No Budget Increase for the Police: Fund Mental Health Crisis Response Instead
Mayor Kenney and Philadelphia City Council
Last October, the police killed Walter Wallace Jr. while his mother begged them to understand that he was experiencing a mental health emergency. It's on us to prevent the next tragedy. We don't want violent police responding to people in crisis. We need trained mental health professionals who can be sent separately from police.
To:
Mayor Kenney and Philadelphia City Council
From:
[Your Name]
Last October, Walter Wallace Jr. was murdered by police while his mother begged them to understand that he was experiencing a mental health emergency. It's on us to prevent the next tragedy. The City of Philadelphia needs trained mental health professionals who can be dispatched to people in crisis separately from police.
Robustly funded mobile crisis response teams could de-escalate people in crisis and get them the services and help that they need. We are asking you to not increase the Philly police budget and to reject the co-responder model that pairs a police officer with a mental health professional. Instead we ask you to allocate enough funding so that caring mental health professionals can be dispatched separately from the police to those in crisis across Philadelphia 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Furthermore, we ask that funds be used to extensively retrain 911, so dispatchers are equipped with the skills needed to successfully identify a mental health crisis so they can dispatch mobile crisis response teams instead of police.
Help fund this program so Philly can be a city that responds to those in crisis with treatment not trauma.