Linking unarmed responses to what we do
Jessilyn Averill
Last month the Coalition for Re-envisioning Our Safety, or CROS, held a virtual Public Forum to discuss the creation of an unarmed safety response team in Ann Arbor. CROS is a coalition of community members and groups who came together following the resolution Ann Arbor City Council passed in April 2021 directing the City Administrator to develop an unarmed public safety response program for the city.
Panelists at the Forum included Yodit Mesfin Johnson of Nonprofit Enterprise at Work, Sheri Wander of Day Time Warming Center - Washtenaw County and Peace House, Ypsi, Bri Carpenter of Avalon Housing, and Erin Keith of Detroit Justice Center. The Interim City Administrator, Milton Dohoney, also joined. To watch the recording of the Public Form click here.
The personal experiences shared by the panelists detailing direct police interactions between themselves or with others from our community made clear the need for trauma-informed care when first responding to mental health, homelessness, and addiction crises. One personal story showed how complaint-based policing is not effective in bringing safety, in fact, it redirects a person vulnerable in a nonviolent crisis from accessing emergency social services to a jail cell. Another panelist shared how it was possible for them to co-develop a collective care response that avoids calling the police as the default when supporting someone who needed help after an overdose.
"When you think of the majority of the calls that come into a dispatch center, over 83% of those calls do not require someone who’s been authorized with a weapon to respond,” Pastor Donnell Wyche said during the Forum. “Only 17% of the calls might fit someone’s definition of crime. It might be petty larceny or maybe property crime, but only 4% of those are what someone might categorize as violent crime."
The City's resolution directed the development of the new response team by December 2021. Late last December, the City Administrator's office submitted to City Council an interim report outlining next steps for continuing to explore the creation of the program. More recently, Administrator Dohoney sent a memo to the Ann Arbor Mayor and City Council with recommendations following the open community APRA funding input survey, which included $3.5 million for unarmed response. Advocates continued to push for support of this funding for this project at the March 7th City Council meeting.
CROS is looking for community members to speak in support of allocating ARPA funding for the unarmed response team at the next City Council meeting on March 21st as well as send an advocacy email to the Council beforehand. It is expected that projects approved for ARPA funding will be announced by the end of March. To stay informed on what is happening and take action in support of implementing a new response program, visit CROS's website reenvisionoursafety.org or email ReEnvisionOurSafetyWashCo@gmail.com.
Did you know? Washtenaw County has a 24/7 crisis services hotline through the Washtenaw County Community Mental Health (CMH) (734) 544-3050. Starting on January 1st of this year, the hotline now includes substance use treatment and support services answered by licensed substance use and mental health professionals. Check out WCCMH's 2020 Millage Impact Report to read about how the millage dollars are used and the services people can be access or refer others to.