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  • In the first six months of health care professionals replacing police officers, no one they encountered was arrested

    February 02, 2021 |

    Denverite |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Denver, Colorado

    Denver's STAR (Support Team Assisted Response) program deliberately reduces potentially violent encounters between uniformed police officers and troubled people by responding to certain low-level crises with a mental health clinician and a medic. In STAR's first six months, the team offered 748 people help rather than jail, without requiring any arrests to resolve problems. With more resources, the team could have handled more than 2,500 incidents. The police chief supports the program's expansion, saying it frees his officers to handle more serious matters.

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  • Next Step goes to the front lines of gun violence in Minneapolis, starting with the shooting victims

    January 30, 2021 |

    Minneapolis Star Tribune |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Minneapolis, Minnesota

    Next Step is a hospital-based violence intervention program based at Minneapolis' Hennepin County Medical Center that counsels gunshot victims to try to help lower the chances that they will be harmed again or seek to harm others. Focusing on young adults and their families, the program starts its work when a victim is hospitalized. The counseling and connections to support services can continue for months and even years.

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  • Cops, crisis calls and conflict over who should help

    January 28, 2021 |

    Crosscut |

    Podcast |

    Over 15 Minutes

    Response Location: United States, Seattle, Washington

    Seattle Police Department's crisis response team answers some of the city's many 911 calls for people in distress, pairing police trained in handling such calls with mental health professionals. The aim is to counter the default policing approach to problems that usually involve mental illness or substance abuse, which is to control people. It doesn't always work, due to the complexity of the calls, the nature of policing, and the department's limited resources devoted to the program. But, when it works, it can help rather than escalate situations, and avoid the ultimate failure, the use of excessive force.

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  • An Oregon city's decades-old alternative to police

    January 28, 2021 |

    Crosscut |

    Podcast |

    Over 15 Minutes

    Response Location: United States, Eugene, Oregon

    Like many cities, Seattle is looking to Eugene, Oregon, for a model to shift resources from police to unarmed crisis responders handling 911 calls about mental health, addiction, family conflict, and other non-criminal problems. Eugene's CAHOOTS program has been doing such work for half a century, and since 1989 sending medic-and-counselor teams on calls. In 2019 it saved $8 million in police costs and $14 million for ambulances and emergency room visits. But, while taking police out of situations where they might cause more problems than they solve, it's only as good as its region's social services.

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  • A Heavy Blow: The Pandemic's Impact on Domestic Violence

    January 25, 2021 |

    KOSU |

    Podcast |

    Over 15 Minutes

    Response Location: United States, Oklahoma

    Domestic Violence Intervention Services supports domestic violence and sexual assault survivors. Services include counseling, legal advocacy, and group meetings among others. A texting service allows people to subtly connect to advocates, which was crucial during COVID-19 lockdowns and certified interpreters are available. Services are tailored to special populations, like immigrants and refugees, LGBTQ survivors, individuals who are incarcerated, and rural populations. An intensive year-long intervention program works with convicted offenders to develop coping mechanisms and tools to change behaviors.

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  • The Free Hotline That's Saving Women's Lives by Disarming Dangerous Men

    January 22, 2021 |

    Medium |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: Colombia, Bogotá

    The Calm Hotline takes calls from men in Bogotá, Colombia, in an effort to address the root causes of domestic violence: a culture of machismo. Four psychologists take emergency calls – about 700 calls came in the service's first month – and works to refer the callers to an eight-week "gender transformation program" that will attempt to change men's toxic attitudes that can lead to violence. The program is patterned on a counseling hotline in the Colombian city of Barrancabermeja that was associated with a steep decline in domestic violence.

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  • In Eugene, Oregon, civilian response workers—not police—are dispatched to nonviolent crises

    January 19, 2021 |

    The Christian Century |

    Text |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Eugene, Oregon

    Eugene's well-established CAHOOTS program for replacing police as first responders to certain types of 911 calls has become a model for multiple cities as they seek to replicate its success in an era of questioning the role of police. While it saves its city money and replaces arrests and possible violence with social and health services for people needing housing or mental health care, or suffering from addiction, CAHOOTS is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of programs responding to these challenges. Communities' differences will dictate what works best for them.

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  • Albuquerque's vision for non-police first responders comes down to earth

    January 17, 2021 |

    New Mexico In Depth |

    Text |

    Over 3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Albuquerque, New Mexico

    In response to the 2020 policing protests, Albuquerque was among the first cities to embrace a major change in handling mental-health-crisis calls to 911. But its new Community Safety Department has foundered in its first year, a victim of inadequate planning and resources. The plan to send unarmed first responders on such calls, to reduce the risk of a violent over-reaction by the police, depended on reassigning city workers from other agencies, none of whom were mental health professionals. City councilors have sent the planners back to rethink the latest in a history of failed responses.

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  • Criminalizing Mental Illness, Part 2

    January 14, 2021 |

    KALW |

    Podcast |

    Over 15 Minutes

    Response Location: United States, Los Angeles County, California

    Los Angeles County's Office of Diversion and Reentry has moved about 6,000 people out of jails and into programs providing mental health care, drug treatment, housing, and job training at a cost that is about one-fifth that of incarcerating people with mental illness. Like Eugene, Oregon's CAHOOTS program, ODR provides an alternative to the default model in the U.S. of incarcerating people with such health problems. L.A. County is now shifting as much as $500 million from policing to supportive services because programs like ODR and CAHOOTS fall far short of the actual need.

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  • At Teen Lifeline, teens help in ways only they can

    January 11, 2021 |

    Cronkite News - Arizona PBS |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Phoenix, Arizona

    A hotline staffed by teenagers for teenagers has been providing peer-to-peer support and counseling services in Arizona for years but has played an even bigger role during the coronavirus pandemic. The group quickly pivoted to reduced staffing shifts to limit exposure to the virus and implemented longer hours for texting services. Not only have calls to the hotline increased, so has the number of those who want to volunteer.

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