Richmond launches community crisis response program
The City of Richmond has officially launched its Community Crisis Response Program (CCRP), designed to address non-violent emergencies such as mental health crises and homelessness without the involvement of police.
This care-first initiative follows the Richmond City Council’s decision in June 2021 to reallocate $3 million from the police department budget, a key step in the city’s broader efforts to reduce law enforcement’s role in non-criminal incidents.
“CCRP is here to support everything that the City of Richmond needs help with,” said Michael Romero, the program’s project manager. “We’ve had everything from folks needing support with being unhoused to residents working with our code enforcement officers.”
The program, which operates under the Office of Neighborhood Safety, aims to provide voluntary, compassionate responses to individuals in crisis, offering services without coercion.
Soren Hemmila
The crisis response program began operations recently and collaborates with multiple city departments to provide crisis response services. Its staff has started addressing calls for support from residents dealing with homelessness, behavioral health issues, and other non-criminal situations.
Romero said Richmond’s dispatchers have the decision to either send out fire, police, EMS, Contra Costa County’s, A3 Crisis Response team, Coordinated Outreach Referral, Engagement (CORE) but will now have the CCRP as another option.
“Our dispatchers are the gatekeepers who ensure that the community, our team, officers, fire personnel, and city staff are all in a place where they can safely ensure that the appropriate services can be delivered,” Romero said.
“It’s all going to come down to collaborating, it’s going to come down to everybody working together, and the response is appropriate safe, and so that’s what we’re building on right now, is that system of care, and it’s going to be, it’s going to be unique to Richmond.”
At the September Community Police Review Commission meeting, Richmond Police Chief Bisa French said the police department had met with Romero several times and turned several cases to the crisis response program for intervention.
“That’s been working out really well. Our dispatch center had some training in A3 and is sending cases to A3 for mental health. That has also been working out pretty good,” French said.
However, the CCRP’s full implementation has faced hurdles. Richmond Vice Mayor Claudia Jimenez, the primary champion of Richmond City Council's police budget reallocation efforts, acknowledged the slow progress.
Jimenez said the city has hired the director and the data analyst, and they have the vans. They are already redirecting some calls from different departments that the director is getting and addressing. We budgeted for eight specialists that are the ones who are going to be working to respond the 911 calls.
Jimenez said emergency dispatchers have begun training to handle calls that can be redirected to the crisis response program.
“The problem that we have is the RPOA (Richmond Police Officers Association) is using some technicalities that haven’t been used before to hold off hiring the eight staff positions,” Jimenez said. “The jobs have been created, and they were going to be presented to the personal board, but RPOA pulled them, so they are still delayed.”
Benjamin Therriault, President of the Richmond Police Officers Association, said city officials failed to comply with the required “meet and confer” process with the union before moving forward with these positions.
“For folks to say that we’re stalling, it is inaccurate. We are going to make the city follow the correct process,” Therriault said. “There are a lot of legal procedures and processes that have to be followed when creating new jobs. The city just thought they were going to skip that we’re just essentially holding the city accountable to the rule of law.”
Therriault said procedures for job classifications and hiring processes are outlined in the city charter and the City of Richmond’s HR documents and stipulate that any creation of new jobs requires consultation with the union before any steps are taken.
Design ROCK's official logo
The City of Richmond has a new team named Reach Out with Compassion Kindness (ROCK) and has launched a logo contest for Richmond’s young people, according to Richmond City Manager Shasa Curl.
“ROCK is excited to announce a logo contest open to Richmond residents ages 13-25. Help the ROCK team design an official team logo!” Curl said.
The deadline is October 31, 2024, at 5 p.m. For more information, email ccrp@ci.richmond.ca.us
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