This move is part of Dayton’s ongoing police reform process, where five working groups are examining topics like use of force, implicit bias on racial issues, and in this case, community engagement.
City Manager Shelley Dickstein described a complex process over the next six months where Dignity Best Practices and the city will evaluate which social workers or mental health professionals might be appropriate as alternate responders, will consider new training for police dispatchers, then recommend a system for how those people can best collaborate with police officers and the public.
“Some calls require police attention, police skills, training and equipment. Then there are mental health calls, and there are lower-priority calls, maybe property crimes, where someone could just come and take a report,” Dickstein said. “All of that has to be analyzed — is it appropriate for alternative response? Who is the alternative responder? Do they go alone or are they accompanied by police? There’s all of that operational detail that has to be built.”
Dignity Best Practices was founded only seven months ago, but won the contract over three other bidders. City officials spoke highly of the group’s executive director Daniel Kornfield, who was a supervisor of D.C. Police’s research and statistics arm in 2019-20.
“This is a very new process, and there aren’t a lot of people with experience locally,” said City Commissioner Chris Shaw, who helped lead the community engagement working group. “I think it’s critically important that we hire someone with experience, as limited as it may be. … If you look at the scores, it was overwhelming that this person was best qualified.”
Darryl Fairchild was the only city commissioner to vote against the contract, citing some concerns about the new firm’s skills and experience in the social work and mental health areas.
“This is such a key piece of the whole police reform, and it’s an expensive piece,” Fairchild said. “It has the potential to be transformative, so I knew we had to get it right. With what I had in front of me, I couldn’t be confident we had the right firm.”
Shaw said alternate responders could be sent to any police call that is not a violent situation, adding that “the goal is to have less contact with police across the board.”
“I’m talking about the thousands of encounters that you never hear about,” Shaw said. “There are thousands of folks in jail now who probably could have gone through better process in a treatment program, rather than treating them in our jails. We have to take a holistic approach to looking at policing in general … we have to do something different.”
Dayton Fraternal Order of Police leaders did not respond to requests for comment on the plan Friday. Shaw said the police representatives in the working group were happy about alternative response, saying their time is better spent dealing with violent crime.
Dickstein and Shaw said police dispatch training will be a key part of the equation — recognizing what types of calls fit an alternative response, which type of responder should be sent, and whether to send them alone or with police support.
“Those are not easy things to discern. We will be incredibly cautious because we want to be sure of people’s safety — both those we’re responding to, and the responders themselves,” Dickstein said.
The city of Kettering began sending a crisis intervention specialist along with police officers on some calls early this year. Oakwood has begun training its public safety officers on response to mental health issues.
Dickstein said Dayton has talked to the West Coast cities of Portland and Oakland about their alternate response programs. And they’re working locally with the ADAMHS board, which already has some collaboration with local police on crisis response. Mental health-related 911 calls were up 20% in Dayton for 2020.
Shaw emphasized that despite the potential for police going on fewer calls, there have been no discussions of police layoffs or “defunding” police. Dickstein said the plan will be a significant change that “will require additional resources and funding.”
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