2024-04-06 07:00:00
Albuquerque Community Safety behavioral health responder Nevada Sanchez, 28, looks through an apartment window to see if anyone is inside, responding to a welfare check of two children in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, 15 March 2024.
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Reuters
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Unarmed first responders Nevada Sanchez and Sean Martin take a police call in southeast Albuquerque, New Mexico, a city with high rates of violent crime and police shootings.
They have no enforcement powers or protective equipment and say they use their voices and brains to reduce encounters with people in mental health and substance abuse crises.
On some occasions they may have saved lives.
Driving through a throng of squat beige buildings and strip malls, Martin and Sanchez recall occasionally talking out people holding a weapon.
Martin says he persuaded one man to throw a knife into a neighbor’s yard and told him officers were on their way. When they arrived, Martin told them the man was no longer armed and things ended peacefully.
“On that day, I can’t help but think we prevented him from getting injured,” says Martin, 53, who, with his ponytail, hoop earrings, hooded jacket and blue jeans, looks more like a technical worker than ‘ a first responder look.
Albuquerque, with the second-highest rate of police killings among U.S. cities of more than 250,000 people, according to Mapping Police Violence, has set up one of the nation’s most ambitious citizen response programs to provide aid rather than law enforcement to people in crisis.
Such initiatives have spread like wildfire across the United States since the 2020 killing of George Floyd highlighted police killings of people of color and those suffering from mental illness or substance abuse, said Brooklyn College sociology professor Alex Vitale. said.
The two-and-a-half-year-old Albuquerque Community Safety (ACS) department now takes the majority of mental and behavioral health calls when there is no weapon or danger to responders.
The police or an ACS “mobile crisis team” of a mental health professional and officer take the rest.
Sean Martinez, 53, tries to check on an elderly man through the windows following a neighbor called a welfare check on March 15, 2024 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
“CHANGING PUBLIC SAFETY”
ACS measures success by metrics such as how many people it transports for mental health services and reducing police shootings, said director Maria Ruiz-Angel.
Albuquerque’s officer-involved shootings hit a record in 2022, with 11 people killed — nearly as many as the 13 in New York City with regarding 15 times the population. Fatal police shootings decreased to seven in 2023, still high. About a third of the incidents involved someone in a mental health crisis.
No ACS mobile crisis team has been involved in a police shooting.
In the same period, the number of people offered ACS housing more than doubled to 1,454, while the provision of mental or behavioral health services nearly tripled to 904, city data show.
“Albuquerque is a very good example of what it looks like to go beyond implementing a program to build an institution and an infrastructure that can anchor the transformation of our public safety and emergency response systems,” said Daniela Gilbert , a director at the Vera Institute said. investigate criminal law.
ACS, a city department independent of police and fire, offers services ranging from school violence intervention programs to outreach to the unarmed. Many police departments support civilians taking non-criminal emergency calls so officers can respond to crimes more quickly.
Albuquerque Police Chief Jeff Barnard would like to see ACS “get additional funding and resources to continue working on the things they’re working on.”
The Justice Department has been monitoring Albuquerque police since 2014 following finding a pattern of excessive use of force. It recommends that ACS take more 911 calls.
Nevada Sanchez, 28, and Sean Martinez, 53, of Albuquerque Community Safety, talk with a neighbor who called a welfare check for her elderly neighbor on March 15, 2024 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
Shaun Willoughby, head of the APD officers’ union, said ACS is a feature, but it’s “fantasy” to think that responders can replace officers because of restrictions on the types of calls they can take without police backup.
“The real problem facing Albuquerque is that we don’t have enough police officers and crime is out of control,” he said, citing an “exploding fentanyl problem.”
Unlike programs in New York, Chicago and Houston, ACS behavioral health teams are sent without paramedics or police who can cause people suffering a psychotic break.
“It is absolutely our preference that these civilian responders respond without police whenever possible,” said Daniel Williams of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, referring to the safety of people in crisis.
ACS responders are trained to retreat if threatened. Their most serious injury to date is a responder who was randomly shot by a child with an air rifle.
When an unprotected woman charged at Sanchez with a shovel, she said she ran.
“If someone tells us to ‘Go away’, we go away,” says the 28-year-old, who has a master’s degree in forensic psychology and uses breathing exercises to calm people in distress.
Sean Martinez, 53, and Nevada Sanchez, 28, talk to an unguarded man in an alley during a wellness check in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S., March 15, 2024.
Word is spreading regarding ACS’s ability to get mentally ill patients to the hospital who would not go with officers or paramedics following they may have been handcuffed in the past.
“Now people are saying, ‘Don’t send officers,'” said Martin, a licensed clinical social worker.
Since ACS launched, monthly call volume has quadrupled to regarding 3,200, more than two-thirds of calls are diverted from the police, who take regarding 5% of all 911 calls.
Eugene, Oregon’s CAHOOTS, one of the oldest answering programs in the country, handles regarding 8% of 911 calls, according to coordinator Adam Walsh.
ACS faces challenges. Ruiz-Angel laments a lack of hospital beds, shelter spaces or addiction centers for the people to whom the respondents are called.
How big ACS can grow is limited by annual funding of regarding $17 million. The police get $268 million. ACS has 65 responders, Albuquerque police regarding 900 officers.
“We don’t want to compete with the police for money, but we need to start figuring out how we distribute some of the public safety funds,” Ruiz-Angel said.
Sean Martinez, 53, and Nevada Sanchez, 28, of Albuquerque Community Safety arrive at an apartment complex in response to a well-being check for an elderly man on March 15, 2024 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller sees ACS doubling in size and taking on 60,000 more calls a year with a $25 million budget.
The city is making its largest-ever investment in mental and behavioral health with a $50 million hospital renovation to provide additional shelter, addiction and medical services.
“That’s how big the demand is for that kind of behavioral health, social service response right now in Albuquerque,” the two-term Democratic leader said.
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