Members of the Columbus Joint Safety Committee want the city of Columbus to implement another emergency response program, one that does not involve the police in crisis response.
The city currently has programs aimed at providing alternative responses and reducing Columbus police responses, but Columbus Safety Collective organizer Alwiyah Shariff said his group believes the current measures do not address real crisis situations.
“The current alternatives in the city of Columbus do not address this need for non-police teams to respond to the scene when someone needs help,” Shariff said during a public meeting of the congregation Wednesday at Church Trinity Episcopal at East Broad and Third streets, downtown.
“We want the city to invest in a public safety system that our neighbors can rely on and trust, that makes evidence-based decisions, and is accountable to the public,” Freeman said. The group, according to its Facebook page, “exists to create an anti-racist, health-oriented emergency response program” for Columbus that does not involve the police.
Last year, the city created a pilot project called the Correct Response Unit — a team made up of a dispatcher, a Columbus Public Health social worker and a city Fire Department paramedic — embedded in the 911 dispatch center to review calls to possible alternative calls. , non-police responses. The creation of the unit arose out of the city’s “Reimagining Public Safety” initiative that jumped to the fore after the racial injustice protests in Columbus in 2020.
The Columbus police mobile crisis response (MCR) unit paired police officers trained in crisis intervention with mental health and substance abuse clinicians. The program had clinicians and officers on the street together for about 18 hours a day, seven days a week, and answered about 6,000 calls. But the agreement with the company providing clinicians ended in 2021.
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Stephen David, an organizer and social worker for the Columbus Safety Collective, said the group is asking the city to allocate money in the 2023 budget to launch a new pilot program that does not include police in mental health crisis responses next year.
David outlined the policy points the group hopes will lead to the creation of a new program, including sending teams to crisis sites without police officers and incentivizing crisis responders to be hired from “high-income neighborhoods necessity.” David added that the group hopes to see community participation in the proposed program, hiring and training community members in mental health crisis intervention and healing skills.
He said the group also plans to establish a community oversight board and pay for an external evaluation to assess the impact of the proposed program through the pilot program and beyond.
Chana Wiley, a community organizer with Ohio Families United for Political Action and Change and the Columbus Safety Collective, also spoke during the meeting about how her own experience shaped her perspective on the need for alternative, non-police responses. Wiley’s brother, Jaron Thomas, died in police custody in 2017 after he called 911 during a mental health crisis and was restrained by responding police.
“A mental health or behavioral crisis is not the same as danger,” Wiley said. “When the police respond to these situations, it reduces the chances of people getting the help they really need. These models work in other cities and we shouldn’t have to wait to see one in Columbus.”
The Franklin County Coroner’s Office ruled that Thomas’ death was accidental and that his cause of death was a lack of oxygen to his brain due to a cardiac arrest, The Dispatch reported. Because the coroner ruled the death accidental, the Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office declined to present the case to a grand jury.
In 2021, a federal judge dismissed a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Thomas’ family against the officers involved.
A spokesman for Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther could not immediately be reached Thursday for his response to the proposal.
Cole Behrens is a reporter at The Columbus Dispatch covering public safety and breaking news. You can reach him at CBehrens@dispatch.com or find him on Twitter at @Colebehr_report
