By Ryan Stanton
mlive.com
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — An unarmed crisis response program years in the making is finally getting ready to launch in Ann Arbor.
City Council voted 10-0 Monday night, July 20, to approve the program dubbed SPROUT, which stands for Supportive Resources and Outreach Team, and hiring staff for it.
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Rather than sending armed police to deal with certain non-criminal, non-violent situations, SPROUT will handle those calls.
It will be staffed by two teams, each with two clinicians, for a total of four clinicians who will hit the streets, operating as unarmed responders distinct from law enforcement, officials said.
There also will be three caseworkers responsible for long-term social service coordination, and a program director providing oversight. The program will be run through the city’s Supportive Connections office led by Director Jonathan Laye.
The unarmed response program has been a long time coming and has taken longer than expected to set up, council members said.
“It’s certainly, I think, longer than we expected when we first expressed support for exploring an unarmed crisis response model back in 2021,” said Council Member Jen Eyer, D- 4th Ward.
Building a program that will work has been more complex than city officials anticipated, Eyer said.
Council Member Cynthia Harrison, D- 1st Ward, said she has heard from residents again and again about what it’s like to call for help during a mental health crisis and watch uniformed police officers show up instead of a mental health professional.
“Instead of someone trained to listen, deescalate and connect them to care, they or their loved one were ticketed, arrested or trespassed — no mediator, no clinician, no opportunity to intervene before the criminal legal system took over,” she said.
Someone experiencing a crisis deserves to be treated fairly, compassionately and professionally, Harrison said.
“Having a breakdown isn’t a crime,” she said. “Not every crisis calls for a law enforcement response.”
SPROUT will respond to defined non-emergency, low-risk call types, including unhoused concerns, welfare checks, victim support, connection to social services, repeat behavioral-health-related calls and city protection order followup, the council resolution states. SPROUT clinicians will help connect people to mental health services, substance use support, transportation assistance, conflict-resolution resources, housing services and other stabilizing interventions, officials said.
For times when police and a behavioral health clinician may need to respond together, council also voted Monday to approve an agreement with Washtenaw County Community Mental Health for a licensed clinician to support a separate co-response program through the Ann Arbor Police Department.
It’s dubbed CO-RESPONSE A2 REACH, which stands for Ann Arbor Respond, Engage, Assist, Co-Response Help.
The city plans to compensate CMH up to $135,000 annually, based on a minimum of 2,080 hours of clinician service per year. The clinician is expected to be paired with a police officer trained in crisis intervention, handling calls involving safety concerns, risks of harm, suicide threats and other situations.
Harrison said the co-response program is needed because SPROUT is set up to handle non-criminal matters. There may be other calls such as someone aggressively panhandling or trespassing on a property, which is against the law, and unarmed responders can’t handle those alone, she said.
Rebecca Arends, a licensed social worker who is running against Harrison in the Aug. 4 primary, said she supports the co-response model with CMH, but she raised concerns about the separate unarmed response program and urged council to vote against it.
Mayor Christopher Taylor said he’s grateful for the work police officers do, putting themselves on the line to help others, but not every circumstance requires their engagement.
“Here we’re going to give people options, and I think we will help folks’ lives be so much better because of it,” he said.
Council Member Chris Watson, D- 2nd Ward, said his father was part of a co-response program with Ann Arbor police when he was a psychologist in training back in the late 1970s. So, the idea of mental health professionals accompanying police officers isn’t new, but the commitment and funding for it in the city fell by the wayside over the years, Watson said.
“Too often, police interactions with community members, especially Black men like me, escalate when mental health issues are involved,” Watson said, expressing hopes the new programs save lives, whether by deescalating situations, preventing an officer-involved shooting or simply diverting people into treatment.
SPROUT will work collaboratively with the co-response unit, CMH and other community partners, ensuring coordinated service delivery, officials said.
The unarmed response program will start as a pilot and the model may need to be refined along the way, Laye said. He expects its success to be measured not only in call numbers, he said, but demonstrating it can safely and effectively meet community needs while improving outcomes for residents in crises, keeping them from unnecessarily entering the criminal legal system.
Eyer said her hope is SPROUT becomes another way the city meets people with compassion and dignity, including those experiencing homelessness and others who need support.
“If this program helps even one person get connected to the care they need before the crisis becomes a life-altering event, it will have made a real difference,” Eyer said.
Harrison said she’s most proud SPROUT will not be armed and it will not be part of AAPD. It will be a fully civilian, unarmed response program staffed by licensed social workers trained in crisis intervention and trauma-informed care, she said.
“Their job is connection, stabilization and case management, not law enforcement,” she said. “SPROUT is built for the calls that were never criminal to begin with.”
The city expects SPROUT to operate as a pilot program for at least one year and learn from it.
Funding for the programs has been allocated through the city’s portion of a countywide mental health and public safety millage and marijuana tax revenue.
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