Opinion: Equity Under Attack by the Town of Amherst #4: Saving Amherst’s Community Responders Alternative to Policing

By Allegra Clark, Debora Ferreira, Pat Ononibaku, Darius Cage, Russ Vernon-Jones, Brianna Owen, Ellisha Walker, and Tashina Bowen

This article is the fourth in a series written by current and former members of the town’s Community Safety and Social Justice Committee and former members of the town’s Community Safety Working Group, focusing on the ways that equity is under attack in the Town of Amherst.  View previous columns here (#1), here (#2),  and here  (#3).

In 2020, the Community Safety Working Group (CSWG) was assembled to create recommendations related to alternate safety services following the brutal murder of George Floyd by police. Amherst activists and the broader community saw an opportunity to reimagine public safety through a lens of antiracism and cultural competency, focusing on alternative responses to situations that do not require armed intervention/response, particularly in light of the over-surveillance and police brutality disproportionately affecting BIPOC individuals in Amherst and nationwide. 

In the summer of 2021, the Town of Amherst undertook a step towards a commitment to dismantling white supremacy, as outlined in its 2020 resolution, “Resolution Affirming the Town of Amherst’s Commitment to End Structural Racism and Achieve Racial Equity for Black Residents.” This step forward came to life with the swearing-in of a diverse team of eight staff for the Community Responders for Equity, Safety, and Service (CRESS) program after a long fight by the CSWG, which supported its program development, and implementation. 

After listening sessions, community surveys, and several consultant reports, the CSWG had created CRESS with the intention of minimizing the over-surveillance and police brutality that BIPOC individuals in the town experienced. The urgent need for the CRESS program became evident the evening before its first responders were sworn in. On that night, nine youth in Amherst were subjected to police harassment (see also here)  in an incident that quickly gained widespread attention online. This event not only underscored the need for an alternative, community-centered approach to public safety but also amplified the call for systems that prioritize equity, cultural understanding, and nonviolent responses—core values of CRESS.

The University of Illinois Chicago highlights that over 600 people lose their lives annually at the fault of law enforcement, with a significant proportion of the victims being individuals from BIPOC communities. While this affects communities nationwide, the harm caused by the police is also present here in Amherst—creating conditions that could tragically escalate to the loss of BIPOC lives.

 In 2021, 7GenerationMovementCollective did a deep dive in capturing the lived experiences of residents in Amherst and their experiences with the APD. Their research included 42 participants: 25 men and 17 women. The group included seven teens, 11 people in their twenties, eight in their thirties, eight in their forties, five in their fifties, and three elders. Participants identified as AAPI, Cape Verdean, Afro Latinx, Black/African American, Black & Native American (BIPOC). One person identified as Northern European and specified “poverty” and “learning disabled” as other identities. Their research highlighted the fear and harm caused by the Amherst Police Department and a gap in emergency responses that did not prioritize anti-racism, cultural competency, and trauma informed care. One participant even told researchers, “I tell no one in my house to call the police. I don’t call the police because things could go either way.”

As the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) reported, cities across the country are building civilian first-responder teams to ensure that they can send the right responder to each 911 call, rather than having to send an armed police officer by default. Existing programs have demonstrated that these “community-responder” teams can safely take many calls off the shoulders of police, calls that do not require an armed officer, that involve issues better handled by connections to services than by the criminal justice system, and that can be escalated by the presence of a uniformed officer with a gun and a badge.

LEAP’s report analyzing the 2019 Amherst call log data estimated that an alternate safety service would have the potential to take on between about 25-40% of police calls for service. LEAP noted that CAHOOTs, a similar program to CRESS located in Eugene, Oregon, diverts about 15% of the call volume that would otherwise be handled by Eugene’s police department. Only 0.2% of their calls have required emergency police backup, and in over 30 years, CAHOOTS has never reported a critical incident resulting in death or injury of a responder. CAHOOTS saves the city of Eugene an estimated $8.5 million per year. Additionally, the LEAP report addresses the obvious worry — responder safety and liability —and points out that in Amherst, Clinical Support Options (CSO) has responded to thousands of mental health crisis calls over the past few years, with no assaults or injuries. 

The CSWG recommended the creation of the CRESS Department to alleviate the harm BIPOC community members experience when people need an emergency response, to ensure responses are conducted through a lens of trauma-informed care and antiracism, and to reduce the harm people have experienced here in Amherst. Racism is rooted in the Town of Amherst’s policies, the way it governs itself, and the experiences of community members and their interactions with the Amherst Police Department (APD), which is why the CSWG and CSSJC co-chairs continue to work to hold the town accountable to  its resolution to dismantle white supremacy, and how it thrives in institutions, here in Amherst. 

“In thinking about building trust… I think there needs to be an acknowledgement about the harm that has been caused to folks of color in Amherst for generations, and that’s where you start, and then it’s really about listening, responding and taking action and co-designing and building with the communities of people who are most impacted, and that’s really where change starts.” — Statement from community member, at the CWSG community forum, January 13, 2021

With that, the CSWG and CSSJC co-chairs  urge the town to continue to fully fund CRESS, hold the CRESS department  accountable to its critical mission, and keep CRESS a department separate from the Amherst Police Department as it continues to grow.  We recommended the CRESS program three years ago and sadly, leadership instability, lack of full funding, and the diversion of dispatching calls from CRESS has hindered CRESS’s program development and its ability to respond to nonviolent calls, which  negatively impacts the BIPOC community. We hope to see the CRESS program flourish in a way that represents our community values rooted in inclusivity, kindness and resilience and centered in a commitment to ending structural racism and white supremacy. 

Allegra Clark and Debora Ferreira  are co-chairs  of Amherst’s Community Safety & Social Justice Committee.

Pat Ononibaku, Darius Cage, Russ Vernon-Jones, Brianna Owen, Ellisha Walker, Tashina Bowen, and Debora Ferreira were members of Amherst’s Community Safety Working Group.