FROMPAGE ONE Reform
Earlier this month, the police reformgroup focused on community engagement approvedits first recommendation to send to the Dayton City Commission for consideration.
If commissioners approve the proposal, Dayton’s city manager will be directed to develop an implementation plan and options, officials said.
The recommendation calls for sending “alternative responders” — possibly social workers or mental health professionals — to certain nonviolent calls for service, such as those related to mental health, homelessness, panhandling and intoxication, groupmemberssaid.
The group also wants the city to hire or procure alternative responders who are culturally sensitive and represent thecommunities they serve.
The group wants to build community capacity for alternative-response models and use best practices from models used in other communities, said Shannon Isom, co-lead of the engagement working group.
Many of the details of how this systemwouldwork are unclear, but models in other
communities have reported reductions in police calls and some success preventing violent police encounters.
“Everything is being considered,” Isom said.
One of the most wellknown and publicized programs was developed in the city ofEugene, Oregon, more than 30 years ago.
Called Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS), the program provides mental health first-response as part of a community-police initiative.
911 dispatchers send unarmed, two-person teams to mental health-related crises
and situations such as conflict resolution, welfare checks, substance abuse and suicide threats.
The teams — consisting of a crisis worker trained in mental health and a nurse, paramedic or EMT — use “trauma-informed deescalation and harm-reduction techniques.”
The program, which reportedly costs about 2% of the impacted police departments’ budgets, has been credited with savingmillions of dollars in public safety costs every year and diverting many people away from the criminal justice system
into treatment or mental health services.
There is no perfect model, butDayton could adopt policiesandstrategies fromother communities and tailor fit them to meet the local need, said Commissioner Shaw.
He also saidMontgomery County Alcohol, DrugAddiction andMental Health Services has beenworkingonan alternative responsemodel in conjunction with police leadership.
Shaw said hopefully a new crisis unit would lead to fewer negative citizen-police interactions and useof-force incidents. He said he also hopes fewer people struggling with mental illness and substance abuse end up arrested, charged and jailed.
Many people need help and treatment and don’t belong in the criminal justice system, he said.
The Dayton Police Department received 4,154 mental health-related calls for service this year through mid-October, which is up from 3,451 during the same period in 2019, according to police data.
About five years ago, the department created a mobile crisis response team focused on mental health, which grew out of downtown engagement project that strived to reduce calls for service involving thementally ill and the homeless population.
The unit has grown from one full-time officer to four, who respond to and follow up on calls related mental health and other issues. One officer follows up on drug overdoses.
The department also said it has been working on a partnership to have a mental health professional ride along and respond to these types of calls. Thiswould be inpartnershipwithADAMHS.
Current policing strategies are antiquated and do not properly addresswhat’s actually happening in the community today, said Jo’el Jones, a member of thecommunity engagement reform committee.
Police officers generally are not mental health or behavioral specialists, nor are they expert substance abuse interventionists, she said, and society and government expect too much from law enforcement.
She said experts in those areas shouldwork alongside police, because that should lead to better results and outcomes.
But Jones said the city’s five reform groupswere created to address the racial oppression of policing, and mental health is just a part of the problem. She said more change is needed.
This is a historic opportunity for needed sweeping reforms, and political courage is needed to demand more of the people who are entrusted to protect and serve the community, she said.
“We have to addresswhy it’s acceptable for black folks to be judged in the streets, and executed for their crime, before they have had an opportunity to be judged by a jury of the peers,” she said.