"The city is always looking for holistic approaches to deal with mental health, deal with the unhoused crisis - all of those things. And this is it,"
"Do you need police, fire, EMS or mental health services?"
"Where this team identified the gap is our high-acuity incidents,"
"These are individuals experiencing a severe crisis. There may be a high risk of harm and some sort of imminent danger."
Austin launched Austin FIRST to jointly dispatch an EMS paramedic, an Integral Care mental health clinician and an Austin Police officer with mental-health training to downtown 911 calls involving severe or complex mental-health conditions, including delusions, paranoia and self-harm risk. A 2018 audit found Austin had the highest per-capita rate of fatal police shootings during mental-health crises among large U.S. metros. In 2021 911 operators began asking callers, "Do you need police, fire, EMS or mental health services?" The C3 team resolved 86% of diverted calls without police; Austin FIRST targets the highest-acuity incidents.
Read at Austin Monitor
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