To Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin, Mayor Pro Tem Corey Branch, Councilmember Stormie D. Forte, Councilmember Jonathan Melton, Councilmember Mary Black, Councilmember Megan Patton, Councilmember Jane Harrison, and Councilmember Christina Jones,

As organizations, businesses, houses of faith, and community members in Raleigh, we request that our Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and City Councilmembers vote to fully fund a citywide, independent crisis care unit that includes crisis call diversion (adding clinicians to the 911 call center to quickly connect community to mental health professionals); care navigation (providing in-person or phone-based follow-up within 48 hours after meeting with a first responder); and community response (unarmed three-person teams of peer support specialists, licensed mental health clinicians and emergency medical technicians who serve as first responders to nonviolent behavioral health and quality-of-life calls-for-service) for all Raleigh residents in the 2024-25 budget.

Raleigh residents deserve a better option, one the City of Durham is already offering through the successful Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team (H.E.A.R.T.). Raleigh City Council and Mayor Mary Ann Baldwin should follow suit and invest taxpayer dollars in a non-law-enforcement crisis response team to provide safe and meaningful support that is accessible to us all.

It is estimated that approximately 5% of the US population lives with a serious mental illness, but they make up more than 20% of fatal police shooting victims. Assuming Raleigh has a similar rate of mental illness, more than 23,000 of our residents are at a heightened risk of dying during a police encounter. This disturbing reality is especially poignant for Raleigh’s Black residents with untreated mental illnesses, who are 10x more likely to be killed by police than white people who do not have a mental illness.

Data from pilot programs across the country shows that a non-law enforcement alternative will give us a much better, and safe, return on taxpayer investment. Durham’s H.E.A.R.T. responders successfully resolve most calls on-scene, and provide follow-up care, all while diverting calls from the police and other first responses. For certain calls that pose a greater potential safety risk, H.E.A.R.T. pairs clinicians with police officers, but data from the first ten months of the program show a police presence is mostly unnecessary. Their responders reported feeling safe in 99% of encounters, and 0% of calls needed police department backup for team safety. Non-law enforcement crisis response teams also benefit the broader community—A 2022 study found Denver’s STAR program reduced ‘low-level' crime by 34%. Durham Police Officers, including Durham Police Chief Patrice Andrews, say that with the H.E.A.R.T. program handling their most "time intensive calls" officers are now free to "focus on violent crime and addressing come of the other ills within [the Durham] Community."

The Raleigh Police Department’s ACORNS team of police officers and social workers currently provides only care navigation and no real time response to 911 emergency calls concerning a mental health crisis. Of 680 calls in 2021, ACORNS responded to 12 mental health commitments and 0 suicide calls. The police responded to over 1,000 suicide-related calls and 3,200 mental health commitment-related calls. 60% of ACORNS’ calls are classified as “follow-up investigation.” The structure of ACORNS is also counter to recommendations from mental health advocates who say a reduction in encounters between police and those with serious mental illness may be the single most immediate and practical strategy for reducing these fatal police shootings.

Raleigh needs a H.E.A.R.T. and if it had one maybe individuals like Soheil Antonio Mojarrad, Keith Dutree Collins, and Reuel Rodriguez Nunez, whose lives were tragically taken by the police when they were experiencing a mental health crisis, would still be here with us today.

Respectfully,