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.
"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."
Read at Austin Monitor
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