Members of the Columbus Safety Collective want the city of Columbus to implement an alternative emergency response program, one that does not involve police in a crisis response.
The city currently has programs intended to provide alternative responses and reduce Columbus police responses, but Columbus Safety Collective organizer Alwiyah Shariff said his group believes current measures don’t address real crisis situations.
“The alternatives that currently exist in the city of Columbus do not address this need for non-police teams to respond on the spot when someone needs help,” Shariff said during a public meeting of the collective Wednesday at Trinity Episcopal Church on East Broad and Third Streets. , Center.
“We want the city to invest in a public safety system that our neighbors can trust, that makes decisions based on evidence and is accountable to the community,” Shariff said. The group, according to its Facebook page, “exists to create a health-focused, anti-racist emergency response program” for Columbus that doesn’t involve law enforcement.
Last year, the city created a pilot project called the Right Response Unit, a team consisting of a dispatcher, a social worker from Columbus Public Health and a paramedic from the city’s Fire Division, which is embedded in the center of 911 dispatch to review calls for possible alternatives. , non-police responses. The creation of the unit grew out of the city’s “Reimagine Public Safety” initiative that jumped to the forefront following the 2020 racial injustice protests in Columbus.
The Columbus Police Mobile Crisis Response (MCR) unit paired a police officer trained in crisis intervention with mental health and substance abuse clinicians. The program had doctors and officers on the street together for about 18 hours a day, seven days a week, answering about 6,000 calls. But the agreement with the company that provides doctors ended in 2021.
For subscribers: Columbus hires its own 911 mental health crisis response workers after Netcare deal falls through
Stephen David, an organizer and social worker for the Columbus Safety Collective, said the group is asking the city to allocate money in the 2023 budget to launch a new pilot program that doesn’t include police in mental health crisis responses on next year.
David outlined the policy points the group hopes will lead to the creation of a new program, including sending teams into crisis settings without police officers and incentives to hire crisis response personnel from “high-need neighborhoods.” David also said the group hopes to see community involvement in the proposed program, hiring and training community members in mental health crisis intervention and medical skills.
He said the group is also proposing to establish a community oversight board and pay for an external evaluation to assess the impact of the proposed program through the pilot and beyond.
Chana Wiley, a community organizer with Ohio Families United for Political Action and Change and Columbus Safety Collective, also spoke during the meeting about how her own experience shaped her view of the need for alternative non-police responses. Wiley’s brother, Jaron Thomas, died in police custody in 2017 after he called 911 during a mental health crisis and was restrained by responding police.
“A crisis involving mental or behavioral health does not equate to danger,” Wiley said. “When the police respond to these situations, it reduces the chances of people getting the help they really need. These models work in other cities and we shouldn’t expect to see one in Columbus.”
The Franklin County Coroner’s Office ruled that Thomas’s death was accidental and the cause of death was a lack of oxygen to his brain due to cardiac arrest, The Dispatch reported. Because the coroner ruled the death an accidental death, the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office declined to present the case to a grand jury.
In 2021, a federal judge dismissed a wrongful death lawsuit brought by Thomas’s family against the officers involved.
A spokesman for Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther could not be immediately reached Thursday for his reaction to the proposal.
Cole Behrens is a reporter for The Columbus Dispatch covering public safety and breaking news. You can reach him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter at @Colebehr_report