If you were having a mental health crisis, would you want someone with a gun and taser telling you to calm down? That’s often the reality when someone calls 911 in response to a behavioral or mental health emergency.
The standard response to an emergency call is to send the police, no matter the situation, but what if we could be sending trained experts who know exactly how to respond?
To keep our community safe, we need to be sure that we will be treated with empathy and receive the proper care we need when we are experiencing mental health and behavioral health emergencies. Alternative emergency response programs, or ARP, are a way to achieve those goals. These programs provide alternative methods for responding to non-violent, non-medical emergency calls, such as sending trained behavioral health experts to help people in crisis…