(The Center Square) – The city’s Community Assisted Response & Engagement program isn’t fully capable of doing its job of handling mental health emergencies, a recent evaluation by Seattle’s Office of Inspector General shows.
The program provided crisis intervention by crisis workers rather than police officers, but the report said the current union contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild maintains armed officers as the standard practice to respond to behavioral health emergencies.
A 2025 contract between the city of Seattle and the Seattle Police Guild, which represents police officers, was supposed to expand the type of calls crisis workers could respond to, the OIG said. But the OIG analysts said in the report that specific terms written into the labor agreement severely restrict civilian responders from reaching a substantial portion of community members in need…