Oakland police option stalls
Plan to use mental health workers as alternative falters when 2 groups vying for contract pull out
As protests against police brutality swept Oakland in June, the City Council took a bold step toward rethinking public safety: It set aside $1.85 million for a new program to dispatch counselors and paramedics to mental health crises, instead of armed law enforcement officers.
Eight months later, the Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland program, known as MACRO, has yet to get off the runway. And on Wednesday, two community organizations that were vying for the contract bowed out.
“This is very disappointing to say the least,” Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas wrote Thursday in an email to city officials, announcing that the two groups — Bay Area Community Services and Alliance for Community Wellness, also known as La Familia Counseling Service — had pulled their applications.
The city mental health program, billed as a temporary pilot originally set to begin in January, represents an experiment in redistributing police funding that is playing out in cities across the U.S. In Oak
land, the effort is complicated by politics. A battle flared up this month over which nonprofit would receive taxpayer funds to handle duties that have long fallen on sworn police officers.
The city’s Department of Violence Prevention spent months picking a contractor, beginning with a request for qualifications that the department released on Oct. 30. A panel of city staff and community members with expertise in behavioral health rated five applicants and recommended the one with the highest score: Bay Area Community Services, a nonprofit that has served Oakland since 1953.
The council’s Public Safety Committee, however, backed a different contender — the runnerup, Hayward nonprofit Alliance for Community Wellness — in a unanimous vote on Feb. 9. The decision came after several public commenters blasted Bay Area Community Services, arguing that it lacks strong community ties. Two days later, city staff revised the contract legislation to include both applicants.
Bay Area Community Services CEO Jamie Almanza addressed the criticisms against her organization Wednesday in a letter to the council that The Chronicle obtained. It served as a notice of withdrawal.
“I find it my duty to respond to the stated opinions of individuals who may not know who BACS is, where we come from, where we are, and who we serve out of respect for our team who found last week’s meeting disrespectful, full of mistruth, and a false representation of true community work,” Almanza wrote.
The letter went on to recount the history of the organization and describe numerous services it provides in Oakland for unhoused people and those with mental illness.
That same night, the council received a second withdrawal letter from the remaining applicant, Alliance for Community Wellness CEO Aaron Ortiz. “After reflecting and discussing this contract with our stakeholders, La Familia has made the decision to withdraw our application to operate Oakland’s MACRO program,” Ortiz wrote.
On Thursday, city officials abruptly canceled a special
council meeting to decide which organization should get the $1.6 million contract, which doesn’t include the city’s startup costs.
That morning, during a meeting of the council’s Rules Committee, Bas scheduled an item to discuss the mental health program at the council’s March 2 meeting. Bas and Guillermo Cespedes, chief of the Department of Violence Prevention, said they would consider various options. They could even bring the program inhouse and assign employees
to run it, Bas said in an email to the Chronicle.
“Our goal is to create the best program to serve Oaklanders,” Bas wrote in the email.
City Councilman Loren Taylor said he believes the council committee eroded public confidence when its members disregarded the recommendation of city staff without providing a reason.
“From my perspective it’s pretty outrageous that we are delaying this longanticipated and longawaited pilot that everybody agrees is needed,”
Taylor said, contending that the MACRO program would make public safety more innovative, responsive and efficient once it gets off the ground.
Taylor and Bas cochair the city’s Reimagining Public Safety Task Force, which has a stated goal of cutting the police budget in half and shifting the money over to social services.