Funding New Approaches to Public Safety: Alternatives to conventional law enforcement in responding to mental health crises.

• Author: Kavanagh, Shayne
• Position: FUNDING NEW APPROACHES TO PUBLIC SAFETY

Local governments across the United States are considering how they might better respond to emergency mental health crises. Conventionally trained law enforcement officers (LEO) respond to most calls for service, but standard LEO training is often insufficient for calls that involve behavioral and mental health issues. For this reason, "alternative response"--a municipality's capability for responding to these calls with a better-matched skill set--is garnering interest among many local governments.

One of the critical questions about alternative response is how to fund it. To begin finding an answer, we interviewed jurisdictions of varying sizes and locations and at different points in their journey of implementing alternative response and investigated publicly available records for a number of other governments. This article describes what we found.

What does alternative primary response look like?

A popular alternative primary response program is co-response, in which a trained clinician rides along as part of a regular patrol shift with a specially trained LEO [such as training in mental health crisis intervention]. The patrol car with the clinician is directed to mental health crisis calls whenever possible.

Another approach is a 100 percent non-LEO-staffed program that responds to less dangerous calls, where scene safety isn't a concern. This approach is not necessarily a replacement for coresponse with an LEO. The City of Denver, Colorado, for example, has both types of programs. Out of more than 5,000 calls for alternative response, Denver hasn't once had to send an LEO to a scene where civilian-led alternative response was sent first. In about 17 percent of calls, an LEO arrived on the scene first and then asked for an alternative responder to take over.

Obviously, dispatch capabilities are very important here, especially fora civilian-led program. Different staffing models and improved dispatch capabilities require a funding strategy, which we'll explore next.

How is alternative response funded?

There is no single funding model for alternative response, but we found some general themes.

Local taxes are often the primary funding source. The local governments we interviewed rely largely on local tax--dollars to fund alternative response. Often, this is the local government's general fund, as in the City of Scottsdale, Arizona. The City of Providence, Rhode Island, uses its general fund for partial funding. Denver and the City of Rockford, Illinois, are both funded by another common source, a dedicated local taxin this case, a special sales tax dedicated to public safety [but not dedicated solely to alternative response]. The City of Redmond, Washington, is planning a special property tax levy to fund its alternative response. Up until recently, the City of Eugene, Oregon, funded its entire program from the general fund, but more recently, part of its program is funded through a dedicated payroll tax, with the rest coming from the general fund budget.

GFOA's research report, "New Taxes that Work" provides guidance on how to best approach raising a new local tax. Here are some useful findings from that report, along with examples of how those findings apply to the governments we interviewed:

* Associate the tax with a concrete service. In Denver, voters approved a 0.25 percent increase in sales and use taxes in 2018 specifically to fund behavioral health services for Denver residents. At least 10 percent of the revenue generated by the tax on retail sales comes back to Denver for funding alternatives to jail, including Denver's co-responder program.

* Engage citizens to help define the need for new revenues and build a network of supporters for new revenue. Denver does both through the Caring for Denver Foundation, a nonprofit that helps administer the special tax revenue. Its board members are drawn from branches of Denver government and from community organizations. Caring for Denver uses tax dollars to make grants that support behavioral health services.

* Demonstrate that the tax produces value for the public. In Rockford, the special tax is collected by the county and distributed to the city as a "grant" that's made available to local agencies [like the city], which must apply and make their case for co-response as a worthwhile use of funds. Similarly, in Denver, the city also must apply to receive revenue from the special tax. The funding of alternative response is not automatic but predicated on the city government making the case that the services provide adequate value.

Governments are making limited use of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds.

Although our interviewees had access to ARPA funds, few of them seem to be using the money for alternative response. (1) But some are. Providence budgeted approximately $700,000 of its FY 2023...