In Brief:
- Since 2020, the number of community responder programs in American cities has increased more than tenfold.
- They answer 911 calls that don’t require police response, giving officers more time to pursue serious crimes.
- Although alternative responders are sometimes paired with police, they’ve rarely had to call for armed backup due to safety concerns.
On average, America’s police departments are currently operating with about 90 percent of the officers they are authorized to hire. This means more work for officers who remain on the job, adding more stress to a profession that already tests their physical and mental resources.
More cities, however, are employing community responder programs to handle non-violent situations, freeing officers to concentrate on the most challenging cases. Each year, community responders are handling more than 200,000 calls that would have once fallen to police, according to the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP).
Responder programs rely on civilians such as social workers and behavioral health professionals to address some of the calls that come in. Since 2020, responder programs have increased more than tenfold and are now used in 31 states (see graph) .
There have been no fatalities or serious injuries over the course of more than half a million responses, although there are critics of this approach who say they cherry pick easier cases.
This approach drew criticism a few years ago as part of the “defund the police” debate. A recent survey of Michigan sheriffs included common concerns about the idea of alternative response. More than 80 percent of chiefs and sheriffs were skeptical that civilians could handle emergencies safely; similar numbers didn’t think there were enough qualified professionals in their community to support a co-responder program.
Most believed that funding such a program will leave less money for their departments.
But alternative responders aren’t putting police out of work. Instead of addressing crimes they’re tackling social problems — from mental health incidents and complaints about homeless individuals to problems with welfare checks.
“Police officers are not psychologists,” said Debbie Thomas, a director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, that city’s police union, who supports responder programs. “We are not psychiatrists. We are not mental health experts. We are not social workers, doctors, nurses or waste management experts.”
Breaking Through Resistance
There are officers who are skeptical or defensive about this approach, especially if they see it as critical of their work, says Tom Thompson, a retired community college police chief who works with LEAP to establish new programs.
There haven’t yet been long-term studies of the impact of these programs. Moki Macías, who directs a response program in Atlanta, emphasizes that alternative response is not much more than a Band-Aid if social services aren’t readily available. A recent survey of Michigan sheriffs found broad support for alternative response teams, if they include law enforcement.
In cities with well-established alternative response programs, such as Denver and Eugene, Ore., police have rarely been called due to safety concerns, perhaps 1 percent of the time.
Thompson feels certain what the response would be if he sat down with officers and asked if they’d like not to have to deal with neighbors fighting over a property line, a kid that doesn’t want to go to a school or a non-violent mental health episode. “They’d be laughing and high fiving,” Thompson says.
Varying Forms of Response
The composition of responder teams varies from city to city. A pairing of an EMT and clinician is common, says LEAP’s Rebecca Mironko. There are similar numbers of teams comprised of clinicians only, trained civilians or civilians and an EMT.
Different programs respond to different kinds of calls. “In Dayton, they are the mediation response unit,” says Morinko. “They respond to conflict resolution calls, so they’re trained specifically in mediation and de-escalation.” (If violence or a weapon is involved, police are dispatched.)
To the extent that community responder programs give police more time to pursue criminals, they satisfy calls for enforcement. If they lead to better outcomes for citizens in mental health crises, they answer demands for change.
Thompson worked the streets during his career and knows the complaints about non-emergency calls well. “It’s, ‘Why are we going to these calls — we’ve got people shooting each other, drugs being sold,’” he says. “Cops want to be cops.”
