Tuesday May 17 budget workshop on Corrections (Public Safety and Justice Committee, Agenday Item 14) and Behavioral Health (Health and Hospital Committee, Agenda Item 13)
Right now there is no way to tell how much money is allocated to the Trusted Responders Urgent Support Team (TRUST), nor the Alternatives-to-Incarceration process. It is disturbing that the budget includes no reference to the ATI process that supervisors voted unanimously back on January 25 2022. TRUST is a program modeled after the Eugene Oregon CAHOOTS program. Right now the county has something called the Mobile Crisis Response Team. When calls are made to the MCRT (which has a very complicated phone number and only sends a team out between 8amand 8pm during weekdays), SJPD runs the person in crisis's information BEFORE responding to the call, not after any perceived danger etc they might experience during the visit. If they have a bench warrant (including for something small like a missed court date which can happen if one has no permanent address because one is unhoused), police MUST move forward with an arrest-no exceptions. The program is marketed as a clinician going out to assess with the police there "in case", or an alternative to 911 but in practice it's not much different than calling 911, and in fact 911 might be more appropriate and less harmful in some cases as EMS would be dispatched too/instead. The TRUST program would not have police response automatically embedded and will have a community oversight group that includes system impacted families. You can read more about the vision for the TRUST program here. More investment and buy-in to the TRUST program was one of the San Jose Re-Imagining Public Safety recommendations (p.12) and is a priority for our partners in Race, Equity and Community Safety (RECS) at Sacred Heart Community Service.
How to Take Action for May 17
Write your public comment. See this space for talking points.
LOGIN to the meeting at https://sccgov-org.zoom.us/j/95392132618 (recommended) or (669) 219-2599,
meeting ID 9539 213 2618# (participant ID not required)Here is the agenda for the May 17 county budget study session.
If you cannot attend to make verbal comment, email written comments to BoardOperations@cob.sccgov.org by 1:30pm on Monday May 16 in order to be sure they enter the agenda packet board members receive
Invite others in your networks to make public comment