Civilian crisis response team has leader
Bronin fills job with former Connecticut Children’s social worker
HARTFORD — A longtime social worker will oversee the creation of a new civilian crisis response team in Hartford, an effort Mayor Luke Bronin announced in June amid calls to defund the police.
Patricia A. McIntosh left Connecticut Children’s to manage the project, which will ultimately dispatch professional crisis workers to certain emergency calls instead of or alongside police officers. Themayor’s officeannounced her hire Tuesday when it released the names of local health experts who will serve on an advisory board for the new team.
The board, which includes city staff and representatives of St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center and Hartford Hospital, held its first meeting last Friday. A surplus in last year’s budget allowed the city to commit $5 million over four years to the project, a budget that includes McIntosh’s annual pay of $100,000, the mayor’s office said.
McIntosh worked the past 17 years as a child and family support services manager at Connecticut
Children’s, and eight years before that in domestic violence prevention and clinical social work at Hartford Hospital.
She earned master’s of social work and public health from the University of California, Berkeley in the 1990s and became a licensed master of social work in 2015.
The advisory board includes city Councilman Nick Lebron, city Chief Operating Officer Thea Montanez and the heads of the
police, fire, emergency services and telecommunications and health departments. There are also six experts from the community:
Madeline Pérez De Jesús, associate professor of social work and equitable community practice at the University of St. Joseph.
Dr. Gary Rhule, who’s previously worked as Hartford’s health director, director of Charter Oak Health Center and medical director at Aetna.
Dr. Tekisha Dwan Everette, executive director of Health Equity Solutions in Hartford.
Dr. Harold I. Schwartz, psychiatrist-in-chief emeritus at the Institute of Living and Hartford Hospital and psychiatry professor at the UConn School of Medicine.
Susan R. Niemitz, CEO of Capitol Region Mental Health Center.
C. Steven Wolf, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center.
The crisis team would respond to certain calls involving mental illness, emotional distress, trauma and addiction, Bronin has said. He described his plan in an op-ed in the Courant, saying police should not always be the first ones to respond to calls for help.
That notion was supported by an independent climate study of Hartford police, released last month, which found officers wanted more instruction on how to respond to people with disabilities, both physical and intellectual, and people with mental illness.
They also wanted more training and education on cultural understanding, bias, de-escalation and officer wellness, according to the report by researchers from Westfield State University and University of Rhode Island.
Bronin announced the new initiative early in the summer at a time when cities around the country were reeling from the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the deafening question they inspired around how to eliminate racism and excessive force in policing.
Some cities, including Hartford, reduced or rearranged their police department budgets in order to increase officer training and pay for other community needs. Bronin also introduced his plan for the crisis response team as an alternative to armed law enforcement.
On Tuesday, the mayor said the advisory board will make recommendations for the setup of the program, including whether or not it should be a part of city government, and howpeople will identify calls that should be handled by the crisis response team.
Similar programs exist in Eugene, Oregon, and Albuquerque, NewMexico, and the city has been in touch with both communities, the mayor said Tuesday.
“As part of our design process, we hope to engage them further,” Bronin said, in a prepared statement. “And most important, we anticipate that the advisory board will conduct a significant amount of community engagement in the weeks and months ahead as they consider their recommendations.”