Across the Bay Area, communities are looking for ways to deal with mental health crises without involving police. Antioch created it's own private crisis response team, and after 12 months the city's mayor says results have been positive. It's been exactly one year since the city of Antioch launched its "Community Response Team.
" While it may be difficult to measure success on such a thing, the numbers are looking good. One number stands out from the rest. Zero.
That's how many people have died while in police custody since the community response team was created. Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe said that's exactly the result he was hoping for. "The first month of my time as mayor of city of Antioch, I had an in-custody death that led to this.
A month after that we had another in-custody death. And so, we haven't had an in-custody death since we launched this," Hernandez-Thorpe said. "That's a mark of success for me.
" The program is contracted through the non-profit Felton Institute. To highlight the one-year anniversary on Monday, the Mayor rode along with the team. Their first stop was a strip mall that the crew said generates multiple responses per day.
Program manager Nick Jenkins said most of the calls are about nuisances created by homeless people in the area. "We can't touch clients at all," said Jenkins. "All we do is address the situation, 'Hey guys, can you turn the music down? Can you move along?' And it's either a yes or a no, but we approach everybody with the respe.
