Denver is reporting early success with a program that “replaces traditional law enforcement responders with healthcare workers for some emergency calls. Previously, 911 operators in Denver only directed calls to police or fire department first responders. But the Support Team Assistance Response (STAR) pilot program created a third track for directing emergency calls to a two-person team: a medic and a clinician, staffed in a van from 10am to 6pm on weekdays.”
The STAR program was launched in June of 2020 and is already reporting promising results in its first six-month progress report. Plans are underway to add more vans and personnel to the existing fleet. The program aims to provide a “person-centric mobile crisis response to community members who are experiencing problems related to mental health, depression, poverty, homelessness or substance abuse issues.”
Instead of activists making calls to defund the police, they should be calling for funds to be reallocated to a STAR program similar to the one Denver and several other U.S. cities are in the process of starting up. The need is great since, according to a Washington Post database of fatal shootings by on-duty police officers, police have fatally shot nearly 1,400 people with mental illnesses nationwide since 2015.
“Overall, the first six months has kind of been a proof of concept of what we wanted,” said Vinnie Cervantes, a member of Denver Alliance for Street Health Response, one of the organizations involved with the STAR program. “We’ve continued to try to work to make it something that is truly a community-city partnership.” Over the first six months of the pilot program, Denver received more than 2,500 emergency calls that fell into the STAR program’s purview, and the STAR team was able to respond to 748 calls. No calls required the assistance of police, and no one was arrested.
But Denver officials didn’t create the STAR program from scratch; it’s modeled after the Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS) in Eugene, Oregon. White Bird Clinic, a health care center in the city, launched the program as a community policing initiative in 1989.
The question then is “with this level of success why hasn’t every city in the country begun utilizing the STAR approach in dealing with calls that involve an individual suffering a mental health crisis?” With many of the recipients of such services being homeless, it should not be that much of a stretch for our recently confirmed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, our former Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, to utilize federal dollars to entice local police departments to establish STAR-type programs.
Carleigh Sailon, a social worker with the Mental Health Center of Denver who works out of one of the STAR vans, said she takes a “non-judgmental, client-centered, supportive” approach to assisting people in crisis.
“The intent of STAR is to send the right response, not a one-size fit all response. People call 911 for an array of reasons and it’s not always something that involves risk or a criminal element,” Sailon said. “If the STAR van can handle someone in crisis and that frees up police to handle a robbery or domestic violence call, then that’s an incredible success.”
Of course, the mental health crisis in America should be addressed in a manner that reduces the need to rely on STAR program intervention, but until that day comes STAR is a proven way to save the lives of people in crisis.
What will it take for Cleveland to institute such a program? With a mayoral election coming this year, all candidates should be questioned in regards to their level of support for initiating a STAR program in Cleveland.
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsIn
2 Responses to “MANSFIELD: Cleveland Needs STAR”
Walter P Bruckner
So instead of shouting “Defunding the Police,” we should be shouting “Reallocate Resources to Teams of Quick Response Crisis Clinicians?”
Really? That will make all the difference? Mr. Frasier, why do you think all these great programs happen everywhere but here?
Steve h
What will it take? Reallocating existing resources would be a great start, which is what the defund the police movement is all about. Defund is a catchy word, but the idea is to divesting police funds and using them on non-law enforcement forms of public saftey (lile the STAR program).
A little background research never hurts.