S1E3 - Crisis Response

Police were made the one size fits all response to social problems in the US, driving a racist system of mass incarceration. To create an alternative, over 100 communities across the country have launched community crises response programs that provide emergency public services responding to 911 calls by sending a community health worker, emergency medical technician or other non-police professional. This provides people in crisis with a healing-focused response, such as de-escalation, mental and physical health support, and connections to services. Ultimately these services promise to reduce police violence and rates of incarceration, and improve community health and stability.

In this episode of Real Solutions we hear from two experts on this topic: The first is Michelle Perin, who has spent 27 years working in community safety. Perin has been working at the community level in the oldest crisis response service in the country, in Eugene, Oregon. She has experience in traditional public safety roles (9-1-1 Dispatcher, Firefighter/EMT) and behavioral health. She began with the community crisis response service CAHOOTS in 2016. She worked on the van, as a clinical supervisor and coordinator and provided community training, especially to law enforcement and EMS partners.

And the second guest is Tahir Duckett, who is the Executive Director of Georgetown Law's Center for Innovations in Community Safety and an Adjunct Professor at the Law School. Duckett is a national expert on community crisis response programs who has a pulse on the range of programs around the country. His scholarship focuses on community safety infrastructure, including violence prevention and crisis response. He is a member of the non-partisan Council on Criminal Justice and sits on the Board of Directors of the Alternative Mobile Services Association. He was a founding executive committee member of Law For Black Lives-DC, an organization providing legal and policy support to the Movement for Black Lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.