Seattle aims to redirect money from departed SPD officers to ‘alternative’ 911 response efforts

Seattle will try to revise its emergency calling efforts in the coming months. (Seattle Fire Department, Twitter)

Mayor Jenny Durkan announced a new proposal on Friday aimed at implementing an alternative 911 calling model that goes beyond specialized responses beyond law enforcement.

Seattle CM: The city’s response to emergency calls must be a priority

Durkan, along with Councilor Lisa Herbold, unveiled the proposal, describing the action as a means of providing “effective alternatives to a sworn officer” for non-emergency wellness check-up calls.

“This specialized triage response will be an important resource as we work to meet the needs of our communities while reducing the need for sworn officials,” she said Friday.

Council members have been aiming for the “right dimensioning” of the city’s emergency response measures for months, culminating in a unanimous vote in late May to move emergency calls from the Seattle Police Department to the civilian-controlled Community Safety and Communications Center (CSCC). .

Durkan and Herbold’s new proposal will focus on a separate aspect of the emergency calling effort aimed at sorting out certain emergency calls so that unarmed behavioral health professionals can be dispatched to provide assistance in lieu of armed police officers.

“Not every emergency call requires an armed response,” said Herbold. “The proposal for a specialized triage response model is both creative thinking and data-driven innovation that provides a qualified response for those who need help but are not a threat.”

Seattle City Councilor Introduces Bill to Redesign 911 Services

If those calls passed, those calls would be routed from the CSCC to the Seattle Fire Department’s Mobile Integrated Health program, which then dispatches responders itself.

Supporter for the measure on Friday was the acting SPD leader Adrian Diaz, who praised it as an opportunity to release more officials for calls in connection with active crimes.

This is happening while the SPD has continued to struggle over the past year and a half with the departure of over 250 civil servants, whom Diaz previously cited as the driving reason for the 911’s ever slower response times. Overall, the city estimates that this new system could cover between 8,000 and 14,000 calls that SPD officials currently have to answer themselves.

The city hopes to reinvest the money from the loss of these officials to fund this newly proposed 911 triage system, as well as other alternatives to armed responses.

The bill will be presented in the coming weeks to the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, headed by Herbold.