Justin Sondel | October 30, 2024

A coalition of community policy and advocacy groups is launching a pilot program to bring community responders to nonviolent, non-emergency public safety calls that otherwise would be handled by police.

The Partnership for the Public Good released a report on community responders Wednesday and announced that, alongside partners including the Erie County Restorative Justice Coalition, Little People’s Victory and Black Love Resists in the Rust, it will be establishing a demonstration program to put community responders into service in a concentrated area on Buffalo’s East Side. The program would cover portions of the Cold Spring, Hamlin Park and Martin Luther King Jr. Park neighborhoods.

In its research, Partnership for the Public Good found that 82% of all service calls in Buffalo from 2020 to 2022 did not involve crimes, with many for social problems like addiction or mental health, issues that could potentially be handled by community responders.

“Sending police where they’re not needed is costly, inefficient and dangerous, as police training and skills are mismatched with the response most needed in many situations,” said Colleen Kirstich, a senior community researcher with Partnership for the Public Good and the author of the report. “Police are unfairly tasked with too many roles outside of their scope, while at the same time they’re still expected to protect property and public safety.”

The group has $100,000 in seed money for the program from the state Office of Mental Health Services, secured with the help of State Sen. Sean Ryan, D-Buffalo. The group plans to use that money for community outreach efforts, training and data collection while building relationships around the program with community and government partners, including police agencies.

Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, Partnership for the Public Good’s executive director, said the group is also working on identifying funding sources for the next phase of the project, which will include hiring staff and buying a vehicle.
 
“I think it’s one of those situations I’ve seen as a policy person in Western New York where you really, actually have to have some seed money before government partners will say, ‘Yes, let’s test this out with you.’ ”

The report also identifies some community responder programs that have been successful around the country. It points to the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Ore., considered the gold standard in many advocacy circles. In operation for nearly 30 years, the Eugene Police Department estimates the program saves the city more than $2 million in police salaries by diverting 3% to 8% of service calls that do not require officer response.

Nicolalita Rodriguez de Melgar, founder and director of Little People’s Victory, said the plan will be to initially deploy one team of three to four workers with a mix of emergency medical technicians, social workers and mental health professionals.

“We are planning for one team right now, and also understand that the need is much greater than that, so we are also looking into other funding sources to continue to expand that,” she said.

The group plans to start with a direct phone line to their offices before being integrated into the county’s emergency services call system.
 
The hope is that the pilot program will demonstrate the value of the service to local decision makers, and that the service can then secure funding to be expanded throughout the county, Kirstich said.

“We would love to see the pilot scale up, other teams be started, so that everywhere in Erie County, 24 hours a day, every day of the year, you could call and get a community responder team within half an hour,” she said.