The City of Greensboro is expanding its effort to handle some mental health and substance abuse crises without sending police officers on the calls.

According to a city press release issued Thursday, May 22, the city’s Behavioral Health Response Team (BHRT) has officially launched what’s called the “Clinician Alternative Response” program – or CAR – which allows two behavioral health clinicians to respond to certain 911 calls rather than police officers.

The new response model is part of Greensboro’s Community Safety Department and it represents another step in the city’s broader attempt to rethink how some emergency calls are handled – particularly calls involving mental illness, substance abuse, homelessness or people in crisis who may not actually be committing crimes.

The city says the CAR program is intended for “appropriate, low-risk calls” and will generally operate from 6 a.m. until midnight Monday through Friday.

Under the traditional Behavioral Health Response Team model, behavioral health counselors respond alongside specially trained Greensboro police officers in what the city calls a “co-response.”

The new Clinician Alternative Response model cuts police out of some calls entirely and instead sends two civilian crisis counselors.

City officials say that the goal is to connect people with treatment and services while also reducing unnecessary interaction with the criminal justice system.

The city’s press release states that whether a call qualifies for a CAR response is ultimately determined by BHRT staff and officers.

Greensboro first launched BHRT in 2020. The program combines Greensboro Police Department officers with licensed clinicians and crisis counselors from the Community Safety Department.

City leaders say that those clinicians are specifically tasked with diverting people away from the criminal justice system and toward treatment whenever possible.

The Community Safety Department describes its mission as providing “the right responders at the right time in the right situations.”

The idea behind programs like this has gained traction across the country in recent years as cities have struggled with the best way to handle mental health crises that often end up becoming police matters simply because 911 is the number people call when they don’t know where else to turn.

Supporters argue that many people experiencing mental illness or addiction need medical or behavioral health intervention rather than an armed police response.

Critics, however, sometimes question whether these civilian responders will be placed into dangerous situations and whether police backup will still frequently end up being needed.

City leaders are trying to strike the right balance between those concerns.

According to the release, higher-risk calls will still use the original co-response model involving police officers, while the Clinician Alternative Response unit is designed for lower-acuity situations.

The city also released some early numbers from a pilot version of the CAR program. According to Greensboro officials, during a pilot period running from mid-February through April 2, four BHRT clinicians responded to 45 calls under the CAR model during limited daytime hours.

The city says those 45 calls “saved more than 60 patrol responses” while allowing police officers to remain available for criminal investigations and emergencies.

The pilot hours were narrower than the newly expanded program: During testing, CAR reportedly operated from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The permanent rollout expands those hours significantly.

Greensboro’s Community Safety Department itself is still relatively new and has become one of the city’s most closely watched public safety experiments.

Unlike a traditional police department, the Community Safety Department focuses heavily on violence interruption, homelessness outreach, mental health response, substance abuse issues and long-term case management.

The city says that the department takes a “holistic, collaborative approach” to public safety and focuses on prevention and de-escalation instead of relying solely on arrests and throwing people in jail.

In addition to BHRT and CAR, the department also operates a program called BRIDGE.

According to the city, BRIDGE works with eligible people during and after hospital discharge and connects them with peer support and intensive case management. City officials say the program uses a “harm reduction-focused approach” intended to support long-term recovery and stability.

Programs like Greensboro’s have become increasingly common nationwide – particularly after the national debate over policing that intensified in 2020.

One of the most frequently cited examples is CAHOOTS in Eugene, Oregon, where civilian crisis workers have responded to mental health-related emergency calls for decades.

Greensboro officials haven’t framed CAR as replacing police, but rather as reducing the number of situations where police officers are used by default.

The city’s release repeatedly emphasizes that law enforcement will still respond to higher-risk or potentially dangerous calls.

Whether Greensboro residents fully embrace the concept may depend largely on how the program performs over time – particularly whether it can safely reduce police involvement while still getting people in crisis the help they need.

For now, city officials say the early pilot numbers are encouraging and that the expanded program should allow Greensboro police officers to spend more time dealing with violent crime and other emergencies while behavioral health professionals handle calls more directly related to mental illness

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