Aid bill boosts mental health response teams
WASHINGTON — When police respond to a person gripped by a mental health or drug crisis, the encounter can have tragic results. Now a government insurance program will help communities set up an alternative: mobile teams with mental health practitioners trained in deescalating such potentially volatile situations.
The effort to reinvent policing after the death of George Floyd in police custody is getting an assist through Medicaid, the federalstate health insurance program for lowincome people and the largest payer for mental health treatment. President Biden’s recent coronavirus relief bill calls for an estimated $1 billion over 10 years for states that set up mobile crisis teams, currently locally operated in a handful of places.
Many 911 calls are due to a person experiencing a mental health or substance abuse crisis. Sometimes, as with Daniel Prude in Rochester, N.Y., the consequences are shocking. The 41yearold Black man died after police placed a spit hood over his head and held him to the pavement for about two minutes on a cold night in 2020 until he stopped breathing. He had run naked from his brother’s house after being released from a hospital following a mental health arrest. A grand jury voted down charges against the officers.
Dispatching teams of paramedics and behavioral health practitioners would take mental health crisis calls out of the hands of uniformed and armed officers, whose mere arrival may ratchet up tensions. In Eugene, Ore., such a strategy has been in place more than 30 years, with solid backing from police.
The concept “fits nicely with what we are trying to do around police reform,” Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner said.
“If I can rely on a mechanism that matches the right response to the need, it means I don’t have to put my officers in these circumstances,” Skinner said. “It actually deconflicts, reducing the need for use of force.”
The program in Eugene is called Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets, or CAHOOTS, and is run by the White Bird Clinic. CAHOOTS is part of the local 911 emergency response system but operates independently of the police, although there’s coordination. Crisis teams are not sent on calls involving violent situations.
“We don’t look like law enforcement,” White Bird veteran Tim Black said. “Our responders wear a Tshirt or a hoodie with a logo . ... The way we start to interact sends a message that we are not the police and this is going to be a far safer and voluntary interaction.”
Many responses involve homeless people, and the CAHOOTS teams work to resolve the situation that prompted the call and to connect the person involved to ongoing help and support.
At least 14 cities around the country are interested in versions of the model, said Simone Brody, executive director of What Works Cities, a nonprofit that tries to promote change through effective use of data.