Across the Bay Area, communities are looking for ways to deal with mental health crises without involving police. Antioch created it’s own private crisis response team, and after 12 months the city’s mayor says results have been positive.
It’s been exactly one year since the city of Antioch launched its “Community Response Team.”
While it may be difficult to measure success on such a thing, the numbers are looking good. One number stands out from the rest.
Zero. That’s how many people have died while in police custody since the community response team was created. Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe said that’s exactly the result he was hoping for.
“The first month of my time as mayor of city of Antioch, I had an in-custody death that led to this. A month after that we had another in-custody death. And so, we haven’t had an in-custody death since we launched this,” Hernandez-Thorpe said. “That’s a mark of success for me.”