Chairman of the Committee on Finance, Councilman John J. Iglozzi Esq. (Ward 7) announced today that the Committee will have a discussion tonight with representatives from the Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) Program based in Denver, Colorado.
“After a nearly nine-hour long public hearing on the budget, our Committee heard loud and clear that their needs to be a new way of looking at policing in our community,” stated Chairman John J. Igliozzi Esq. “We heard calls to abolish the police and to defund the police, but in each of those refrains, it was centered on the need for the decriminalization of societal issues – like mental health, low-level drug offenses, public intoxication, and other issues that would not warrant an armed response. These are things that can and should be handled by trained medics and mental health professionals, and would allow individuals to receive social services rather than being confronted with the potential of an arrest.”
Last week, the Committee on Finance heard from representatives from Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets (CAHOOTS) launched by the White Bird Clinic in 1989 in Eugene, Oregon. Their program addresses the social service needs that are better treated by trained counselors, medics, and crisis managers than the police. The program deploys teams of two unarmed civilian officers with a medic and trained crisis worker to calls that are nonviolent and do not require an armed response. According to their shared data, they handled 18% of the 133,000 911 calls in the City of Eugene last year and only needed to call for police backup 150 times. The program is operated on a $2-million budget and saved the city nearly $14-million in costs of ambulance transport and emergency room care in the past year.
The STAR program is funded through the Caring for Denver Foundation and began its pilot phase on June 1, 2020. The program has been in development for several years and was planned to launch in April but was pushed back due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The program, based on the CAHOOTS model, is different as it is not housed in the public safety division of the City but based out of the Mental Health Centers of Denver.
“These programs are not one size fits all. We need to find the right balance and the right kind of program that would address the needs that are specific to Providence. Over the next few weeks, we will continue to have these conversations and looking at ways we can integrate unarmed response teams to help serve our community and free up our police to do the work they are intended to do. I believe our Police Department is doing a great job and I applaud how they have been handling themselves throughout these difficult conversations. However, I believe that we can always do better. If creating specific programs to address these societal issues and alleviate the stress of our police force having to go to calls that would be better handled by trained medical and social service professionals, I think that is a great start to better community policing and intervention,” continued Chairman Igliozzi.
