The Shakerite VOL 91 ISSUE I

GUEST RITES
SH4BL URGES ALTERNATIVES TO
POLICE FOR MENTAL HEALTH CRISES
Dear Shaker Heights City Council Members
and Mayor Weiss,
Shaker Heights for Black Lives and our allies
applaud the city’s initiative and ongoing efforts to
create a mental health response team (MHRT) to
respond to the needs of people experiencing mental
health crises in Shaker Heights. However, the
plan the city has proposed is inadequate.
Amid a growing movement to reimagine public
safety in the aftermath of the murder of George
Floyd and the historic demonstrations against
police violence that ensued, the idea of finding
alternatives to having police respond to mental
health crises has become a focal point in many
cities across the country. In their project entitled
“Reimagine Safety,” the Washington Post Editorial
Board said, “jurisdictions around the country
are questioning whether an armed police officer is
really the best response to most calls for help. Philadelphia,
Dallas, Denver and Atlanta are among
the growing number of cities experimenting with
new, unarmed response teams to better respond to
crisis calls, particularly where mental health is involved.”
Other non-police response models are not
new. Notably, the CAHOOTS program in Eugene,
Oregon has been serving its community for over
thirty years. The City of Cleveland has recently
enrolled in a training program to learn how to implement
a police-free response program along the
lines of CAHOOTS.
A key component of all of these programs is
that they do not involve sending police as first
responders. So, while we are heartened by the
city’s initiative and $100,000 budgetary commitment
to fund a pilot MHRT program in 2021, we
are dismayed that the proposed plan still involves
sending a police officer to respond to mental health
crises in Shaker Heights. We call on the city to
design and implement a pilot plan that sends a
non-police team to respond to 911 calls for help.
Of course, those teams could call in police backup
when necessary, but we don’t anticipate this to be
necessary very often. In practice, other cities using
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a police-free MHRT model, including CAHOOTS in
Eugene, Oregon, have resorted to calling the police
less than 2% of the time.
Members of Shaker Heights for Black Lives
and other community groups have attended
MHRT planning meetings since the summer
of 2020. We have helped the city with research,
brought more community members into the
discussion, and voiced our desire for a plan that
involves sending social workers and mental health
professionals to respond to emergency calls without
police or guns. During those meetings, it
became clear that city officials, advocates, police
leadership, and people with mental health illnesses
and their loved ones agree that police are not
ideal respondents to mental health crises. Shaker
Heights’ 2021 MHRT pilot program should not be
used as yet another proof of this point. Instead,
this is the perfect opportunity to try a police-free
model that we all agree we need, so we can improve
upon it in future years. This is also an opportunity
for Shaker Heights to reassert its place among the
national leaders in grappling with racial integration
and equity.
In a previous MHRT planning meeting, a Crisis
Intervention Trainer suggested that police-free
models work better in higher-population areas,
such as those in Eugene or Denver. We call on the
city to pilot a police-free MHRT model now, to be
used as the basis for the implementation of a regional
CAHOOTS-style MHRT, either at the county
level or in partnership with the five cities that
share dispatch services with Shaker Heights.
We appreciate the City’s open process and look
forward to further discussion and consideration
of these issues. We are excited for the opportunity
to work with you to help Shaker Heights both
improve city services and find its place amid the
growing national focus on reimagining public
safety.
Shaker Heights for Black Lives
VOL. 91 ISSUE I