Last week Jaelyn Miller spoke to Raleigh’s City Council in support of the Raleigh H.E.A.R.T. Coalition’s proposal. After speaking, Livable Raleigh reprinted her comments:
Our Coalition, through that proposal, is asking the city council to embed a mental health professional into the 911 call center to divert calls from police to unarmed community response teams and ACORNS… The vast majority of people with mental illness here end up in two places: jail or the emergency department … We need unarmed community response teams and ACORNS to be directly dispatched to the scene to divert folks from jails and EDs. The only way to do that is to have diversion at the 911 call center, rather than rely on officer referral…
Check out the full transcript here and don’t forget to write your letter to the city council!