Reprinted from WNCN:
Raleigh Police respond to a wide variety of calls, but should they?
The City of Raleigh is developing an alternative response program where police officers wouldn’t show up to all 911 calls. The City Council discussed this at its Nov. 7 meeting.
It’s something groups in Raleigh have been advocating for years.
The Raleigh H.E.A.R.T coalition shared a proposal for an alternative response program with city leaders. The coalition wants to see social workers and clinicians respond to certain 911 calls, particularly mental health ones, instead of police. They want the response teams to not be under police jurisdiction.
Kerwin Pittman is a social justice activist at Emancipate NC, one of the partners of the Raleigh H.E.A.R.T program.
“What we want to do is pair the right professionals with the right situation,” Pittman said.
He envisions a program in Raleigh very similar to Durham’s H.E.A.R.T program.
“What we want to do is stop individuals who are in a crisis having interactions with law enforcement,” Pittman said.
RTI International analyzed Raleigh’s 911 calls as part of a study on alternatives to traditional police responses and found close to 10% of calls between 2017-2022 were for mental health or quality of life.