By Sarah Owens and Michael Livingston
In connection with the calls to "defund the police" that came out of the
BLM/George Floyd protests this past summer, the City Council in June
passed
Councilor Andersen's motion
to hold a work session "to discuss the use of City funds for various
non-criminal matters that are currently handled by the Police
Department." A work session on "
Police Operations and Impact of Response to Non-Criminal Issues"
took place on September 21, 2020. The change of language in what the work session was supposed to be about implies an equivalence in the mind of City staff between "funds" and "impact" that's confusing to say the least.
The work session didn't touch on protest- and other
event-policing, even though they're "non-criminal." That's because, for purposes of this work session, "non-criminal" was code for "homeless." Salem figured out a year ago that the City spends around $5M/year dealing with the indirect effects homelessness, based on estimates compiled by the Urban Development Department. Most of that is for policing. See Brynelson, T. "Salem homelessness costs city more than $5 million a year, report says." (27 November 2019, Salem Reporter.) Bach, J. "Salem spends more than $5.2 million a year on homelessness issues, draft report states." (29 November 2019, Statesman Journal.) Chief Moore cited the $5M figure in his slide presentation preceding the work session. The unspoken question for the City is how much, if any, of that $5M can Council shift from the police budget to an agency/program that is better suited to the job?
To make sense of this work session, back up a year or so ago to the Downtown Good Neighbor Partnership (GNP). The GNP determined last fall that, from the perspective of downtown businesses, the biggest gap in the homeless services delivery system is the lack of a 24/7, non-police, single-point-of-contact for assistance with unwanted persons and others needing low-level care. The GNP also determined that, while each of Salem's homeless providers does some form of community outreach, none except Be Bold Ministries had the resources to be on-call to the wider community. If one of them took the lead, however, the GNP thought it might be possible to develop an on-call agency rotation, but not outside normal weekday, non-holiday business hours. See November 2019 Meeting Minutes.
From these GNP conversations, several initiatives emerged to assist downtown businesses. One was a Good Neighbor Guide that offered practical advice and identified Be Bold Ministries as a resource -- someone to call who was not police who had relationships with many of those living in the streets downtown. Another was an effort to bring a CAHOOTS-type model to Salem. Kim Hanson, then with The United Way of the Mid-Willamette Valley, began working with Ashley Hamilton and the Mid-Willamette Community Action Agency to launch a CAHOOTS-lite pilot program, beginning in July 2020. The effort "almost derailed" because the Salem area lacks the full continuum of homeless services that allows CAHOOTS to be successful in Eugene. The pilot would require a van + $500K, and would be called HEART, and later CRU (for Community Response Unit). Thanks to Councilor Nordyke, the City Council included it in its 2020 Policy Agenda. See "News from the Continuum" (17 October 2020). While all that was taking place, City Council passed camping and sit-lie bans, making enforcement of the latter dependent on the availability of appropriate, accessible shelter and hygiene facilities. See "Sit Lie Passes, But It Will Cost" (9 March 2020).
Then, the pandemic forced plans to shift. City Council ditched its plan to erect the large tent "shelter" that would allow it to enforce sit-lie, lifted the camping ban in Cascades Gateway and Wallace Marine Parks, and ordered the homeless out of downtown and into the parks where they remain today. With funding from PacificSource Health Plans, The ARCHES Project, United Way and the Salem Health Foundation, the medical community launched the Alluvium Mobile Health Team, targeting migrant
farmworkers, homeless and other frequent users of emergency services, obviating much of the need for CRU. See Barreda, V. "Local doctors, nurse practitioners launch mobile unit to assist Salem patients." (20 April 2020, Statesman Journal.) CRU was thus made redundant.
However, judging by the comments of Council during the work session, the situation as they see it is unchanged from last February. Council pledged support for a CAHOOTS-lite CRU, and City staff and department heads need to make it work. Simple. They were not looking for data to support the decision, and they didn't get any. The session was, in the Mayor's words, "disjointed", with councilors focused as much or more on police recruitment as they were on the response to homelessness. They did not seem prepared and, on the whole, did not ask good questions. In the end, they charged City Manager Powers with drawing them a roadmap for how to make CRU work. See the City Manager's 10/26/20 "roadmap" here and compare the United Way proposal here. Salem might have a roadmap, but it doesn't have a transport vehicle. Staff are clearly unsupportive of a CAHOOTS-lite CRU.
Moore's presentation highlighted three units: those having responsibility for "EDPs" (calls about emotionally distressed persons) and those that respond to calls involving homeless individuals and camps, namely the Problem Oriented Policing Team, the Downtown Enforcement Team, and the Behavioral Health Unit (BHU). Official details about those units below.
Council was told that, in 2019, the Salem Police Department had 118,344 calls, of which 8,000, or 7%, did not receive a police response. Of the daily average of 324 calls, at least 14, or 4%, were EDPs, which are "handled" (meaning "responded to") by the BHU. (Not all EDPs are responded to. One shelter provider estimates only about 1 in 5 of its calls is answered, as the BHU tends to be either on another call or not on shift.) During the work session, Councilor Andersen got confused and said 7.5% of calls were EDPs, but he wasn't corrected. He said 7.5% was "low" for EDPs.
The BHU consists of 4.25 FTE, including three officer positions funded through grants from the state to Marion and Polk counties. Next year's budget puts the annual cost for the BHU at ~$781K. Police are needed for these calls because they can involve highly intoxicated people -- possibly out of control, possibly armed -- who are potentially dangerous to self or others, in which case they have to be taken into custody. For this reason, a CAHOOTS-type program might supplement the BHU, but could not replace it. BHU's official description:
Enhances response to calls involving individuals experiencing behavioral health issues. These specially trained teams of a sworn officer and qualified mental health professional, respond to in progress calls and can provide immediate on scene resources to de-escalate the situation and connect the individual with needed support when appropriate. When a Behavioral Health Team is the primary responder on the call, fewer officers are needed while the individuals involved receive a higher level of service which often diverts them from the criminal justice system while providing them the resources they need during their crisis. This also
reduces the potential for use of force against people experiencing a crisis.
Deputy Chief Skip Miller told the Council that police have "no resources" for EDPs who are not deemed a danger to self or others, aside from de-escalating and a courtesy (voluntary) transport to Marion County's Psychiatric Crisis Center (PCC). If police determine the EDP is a danger to self or others, s/he is put under a police hold and involuntarily transported to the PCC for an assessment. Some on Council who like to lament that the state and counties are not doing enough seemed not to know that the PCC is run by Marion County, or that the police positions in the BHU are funded by state grants through Marion and Polk counties.
The POP Team consists of 3 FTE and next year will cost ~$584K. Official description:
This
team uses emerging technologies and trends to address chronic
neighborhood issues, including drug houses and other livability issues
throughout the city. They leverage partnerships with other city, county
and state agencies to create a collaborative approach designed to
resolve those issues that if left unchecked can grow rapidly to more
serious consequences.
The Downtown Enforcement Team consists of 7.25 FTE
and next year will cost ~$1.4M (less than CRU + a sobering center would have cost pre-pandemic). Official description:
Provides a sense of safety and security through foot and bicycle patrols
to deter criminal activity in the downtown core area, including
Riverfront Park, Wallace Marine Park, Minto Island Park and the Transit
Mall. Officers use a combination of presence, education, enforcement
and exclusion as they focus on crimes that impact the quality of life in
this diverse commercial and residential area. Officers are also
involved in removing transient camps along the downtown parks watershed
areas, which in turn reduces contamination of those watersheds by the
illegal campers.
Note the use of the word "transient",
which is how SPD refers to people experiencing homelessness. However, Miller
told Council something SPD has said many times before -- i.e., it doesn't keep records of people's socioeconomic
status, so there's no way for them to know how many of their
interactions are with persons experiencing homelessness, or the outcomes of those interactions. Council also doesn't know how SPD arrived at its 2019 time estimates (20% of patrol time and 75% of Downtown Enforcement Team time spent dealing with homelessness), but DET members often have told CANDO that, during the summer months, they spend >85% of their time at Marion Square Park.
Describing existing homeless outreach services such as the BHU, Marion County's Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) and "Alluvium" as a "sort of hodgepodge approach", Councilor Hoy asked Miller if a non-police mobile crisis unit would fill a gap in the existing continuum of homeless services, or was a "reset" needed? Miller's response, somewhat rambling, was basically that what's needed is some place to take people who are unwanted or in distress, to get them away from where they are not wanted, out of the weather and into the appropriate level of care or supervision. Implicitly, the place(s) would need to be available after hours. Hoy took Miller's response as dismissive. "Quit telling us why [a mobile crisis unit] won't work and tell us what we need to do...in order for that to be successful." As if that's SPD's job, right? (For the sake of some commentators who don't understand sarcasm when they see it, it is not SPD's job to figure out how to fill the gaps in the homeless services delivery system.)
Councilor Kaser asked Miller to describe how police respond to calls from downtown businesses wanting police to respond to unwanted person complaints. Miller told Council that, first, police determine whether the person can be trespassed. If so, police will issue a citation. If the person refuses to leave, police could, before the pandemic, make an arrest and take the person to jail, but the person would not be held. During the pandemic, there's no point in issuing a citation as police won't make an arrest due to Marion County jail restrictions. Thus, the situation during the pandemic is, in effect, that the person cannot be trespassed (because, e.g., the person is on public property, or the business does not want the person arrested), and all the police can do is try to talk to the person, which is not desirable as it often results in escalation. This is why CANDO advocates for following the Good Neighbor Guide instead of calling police to deal with unwanted persons. Besides, as Deputy Chief George Burke reminded Council, what downtown businesses really want help with is cleaning (a fact first established by the Downtown Homeless Solutions Task Force in 2018). Council, however, decided not to include funding for additional cleaning services in the 2021 budget. See "News from the Continuum" (17 October 2020).
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Emphasis added.
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Two themes emerged in the work session. One was "no resources" for low-level EDPs and unwanted person calls. "No resources" means no appropriate place to take these vulnerable people off-hours. The other was CAHOOTS and how great it would be to have something like that in Salem.
Everyone loves CAHOOTS these days. In August, Senator Wyden introduced a bill for a "CAHOOTS Act" that would "help states adopt [non-police] mobile crisis response teams that can be
dispatched when a person is experiencing a mental health or substance
use disorder" (summary). It was read twice and referred to the Finance Committee where it sits. Nordyke envisions Salem's mobile team having an expansive role, as if the community didn't already have the Salem Free Clinics and Northwest Human Services, with its long history of providing medical and mental health services to the homeless community, including medical transport to its West Salem Clinic, not to mention the aforementioned Alluvium team.
Look. No one disputes that, all things being equal, this community would benefit from having non-police, mobile crisis response capacity during off-hours, but police are saying (as clearly as they can) that, from their viewpoint, the primary need is for an appropriate place for them -- or whomever -- to take vulnerable people with low-level needs during the off hours. Councilor Nordyke seems to think an hour in the back of a non-police van will suffice for a lot of people, but police obviously disagree. Which brings us to the other wrong-end-of-the-telescope view the Council has, namely that Salem needs a $1M/year part-time sobering center. Here, once again, is what Council doesn't seem to understand. Salem Hospital's ER is able to provide 24/7 sobering supervision for less than $40K/year (<.5 RN). Although Medicaid doesn't cover sobering services, and police don't like going to the ER because it can tie them up for hours at a time, and ER doctors (notably Councilor-elect Trevor Phillips) don't like using ER beds for sobering, the fact is that chronically homeless individuals taken to the ER for sobering often have other diagnoseable medical conditions requiring treatment for which the hospital can be reimbursed. This outcome is good for the patient and doesn't unduly burden the hospital. Council wants to know why Salem Health is not more supportive of the City's plan to provide outside sobering services? It just doesn't make good business sense. Marion County probably can make a similar case regarding its jail beds.
Some cling to the fantasy that a sobering center is a special place where life-changing decisions begin. As discussed in previous blog posts, there is simply no clinical evidence that spending a few intoxicated hours in a sobering center has that effect, particularly if one is chronically homeless. For details on that and other aspects of this misguided effort, see "Let's Make a Sobering Deal" (1 December 2017); "Sobering Thoughts" (15 June 2018); "Sobering Center Sustainable?" (10 November 2018); "Sobering Ctr Operating Gap Widens" (13 January 2019); "City to Build Despite Ops Funding Gap" (25 January 2019); "City Admits Sobering Ctr Might Be 'Unattainable'" (12 March 2019).
Month after month, year after year, Council continues to whine about partners not doing their part to make the sobering center a reality. It's as if they don't know how to work a problem. During the work session, Kaser and Nordyke again asked why the City has been unable to build the support needed to operate the sobering center. But why did they not satisfy themselves on this question before they agreed last February to go against the City Manager's advice not to include the sobering center operations funding in the 2020 Council Policy agenda? Their failure to do that is quite appalling. For now, Council would do well to forget about the sobering center and CRU, and concentrate on expanding the hours of the navigation center/low barrier shelter that's in the 2020 Council policy agenda. That's what police are asking for, if Council would only listen.
10/27/20 update: City Council received the Powers/Moore staff report following up on the work session. Councilor Andersen received assurances that Powers would continue "move forward with further discussions" on a mobile crisis response unit (video of 10/26/20 meeting at 1:39:00). Deputy Chief Skip Miller clarified that, with regard to the 2019 EDP figures, "handled" means "responded to." (The original post was updated accordingly.) The report states that in 2019, 386 of EDPs resulted in custodial transports. Councilor Nordyke, who was appointed to fill a vacancy on the City Council a year ago, continued to push for the City to pursue a mobile crisis response program, and claims such a program is widely supported by providers. We have been unable to verify that claim.
