June 27, 2024
Seattle’s experiment with non-police responses to certain 911 emergencies is getting a boost this year.
Mayor Bruce Harrell and acting CARE chief Amy Smith announced Wednesday that the pilot program would expand citywide from its current greater-Downtown operating boundaries. With that, the staff will grow from six responders to 24, along with three supervisors, and provide service seven days a week.
The Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) pilot program launched last October. The program sends mental health experts out with police officers to respond to people having mental or behavioral health crises.
The idea is to de-escalate situations in which an armed officer might increase a person’s distress ( analysis by the Treatment Advocacy Center found that people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during encounters with law enforcement).
Some police alternative programs, such as those in Olympia and Eugene, send non-police responders on 911 calls without an officer. Seattle’s CARE is a dual-dispatch model that requires police to be aware of CARE’s responses. In some scenarios that means an officer assessing a scene for safety first before leaving for other higher-priority calls. In others, CARE responders can be dispatched directly to a scene without police on site.