Columbus Safety Collective members want the City of Columbus to implement an alternative emergency response program that does not involve police in crisis response.
The city currently has programs aimed at providing alternative responses and reducing Columbus Police responses, but Columbus Safety Collective organizer Alwiyah Shariff said his group believes the current measures do not address true crisis situations.
“The alternatives currently existing 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, Downtown.
“We want the city to invest in a public safety system that our neighbors can rely on and trust, that makes evidence-based decisions and is accountable to the community,” said Shariff. The group, according to its Facebook page, “exists to create an anti-racist and health-focused emergency response program” for Columbus that does not involve the police.
Last year, the city created a pilot project called the Right Response Unit, a team consisting of a supervisor, a Columbus Public Health social worker and a paramedic from the City Fire Department, which is integrated into the dispatch center. emergency health services to review requests for potential substitutes, non-police responses. The creation of the unit resulted from the city’s “Re-imagining Public Safety” initiative that jumped to the fore following the 2020 racial injustice protests in Columbus.
The Columbus Police Mobile Crisis Response Unit (MCR) paired a police officer trained in crisis intervention with mental health and substance abuse doctors. The program saw doctors and officers on the street together for about 18 hours a day, seven days a week, and answered about 6,000 calls. But the deal with the company that supplies the doctors ended in 2021.
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Stephen David, organizer and social worker at the Columbus Safety Collective, said the group is asking the city to allocate funds in the 2023 budget to launch a new pilot program that does not include police in mental health crisis responses next year.
David outlined the policy points the group hopes will lead to the creation of a new program, including sending teams to crisis settings without police officers and encouraging the hiring of crisis responders from “high-need neighborhoods” . David also said the group hopes to see community engagement in the proposed program, hiring and training community members in mental health crisis intervention and medical skills.
He said the group also proposes to establish a community supervisory board and pay for an external evaluation to assess the impact of the proposed program through the pilot project and beyond.
Chana Wiley, a community organizer with Ohio Families United for Political Action and Change and Columbus Safety Collective, also spoke at the meeting about how her experience has shaped her view on the need for alternative, non-police responses. Wiley’s brother Jaron Thomas died in police custody in 2017 after calling the emergency health services during a mental health crisis and was detained by police who responded.
“A crisis involving mental or behavioral health doesn’t 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 have to wait to see one in Columbus ”.
The Franklin County Coroner’s Office determined that Thomas’s death was accidental and that the cause of his death was a lack of oxygen to the brain due to cardiac arrest, The Dispatch reported. Because the coroner ruled it was an accidental death, the Franklin County Attorney’s Office refused to take the case to a grand jury.
In 2021, a federal judge dismissed a manslaughter lawsuit filed by Thomas’s family against the officers involved.
A spokesman for Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther could not be reached immediately on Thursday for his reaction to the proposal.
Cole Behrens is a reporter for The Columbus Dispatch who covers public safety and breaking news. You can reach him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter at @Colebehr_report