In what will be among the largest and boldest urban police reform experiment in decades San Francisco is creating and preparing to deploy teams of professionals from the fire and health departments — not police — to respond to most calls for people in a psychiatric, behavioral or substance abuse crisis.
Instead of police, these types of crisis calls will mostly be handled by new unarmed mobile teams comprised of paramedics, mental health professionals and peer support counselors starting next month.
“It’s glaringly obvious we need to change the model,” says San Francisco Fire Dept. Capt. Simon Pang, who is leading the fire department’s effort to build these new street crisis response teams.
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