An unarmed response team set up by the city to provide an alternative to police now has no firm date to start answering most calls except that it will be sometime this spring, a spokesperson for the city said Thursday.
Earlier this year the city said that by the end of March the Community Assistance Response and Engagement team would begin responding to calls from people in a mental health crisis, acting abnormally or other situations that don’t need police attention.
Liz Speakman, head of the new Community Safety Department that houses the Care team, said in January that the department would meet the March schedule even after three members of the eight-person team were fired that month, during their probationary period. “We are still very excited about launching in March,” Speakman said in January.
The team would meet its planned schedule of answering calls on weekdays during daytime and some evening hours, she said. In February, the department eliminated the evening hours in an update to the City Council.
The department and the team were established in response to the death of George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020. Floyd’s murder resulted in nationwide demonstrations and calls to defund police and set up unarmed alternatives.
The five remaining responders are in their “final stage of training” and are reaching out to community groups and “meeting with partners,” city spokesperson Jeremy Warnick said Thursday. They were hired and started training last September.
A “spring” startup had been mentioned at a community meeting March 19 at the Cambridge Main Library, Warnick said.
If the city is referring to the astronomical season of spring, it will end June 19, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. The meteorological season ends May 31. Asked to give a date when the Care team will start responding, Warnick said: “There is no firm date.”
“Spring” is the only date, he said.
Needle pickups
The team has been responding to some calls since early this year: requests via 911 and online to pick up discarded needles. The department has also completed 472 hours of outreach this year that served 3,920 individuals, and has distributed 1,159 “material goods” to community groups, the city’s proposed budget says.
Plans call for the responders to answer calls ranging from psychological crises to well-being checks. The launch is taking longer than expected because “obviously this is new work with new systems and protocols,” Warnick said. The Community Safety Department is working on “policies and protocols,” he said. That includes meeting with police department staff “to review best practices for ensuring scene safety, examine different practices in response and create connections with our first-responder colleagues,” he said.
Department administrators are also meeting with the city’s Emergency Call Center to review call types, dispatch protocols and learn how to use the radio system to communicate with each other, Warnick said. Emergency dispatchers will decide which calls to refer to the Care team. Finally, the department is preparing a request for proposals for a software system that will catalog calls, responses and follow-up care, he said.
More hiring
Meanwhile, the city has advertised three positions, including one social worker, to replace the team members who were fired. In addition, an internship at the department held by a social work student ended this week and the department is interviewing candidates for another internship, Warnick said. The intern had completed coursework for a master’s degree in social work, started working at the library in the fall and came to the Community Safety Department in February.
The Community Safety Department was first proposed in 2020 and was initially part of the city’s emergency call center, which handles 911 calls. Last January, after a police officer fatally shot Arif Sayed Faisal, 20, a Bangladeshi immigrant who was holding a large knife during a mental crisis, city manager Yi-An Huang made the department independent in an effort to ensure that the department had no ties to public safety.
A citizen-organized alternative, the Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team, was repeatedly supported by the City Council and received a $300,000 grant from federal pandemic aid to the city. It has raised more than $1 million in donations and a state grant, but hasn’t obtained any city money and still has no phone number to answer emergency calls. Now Heart is facing the loss of space because The Democracy Center on Mount Auburn Street in Harvard Square will no longer rent to nonprofit activist groups.
Grants to be discussed
The Community Safety Department was originally supposed to get $1.5 million to distribute to community organizations, but the amount may have changed. The department has awarded only one contract, to My Brother’s Keeper, for $250,000. My Brother’s Keeper is a local branch of a national group formed by former President Barack Obama to support young boys and men of color after the death of Trayvon Martin. The organization held summer and fall programs for youths on mental health coaching, parenting and post-high school planning, with Cambridge police providing some staffing.
Warnick said the money for grants to community organizations is included in the department’s budget under “other ordinary maintenance.” That category covers other expenditures as well. The department’s budget request for next year includes almost $1.1 million in that category. The city expected to spend $399,600 this year. When Warnick was asked how much of next year’s budget will go to grants to community organizations, he said those details would be discussed at a council hearing next week.
The department is preparing a request for proposals from community groups for the grant money. Warnick said. Previously some believed Heart would get a contract from the department but Speakman and other city officials said Heart had not submitted a proposal that follows city requirements, and Heart said it couldn’t get a clear picture of what was required. In February, Huang indicated there would be no further negotiations, saying Heart should focus on spending the $300,000 it had received in pandemic aid money.
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