S.F. rolls out new program for responding to police calls

Street teams will replace cops at some nonviolent 911 calls

Marking another step in its journey toward police reform, San Francisco on Monday launched the first phase of its Street Crisis Response Team.

Under the pilot program, teams of paramedics, behavioral health clinicians and peer specialists will respond to certain nonviolent 911 calls in the city, instead of police officers. Starting next week, the first team will begin responding to people experiencing mental health crises.

“This new program can help us break the cycle that all too often keeps people going in and out of our emergency rooms or our jails. When the Street Crisis Response Team responds to a call for someone in crisis, they’ll be able to help with compassion and clinical skills to get people the care and support they need,” Mayor London Breed said, according to a news release. “Changing the way we respond to nonviolent calls is going to take work and it’s going to take time. The SCRT is an important first step in our long-term effort to change how we respond to people suffering on our streets.”

The move comes as cities around the Bay Area and nationwide are grappling with demands to “defund the police” and reinvest the money in social service programs, following recent police killings of Black men and women. Calls for police reform stand to have a major impact on how cities interact with their homeless residents, who often are disproportionately cited and arrested by police. Oakland earlier this year cut its police budget by about 5% and approved funding for the Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland, a pilot program to use trained community members to respond to calls related to mental health and homelessness, instead of police. The program is slated to launch in January, with one team in West Oakland, and one team in East Oakland.

Berkeley’s City Council cut its police budget by 12% and approved a similar program called the Specialized Care Unit. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo has promised to explore how the city’s police department can use civilians to respond to noncriminal calls.

The San Francisco Street Crisis Response Team initially will respond to calls Monday through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood. By March, the city intends to expand the program to six teams operating citywide, seven days a week and 24 hours a day. Officials expect the crisis teams eventually to respond to about 17,000 calls per year — that’s how many calls police currently respond to involving mental health crises.

Each team includes a peer specialist, who has experience being homeless, struggling with mental illness and/or

fighting addiction, and has since gone through a successful recovery and been trained to help others in similar situations.

“We are proud to be adding this model to the existing crisis response services at the Department of Public Health. Particularly important is including a team member with lived experience of behavioral health challenges to this service,” Dr. Grant Colfax, director of health, wrote in the release. “Over time, we will build on what we learn from this first team and be able to connect more people in crisis to trauma-informed care.”