Denver successfully sent MH professionals, not police, to hundreds of calls

Abstract

Another U.S. city is reporting early success with a program that replaces traditional law enforcement responders with health care workers for some emergency calls, USA Today reported Feb. 8. Previously, Denver 911 operators only directed calls to police or fire department first responders. But the Support Team Assistance Response (STAR) pilot program created a third track for directing emergency calls to a two‐person team: a medic and a clinician, staffed in a van from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays (see MHW, Sept. 28, 2020). The STAR program, which launched in June, reported promising results in its six‐month progress report. The program aims to provide a “person‐centric mobile crisis response” to community members who are experiencing problems related to mental health, depression, poverty, homelessness or substance abuse issues. Denver is among several U.S. cities working to develop an alternative emergency responder model for people who are experiencing mental health crises, as police officers fatally shoot hundreds of people experiencing mental health crises every year, according to a Washington Post database of fatal shootings by on‐duty police officers. Since 2015, police have fatally shot nearly 1,400 people with mental illnesses, according to the database. Over the first six months of the pilot, Denver received more than 2,500 emergency calls that fell into the STAR program's purview, and the STAR team was able to respond to 748 calls. No calls required the assistance of police, and no one was arrested.