AMHERST — In role-playing a hypothetical dispute at a group home, a community responders team is informed by a resident that his food doesn’t taste right, and he has no trust in those running the residence.
“We’re only here to help and to connect you to resources,” says responder Brittany Haughton, as her colleague, Vanessa Phillips, offers to get the man a sandwich, while showing compassion for his situation.
What Earl Miller, as the director of the town’s Community Responders for Equity, Safety and Service sees, even in this pretend situation, are people ready to begin serving Amherst as a new leg of public safety.
“If you can bring that mindset to the community, you’re going to do good work,” Miller said.
Such mental health calls involving a person in distress are among scenarios the unarmed CRESS responders were expected to encounter as they started work this week, with an aim of connecting, referring and transporting people to get the necessary services before a situation escalates.
As Miller explains, CRESS is about gap coverage to make sure people have food, shelter and other needs. “You’re just trying to keep a person safe until that long-term resource can get there,” Miller said.
The seven initial responders are winding down a two-month training led by Miller and Kat Newman, the CRESS coordinator. The training program brought in experts from various fields, as the town launches its first new public safety department since the fire department in the early 1900s.
The idea behind CRESS is that responders can deescalate situations and address the root causes of crises and conflicts that will eventually mean reducing the number of arrests and citations that police have to issue. At the same time, the hope is to cut down on police presence in handling mental health issues, homelessness, substance abuse, trespass, truancy, wellness checks, youth and schools.
“Anytime we can direct someone away from being arrested, that is a huge impact on their life,” Miller said.
In a nutshell, Miller said he wants responders to see CRESS as Amherst’s way of confronting the 2020 murder of George Floyd. That incident sparked riots across the country, and prompted Amherst to develop the new department out of a recommendation from the Community Safety Working Group.
But CRESS will not yet be serving residents 24/7, instead being a mostly daytime department as its goes live and has a process of scaling up.
“When we start we’re not going to fully be doing what we’re going to be doing,” Miller said. “Call types are starting out slow, and then we grow.”
Town Manager Paul Bockelman said he appreciates that they will need to get the lay of the land before they begin being dispatched, as it’s a matter of keeping them from being in harm’s way.
“Nobody wants to be out into an unsafe situation,” Bockelman said. He added that the development of CRESS will be through a “highly iterative process” involving police, emergency dispatch and fire.
“We’re really trying to learn what the best way is to provide community safety,” Bockelman said.
Initially, the responders will be meeting people through interactions at the public schools, places like the Amherst Survival Center or the streets. Many of these introductory opportunities will be self-initiated, at first.
Bockelman calls it a “crawl before you walk, walk before you run” approach. “This is a brand new department, with a social service approach to meet people where they are,” Bockelman said.
While unknown how many calls the department will be able to handle, the expectation is that responders will go to some that would otherwise be handled by police officers. One of the main ways college students interact with law enforcement, though, will not change, as community responders will not be going to noise complaints and other similar quality-of-life calls, at least not initially, as they don’t have the power to issue fines.
On one of the final trainings, many of which were held in the lower level of the Munson Library Building in South Amherst, Miller went over the contents of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership report given to the town that outlines the purpose of CRESS.
The LEAP report states that CRESS has the potential to handle about 4,400 total incidents in Amherst. CRESS would respond to about 2,600 calls for service currently being handled by police, or about 36% of total citizen-initiated police calls for service
The responders, who will eventually go out as four teams of two, identified through gray polo shirts with name tags and, at some point, their own marked vehicles.
Kyalo Maingi applied to be a responder after working with people with brain injuries at Elaine in Hadley since 2008.
“I’m 14 years ready,” said Maingi, a native of Kenya, who expects that CRESS will mean a professional response and won’t be as alarming for some people.
“The training was everything we needed, and was so eye-opening,” Phillips said. “For me a lot of unlearning and learning in how to talk to people.”
“I think we’ll probably answer a lot of questions that day,” Haughton said. “Getting out to meet people who will benefit from our experience.”
Tim Durocher said that training has been transformative and he hopes to communicate with people.
“I’m about as ready as I’m going to be,” he said.
Miller said the teams shouldn’t be striving to respond to a specific number of calls. “For you all, it’s about the quality,” Miller said. “Time is our friend. Slow it down.”
Still, he expects that the vast majority of calls, including those with suspicious people, can be handled quickly. “Most of those are resolved by first interaction,” Miller said.
Though training is complete, the responders will continue to learn, such as meeting with the Northwestern district attorney’s office to find out about domestic assault protocols. and learning to use the radios that will communicate with the base at the Bangs Community Center.
