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From: - <br />To: GRP -City Council <br />Subject: Public Comment: 7.A. (Community Wellness and Crisis Response Team Mental Health Partnership between the <br />City of Daly City, City of Redwood City, City of San Mateo, City of South San Francisco, and the County of San <br />Mateo) <br />Date: Monday, January 25, 20214:54:11 PM <br />CAUTION: This email originated from outside your organization. Exercise caution when <br />opening attachments or clicking links, especially from unknown senders. <br />I'd like to re -send this letter now as a formal comment on agenda item 7.A. for tonight's <br />council meeting. <br />We urge you to reconsider the initially proposed model. Instead of sending mental health <br />professionals to accompany police, please use this opportunity to create a crisis response <br />team composed solely of mental health clinicians, social workers, and emergency medical <br />support. <br />These professionals are much better suited than police to respond to mental and behavioral <br />health emergencies. Their education and training prepare them to de-escalate crisis <br />situations and provide care and connection to further services for the person experiencing <br />the crisis. <br />By contrast, law enforcement training does not focus on these skills and does not equip <br />police to provide the best response to such situations. Alex S. Vitale, a professor of <br />sociology and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, <br />has pointed out that police "use the only available tools at their disposal: arrest, jail, and, in <br />some instances, violence". Even a Nov. 4, 2020 presentation by the San Mateo County <br />Sheriff's Office to the San Mateo County Mental Health and Substance Abuse Recovery <br />Commission acknowledged that it's uncommon for law enforcement to disengage and <br />simply leave a situation once they've been called. Where police do receive some kind of <br />crisis response training, it is usually brief compared to the rest of their training and cannot <br />compare to the full course of study that mental health professionals go through to qualify for <br />their field. The research requested by mid -Peninsula city managers from Stanford quoted a <br />study showing that de-escalation trainings for police "have little to no effect on the number <br />of aggressive incidents in departments." <br />Additionally, the presence of an armed officer in and of itself increases tension in a situation <br />and becomes an escalating factor. Consequently, sending unarmed responders increases <br />the likelihood of a safe outcome for the person in crisis as well as for the responders <br />themselves. <br />Knowing that it is police who will respond also deters some people from calling for help at <br />all. When residents worry that a call will lead not to help but to possible arrest or use of <br />force against them, they are reluctant to call 911. Concerns about immigration status may <br />