(Image: City of Seattle)

Seattle has sworn-in its first Chief of the Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) Department.

Mayor Bruce Harrell held oath of office ceremonies this week for Amy Smith. Smith will oversee the city’s 911 operations and its new CARE crisis response effort until at least 2028. Smith has led the department since it was launched last year.

CHS reported here on the $1.9M expansion of the CARE program that will include Capitol Hill and the Central District as Seattle cautiously builds a small force of non-police first responders.

Harrell has proposed that $1.9 million in federal funding be used to power an expansion of CARE that will increase the size of the department and expand it to citywide, seven day a week service starting with an expansion including Capitol Hill and the Central District.

The Seattle City Council will take up the proposal as part of its mid-year budgeting efforts.

In September, CHS reported on the launch of what Harrell called Seattle’s “third public safety department.” The small, $1.5 million CARE team pilot program was hoped to help be the start of bigger changes to how the city responds to mental health and drug crisis 911 calls. It included funding for only six responders and has been hampered by limitations on the types of 911 calls it is allowed to respond to.

With a new contract agreement with the city’s police officers that includes the ability to move more work around public safety like automated traffic tickets and property damage to teams outside the department and the federal funding, the Harrell administration is now moving forward with quickly expanding the CARE pilot to what it says will be a full-fledged, citywide effort.

Businesses around the Pike/Pine/Broadway core have called on Harrell and the city to do more to address ongoing street disorder in the area related to drug addiction, mental health, and homelessness including providing more first responders and more funding for clean-up and “street ambassador” programs.

CARE is hoped to help address some of the growing concerns around the area. Backers hope CARE and efforts like its “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 from Capitol Hill and across the city every day.

Under the program, 911 calls dispatched involving someone suffering a crisis can include CARE specialists arriving with police at situations — as long as those incidents don’t involve someone who is injured or sick, an “imminent danger,” weapons, or narcotics, under current policies.

Smith began working with the city in 2023 as it transitioned its 911 operations and has experience “as an entrepreneur, program director, and fundraiser.” She received her doctorate of education from Vanderbilt.

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