Team Safety

While the teams prioritize the safety of their clients, the same care goes into the dispatched team members. Before a team is sent out, a vetting process has already been done by either dispatch or within a parent agency like 988/CC. They will assess if the call is appropriate for a team to go on. When a police officer or firefighter is on a call, they may see the need to call one of the crisis teams to intervene. Since the police or fire is on scene, they can assess the safety risk and will either stay back if there is a weapon or a likelihood of further escalation, or leave it for the team to take over.

Each team has expressed additional safety measures for the team. MRRKT has established a protocol for their team members to do 15-minute check-ins. This is done through communication via email, where they expect a response every 15 minutes. If a team breaks that timeline, they will call 911 for them to be checked on. The other teams that are not dispatched through 911 or police can request a police assisted call if they feel like there is a safety risk before heading out. The teams have expressed very low barriers for calls and rarely have a hard “no” process unless it deals with a weapon. There are some additional options they can do, and they can always do a next day follow-up with the immediate crisis that is too great for them to get involved with at the time.

Enabling Care

The safety protocols described by the teams are crucial for making non-carceral crisis response a viable alternative to police-led interventions. By ensuring that crisis teams have appropriate safety measures in place, these programs create the infrastructure and confidence necessary to respond to complex situations without immediately defaulting to law enforcement involvement. This shift in first response allows communities to address crises through a care-first approach, rather than a process of punishment and control. The fact that police or fire personnel can assess the scene and then defer to crisis teams reduces the chances of arrest, incarceration, or escalation, especially in situations where the presence of armed officers might otherwise intensify or lead to criminal charges.

Selected Quotations

Joe – MRRCT (13:34): “So the team, and let’s go back in the training, they get specialized training as well as called edge training. Edge training talks about verbal deescalation. That’s the main communication tool that we use the evidence-based practice to deescalate the situation to get them to where we can communicate effectively and understand what their needs are.”

Jon – MIH (07:22): “So for a direct crisis dispatch, a couple things need to be the case. The caller needs to be not imminently attempting suicide needs to be considered, not a safety risk to responders and not have any weapons. And they have to also want an in-person response because typically before we dispatch, we’re going to ask them first if they want to talk to the crisis line and then thereafter if they want to talk to the nurse line. So basically the person has to be endorsing suicidality or behavioral health crisis, not be imminently about to suicide and want someone to come see them in person. And if those criteria are met, my team can go.”

Amy – CARE (18:21): “So it is a very cool design because we’re so integrated and it also provides an additional level of safety where officers, the sergeants listening to those channels too. And so if something is going sideways, this happens with the fire department, we know we can send fast backup, we can send help really quickly.”

Zee – MCT (01:29): “So all of the officers who are on our team, they either have to have gone through the 40 hour crisis intervention training that the state offers or go through it shortly after joining the team. That’s a requirement either way. They’re also required to do the FBI is Haas negotiation training level one. But in order to be on the team, we go through an interview process. So it’s officers who really want to do crisis work as their specific profession, at least with us for the time period that they’re with us.”

Dianne – CCORS (19:58): “If the police were out at the scene and had us come out, we would communicate with them around what the situation was or things we might, if the referral we got recommended having law enforcement to meet us out there because of weapons in the home or whatever the situation. If crisis connections determined there was some safety concerns, then we might ask law enforcement to meet us out there by your ambulance. We might communicate with them around assisting with transportation to get someone to the hospital if it was unsafe for the parent or us to transport.”