Seattle’s first team of CARE “Dual Dispatch” responders (Image: City of Seattle)
Seattle has launched its pilot pairing social workers with cops responding to day-to-day mental health and drug crisis 911 calls but, for now, there won’t be any “dual dispatch” responses on Capitol Hill.
Mayor Bruce Harrell announced the start of service this week in the $1.5 million pilot hoped to grow into a “third public safety department” joining police and firefighters in protecting the city with welfare checks and help for people suffering mental crisis and addiction.
Its initial focus will be downtown, “including the Chinatown-International District and SODO,” operating from 11 AM to 11 PM, “a schedule that matches where and when the most frequent calls related to mental health crisis occur,” the city says.
The new program will deploy social workers and behavioral health specialists with Seattle Police Department officers for a limited set of circumstances when mental health expertise is needed and the situation is deemed safe for non-police intervention.
Backers hope CARE and efforts like “dual dispatch” will be the start of needed change and could help the city provide more substantial responses to the flood of so-called “welfare check” calls that come into 911 dispatchers from Capitol Hill and across the city every day.
Under the pilot, 911 calls dispatched involving someone suffering a mental crisis will include the specialists arriving with police at situations that don’t involve someone who is injured or sick, an “imminent danger,” weapons, or narcotics.
The launch comes amid criticism of Chief Adrian Diaz and skepticism around traditional policing in the city sparked by recorded comments from Seattle Police officers illustrating troubling biases and cynicism including the body cam video that captured a police union vice president making flippant remarks about Jaahnavi Kandula after she was struck and killed by a speeding police officer.
It also arrives as leaders have signed the department up for a crackdown on public drug use in the city.
Unlike in other cities where similar experiments are underway, members of the newly formed six-member team will always have a cop at their side.
Amy Smith, deputy director of the former Community Safety and Communications Center, is currently leading the new Community Assisted Response and Engagement department that houses the existing assets around 911 and dispatching while adding the new team of mental health and addiction responders. The city says Smith holds “advanced degrees” in ethical leadership, administration, and organizational learning, and recently completed a doctorate at Vanderbilt University “where she honed her data science and behavioral research skills.”
Smith told Publicola that downtown as selected for the pilot’s launch because the neighborhoods were already “an area of emphasis where there are resources.”
The city says the new CARE response team features behavioral health specialists, “who all have prior field experience along with a bachelor’s or master’s degree related to the field.”
“Equipped with skills to help people in need, the team includes members with peer counselor certification and who have served with the DESC Mobile Crisis Team, Crisis Solutions Center, King County Behavioral Health Outreach, and as an SPD Community Service Officer,” according to the city’s announcement on the launch.
For now, there is no schedule for expansion of the pilot to areas like Capitol Hill where “welfare check” 911 calls are more common.
2024 could bring an expansion of the effort. Harrell is proposing $26.5 million in funding for the new CARE department combining the city’s Community Safety and Communications Center 911 resources with the new “dual dispatch” pilot. That budget proposal is now in the hands of the Seattle City Council.
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I’m guessing only six almost guaranties early burnout. This may undermine the effort and they most certainly have grabbed the wrong end of the stick.
Now hiring: Seattle Police, only you don’t have protection and pay is 1/3rd.
Also with typical LEOFF retirement plans many in SPD can get full retirement at 53 and work in any non-government policing or private security job they want to after that while still collecting that full retirement. CARE staff will probably work til the grave and collect fractions of what they need to live based off of what they were able to pay into their PERS retirement system.
People often don’t know about or overlook the differences in fed & state public employee retirement plans. But the difference between what most make (teachers, jail staff, dmv, city parks, social workers) in retirement compared to police and the age when they can collect it is wild! More info is in the WA state WAC online.
Police and fire are assumed to physically age out much quicker than teachers or other public employees, and therefore require an earlier retirement age. firefighters and police often (maybe always), also do not pay into or benefit from social security so their pensions are their only or primary source of income in retirement. Given these facts, their early eligibility seems quite justified. And one more thing, strong union, which I thought everyone around Seattle supposedly likes.
I cast that comment without judgement. I worked for a union and come from a union family. And having said that, all union employees deserve good retirements!
This is a pilot program, so it’s OK for now that it doesn’t include Capitol Hill. But hopefully the City Council will approve the Mayor’s proposal to greatly increase funding for it in 2024 so that it can include more neighborhoods.