A mental health response team for 911 calls could save lives
Right now in Illinois, if a 911 operator gets a call about someone needing help in a mental health crisis, the only real option is to send the police. Instead of a trained mental health professional, police are put into a situation that may be difficult to understand and can easily lead to trauma, an unnecessary law enforcement response to a situation that calls instead for health care, and in some cases even an escalation into confrontation and violence.
Elsewhere in the country, cities have shown that there is a positive alternative to the use of police in situations they are not best-trained to handle: have a team of mental health professionals available to respond, instead of the police, in appropriate cases.
Illinois can move beyond current rhetoric about police reform and take a concrete step to improve the quality of both mental health care and policing by enacting a bill developed by Access Living and its racial justice organizing group Advance Your Leadership Power, which is led by young adults of color with a range of disabilities.
The Community Emergency Services and Support Act (CESSA) was introduced into the General Assembly by state Sen.
Robert Peters and Rep. Kelly Cassidy of Chicago and would establish an alternative response system in every Illinois 911 emergency district.
Committees of local professionals, police, other public officials and disabled people would plan the new system, incorporating existing resources. Details would vary depending on local circumstances and needs. But the central element would be the availability of mental and behavioral health professionals as an alternative to the police — or a medical ambulance for dispatch when the call indicates that response is appropriate.
A police officer could be sent to accompany those professionals if there is an indication of physical danger, but in similar systems elsewhere in the country that’s rarely needed.
Eugene, Oregon, has had a citywide mental health response system that has been working well for two decades. About 20% of 911 calls are handled by the alternative response team, and in over 95% of those cases the police never get involved. Delaware also established a statewide mental health response system as part of an Americans with Disabilities Act settlement in 2016, and it has operated with similar positive results in the years since.
Costs would vary depending on need in different communities, but the Eugene system and others have planned costs in the range of 3% to 5% of a city’s police budget. That cost is offset to the extent 911 response is shifted away from the police, which reduces the demand for police resources. The cost of a mental health response team itself, unlike police, tends to be subject to reimbursement under Medicaid, which is likely to represent the majority of cases in Chicago and many other places in Illinois. That means the bulk of the net cost is shifted to the state and federal governments.
Beyond those immediate costs and offsets, all studies have shown a long-term savings for the system as a whole when upfront mental health or other services avoid the vastly more expensive alternatives of hospitalization or arrest and incarceration.
Tragically, almost half of all people shot by the police in the U.S. have some form of disability, according to a national study. Several years ago Illinois saw the tragic case of Stephon Watts who had autism. Watts’ family called 911 for help transporting him to the hospital when he had a meltdown because of his disability.
The police responded, and one of the officers who came to their home shot and killed the 15-year-old boy. The proposed new Illinois law is named in Stephon’s memory.
Encounters between the police and people with mental health or other behavioral problems are inevitably susceptible to misunderstanding and miscommunication and can escalate into unnecessary confrontation.
Shifting a significant percentage of 911 calls to mental health/ behavioral professionals is the single most significant and concrete step we can take to reduce the likelihood of violent police/citizen encounters in Illinois.
We are hearing a lot about the need for police reform in Illinois and elsewhere. Enactment of the CESSA bill is a step that should have widespread support from both law enforcement and mental health professionals — and from all citizens who want to see an Illinois mental health/law enforcement emergency response system that best serves all of our needs.