Resource

Police responses to mental health and substance-related crises carry a huge financial and human cost. We should not be making decisions about response models without robust evidence and input from community members.

A better response must be paired with more investment in treatment and resource linkage options. Crisis care is important, but is still downstream for the problems of treatment, stability, and basic needs, which should also be part of the decision-making process around where to invest our city’s resources.

We need to act to ensure community voices are heard and policymakers incorporate both community voice and a strong impact evaluation into plans for a new non-police response program. This means funding evaluations of programs and researching alternative models to better understand the local context in which these response models are implemented.