Sent to paramedic. These teams most often responded to incidents involving trespassing, welfare checks and requests for assistance. In its first six months, Denver’s community responders handled 748 calls to the service, none of which resulted in arrests.
Our independent analysis found that in the eight police premises where the pilot was active, the Denver initiative reduced targeted, low-level crimes such as disorderly conduct, trespassing and substance abuse by 34%. These reductions also occurred during hours when community respondents were unavailable, a finding consistent with evidence that people in untreated mental-health distress are more likely to commit crimes. We also found that the program’s corresponding lack of police involvement did not lead to an unexpected increase in more serious crimes.
These results suggest that the direct cost savings of a community response program can be substantial. We estimate that Denver’s community response program cost only $151 per criminal offense avoided. This amount is only a quarter of the estimated cost of processing lower level crimes through the criminal-justice system.
We’ll never know for sure whether Jeffrey Harsma would still be alive if his serial engagement with the police included mental-health support. But the available evidence on the extraordinary promise and simple common sense of community response programs is a strong argument for studying this innovation across the country.
Mr. Dee is a professor at Stanford University and faculty director of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, where Mr. Paine is a research associate.
Wonder Land: Joe Biden prefers to talk about racism and guns rather than face the real problem. Images: AFP / Getty Images / Reuters / Shutterstock Composite: Mark Kelly
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