Non-police crisis intervention program seeks more funding for around-the-clock operations, building awareness on streets
Bronwyn Jones Carver is a member of Street Roots’ MoJo program. MoJo is composed of vendors learning about journalism, covering life on the streets and writing about issues important to our community.
On Feb. 16, 2022, Portland Street Response will celebrate one year of call responses for the Lents neighborhood in Portland.
A new influx of money will fund the addition of four new units and shifts, expanding the program citywide by March 2022. The funding increase is not enough to fund an around-the-clock schedule, but PSR is working to request additional funds.
Operating times are currently Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Thursday through Sunday, 6 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. PSR responds to 911-placed non-emergency calls, or those called into the non-emergency phone line, requesting help for individuals in need of welfare checks.
This could be an individual walking down the street with no shoes on, someone underdressed for the weather or someone experiencing a mental health crisis in public.
PSR started with one founding team of four that included a firefighter paramedic, a licensed mental health crisis therapist and two community health workers. The team is a diverse group that comes with many years of experience in their fields. Initially, PSR only served a small portion of the Lents neighborhood
On April 1, the boundaries expanded to the greater Lents area to better align with Portland Police districts and to serve an area that is under-supported, lacking existing resources and services. On Nov. 1, the boundary was expanded again to cover the entire Portland Police Bureau East Precinct.
The starting operating budget was $1.08 million, which funded the team inside the original Lents neighborhood boundary and the two initial expansions. The Nov. 1 expansion also saw the addition of another response team. This team consists of a licensed firefighter EMT, a licensed mental health crisis responder and two peer support specialists. The budget expansion allowed a night shift to be operational.
For the fall budget of 2021, PSR put together a proposal requesting an additional $1.08 million, which would bring their current operating budget to $2.98 million. The fall budget proposal passed unanimously.
Robyn Burek, PSR program manager, said the service agency is working to secure additional funding to expand services.
“By the end of 2022, I anticipate we will be citywide and 24/7,” Burek said.
Portland State University, PSR and Street Roots ambassadors are currently collecting data from both the day and night shifts to figure out where to extrapolate and where the need is. After the next Portland State University study is performed, PSR will have the data to guide expanded services and hours of operation.
Street Roots asked several unhoused individuals, all of whom wished to not be named, about PSR and if they had heard of it. No one in the downtown core, nor in the Northeast or the North of Portland had heard of the program, despite the impending expansion.
“It sounds nice, not to have the cops come if I am having a bad day,” one man told Street Roots. “(Police) show up and right away, my PTSD is kicking in because most of the time, they are yelling at you, ‘do this, don’t do that.’ I mean, I can’t think now and they is getting madder at me which, well, it’s just bad, all bad.”
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Another woman echoed what the man said.
“They don’t respect you out here,” she said. “I can be screaming in anger at someone taking my stuff, again, and the cops get mad at me because I am making a scene and they don’t care why. My stuff is stolen, what the fuck?”
To combat the lack of information and awareness, PSR requested $350,000 for an informational campaign in the spring to put together focus groups on how to get the word out and advertise their services better. The more people know about PSR and how to reach it, the more calls it can respond to.
Burek said PSR will need patience during expansion as hold times will vary, but said PSR is working diligently “to improve those times so as to be a reliable and really responsive service.”
Burek said the main goal for PSR in the next five years is expanding and improving services.
“Moving forward, I really hope that we have, or work with our other partners across the city, to provide ongoing services, that we have really good referrals, that we expand the number of walk-in clinics, we expand the number of respite care centers,” Burek said. “I want to see more resources in Portland because that definitely not only impacts my team, it impacts the people we are trying to serve. Sometimes my team feels as though we are just putting a band-aid on things because there are not enough places, enough beds, not enough shelters, not enough resources to take people to get the treatment or care they need.
“The next five years I really hope that we can work with our city partners to expand that, to really provide a very comprehensive care from the time 911 is called to the time we respond, to the time that we can do a (single) handoff to another agency or referral service.”
Current police response
Without non-police alternatives, police still respond to crisis calls in Portland, which advocates and unhoused people say is a problem.
Officers who respond to crisis calls take crisis intervention team training, a police curriculum intended to reduce risk of serious injury, or death during interactions with police officers, according to Sgt. Kevin Allen, Portland Police Bureau’s public information officer. Portland police have two units in the Behavioral Health Response Team that answer to crises. The Behavioral Health Response Team started in 2014, partially in response to a U.S. Department of Justice settlement following disproportionate use of force by Portland police on people with mental illness.
A uniformed officer is paired with a qualified mental health professional from Cascadia Project Respond. The team does follow-ups on individuals who utilize the 911 system multiple times and have high-risk interactions with police. The individuals are usually referred to the team by an officer in the field.
For escalated situations such as suicide or people who are reportedly violent, officers with the Enhanced Crisis Intervention Team respond. Every precinct maintains an enhanced crisis team assigned to all shifts. According to Allen, all Portland police officers receive basic de-escalation training along with a refresher training, though Allen declined to provide a timeline for when officers must take a refresher course.
A National Movement
It is not just Portland creating or growing non-police crisis intervention teams. One of the oldest, CAHOOTS, or Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets, was launched in Eugene in 1989 by White Bird Clinic. The CAHOOTS model was the roadmap for Portland Street Response.
Other West Coast cities like Oakland, Sacramento and others created non-police teams in recent years. Cities in the Midwest and on the East Coast have non-police response teams of their own, including Minneapolis and Baltimore.
Cities with new programs include San Francisco, which launched its Street Crisis Response Team pilot Nov. 30, 2020. The pilot included two teams of a trained social worker, a paramedic and a peer counselor, and served the entire city. Currently, San Francisco’s team operates 24 hours a day. As of October, it “handled” more than 4,000 calls, per a November city report.
San Diego County launched their pilot in January, and as of Dec. 7, the Mobile Crisis Response Team has a budget of $10 million and a planned $600,000 public information campaign, according to the San Diego Union Tribune. The team consists of a mental health clinician, a case manager and a peer support specialist.
In New York, the Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division or B-HEARD was launched in June. Operating largely in the “high need” areas of East Harlem, and parts of Central Harlem and North Harlem, New York, a three-person team of two EMTs or paramedics and a mental health professional are dispatched 16 hours a day as a police alternative.
Editor’s note: Some Street Roots staff were involved with researching and launching Portland Street Response. The author and editor of this article were not.
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