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Date: 6/22/2022
AMHERST – The Amherst Community Responders for Equity, Safety and Security (CRESS) Department hosted a community forum with the Amherst Police Department (APD) to discuss the collaboration between the departments and field questions from the public on June 13 at the Bangs Community Center.
CRESS is Amherst’s first public safety department implemented since the late 1800s. It was established to provide Amherst with trained responders outside of the police for non-violent emergency calls and to be a general resource for people experiencing homelessness, mental health issues, substance abuse, youth and more. CRESS Director Earl Miller was appointed by Town Manager Paul Bockelman, a move he announced in a memo on March 3.
Miller said there are a million different ways to define his explanation of the department being “an unarmed response to challenges in the community.” He said right now, the definition changes every Friday because he doesn’t want to prescribe solutions before fully understanding the challenges.
“That’s a potential pratfall,” Miller said. “Just so you know, the last time there was a new public safety department in this town, there were horses and buggies on these streets, it was a very long time ago, so it’s not like I can find those folks and ask them how they did it. What we know is that there are some mental health challenges in this community that are unmet, either through existing providers not having enough space for folks, or frankly the limits of traditional services. Some people’s mental health challenges are easily addressed by going to a therapist weekly or monthly, some people it’s not. Some people need someone who can show up when they need them.”
Before becoming the CRESS director, Miller worked in peer support at what is now the Wildflower Alliance in Springfield, teamed up with Michelann Bewsee to secure homes for over 100 people and was the director of recovery for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health for over four years.
“Somebody asked me a week ago how did I end up here and I said, ‘I’m not quite sure, I feel a little like the story of Moses, I got thrown into a river and I’m in Amherst,’” Miller said.
Miller said the town and department has been and will continue to work in close coordination with the APD, Fire Department and emergency dispatch.
“For too long in this country, every social problem has been dumped off on law enforcement,” Miller said. “That’s not fair to them, they didn’t sign up for that either. The resources to solve those problems didn’t follow the ask to do it. Generally, when communities have gone this way, it’s because they no longer trust their police department. Our opportunity here is can you do this in a place where the [Police Department] is still working for folks. There are lots of folks in this community who are afraid of CRESS not because they think we’ll fail, but they think when they call the police they won’t show up. That’s not going to happen. We’re committed to being the third leg of public safety. If your house catches on fire, I promise not to show up with a bucket of water.”
APD Captain Gabe Ting joined Miller on the panel throughout the forum. Ting, who has been a police officer for 25 years, grew up in Amherst after his family moved from Argentina when he was five.
“I’m very proud to be employed by the town of Amherst and to be able to give something back to a community that’s given myself and my family so much,” Ting said “Our Police Department is very progressive. We really focus on training and finding the best officers that we can find out there.”
Miller said it is important to recognize how many communities started this conversation but never made it past asking the question. His working thesis on why it happened in Amherst is because Amherst was “willing to have the battles, willing to have those conversations and willing to push pass even if you couldn’t agree. That’s really hard to do. This is a brave community that has done brave things before and I’m asking to be brave again.”
“Sometimes when we think of homeless folks, we only see them on their worst days,” Miller said. “I was homeless; when I was 21 I lived in [Springfield’s] Forest Park. What I was lacking wasn’t necessarily a home, it was compassion. I didn’t have anybody who could really see me. I’m telling you a long story of saying a lot of the problems we’re thinking about solving are problems that I’ve had myself.”
Most recently, Miller has spent time going around and meeting as many residents and workers in the town as he can. He encourages everyone to let CRESS know if there is someone they know that might need a response from CRESS in the future, saying he prefers getting ahead of problems before seeing people on what is inevitably one of their worst days. This can help the team know who they want to show up, if they have a preference between a man or woman and to learn how to not retraumatize them.
“What’s important is to get [responders] used to being around the other public safety agencies so the first day they’ll be in this building, they’ll swear in, they’ll get pins,” Miller said. “The first day we’ll take them over to [the Police Department], they’ll meet those folks and their leadership team, they’ll orient to who’s who over there, what their procedures are. They’ll see the dispatch center and those folks, they’ll go back to the Fire Department, I don’t know if we’ll get to the North [Fire Station], but we’ll at least be right here with Chief [W. Tim] Nelson and meet his leadership team.”
The opening weeks will include training on anti-racism, LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning plus) allyship, motivational interviewing, non-violent communication and understanding posture and energy in a room, de-escalation techniques and plenty of drilling.
The final speaker of the Q&A portion captured the room. They spoke on behalf of the Hispanic minorities and particularly the Salvadorian and Ecuadorian communities in Amherst. The speaker said they had moved to the U.S. from Venezuela for six years and remembered a total lack of resources on arrival.
“Are you going to have a staff with different languages? Many members of this community are non-English speakers,” the speaker said. “We have a huge Salvadorian and Ecuadorian community here and the majority of them came here from very poor conditions. They have a lot of trauma and they are very scared. They can’t drive, they barely go outside of their own community because they don’t speak English.”
After a few minutes of discussion and affirming the speaker, Miller asked if the speaker was passionate for these communities.
“Absolutely,” they replied. “I am the person for them that I wished to have when I came here. I become that person, because I am living in this country for just six years. When I came here, I didn’t speak English, I didn’t have friends, I didn’t have anything here. I needed someone to support me and I decided to become that person, that’s why I’m here right now.”
Miller said, “We’re going to work with you. Thank you for that. What you did there is really important. You showed us a soft spot, you showed us something that happened to you that shouldn’t have happened. In this country, there’s an American dream that isn’t being lonely when you get here. That story you told is the reality of how folks come here, it’s the story of feeling ignored in a place you love, in a place you worked hard to get to. I don’t have an answer for what you’re saying but I think you have us closer to an answer so what I want to do is schedule some time with you to learn that and appreciate your passion.”
The earlier Q&A portion heard questions of how someone could contact CRESS, how the dispatch to different departments would work, the staff composition and more.
“[Emergency Dispatch Supervisor] Mike Curtin has been a part of this process since it started,” Miller said. “They are already, when calls are coming in, looking at whether they would flag them for CRESS. We’ll also have a direct number, so we will have a number folks can just call to speak with us but also just reach out directly.”
Ting added, “Our dispatch center dispatches not only for the police but also for fire and EMS as well. When they take a call, they have to gather the information and they make a determination as to who they’re going to send. Now, with the CRESS program being there, that’s an added agency for them to be able to call. The challenge with that is determining what type of call is it exactly. One of the biggest hurdles that we faced together was the element of safety.”
Ting explained how many calls come in as some type of trespass or disturbance, but the officers often run into a different issue than described upon arrival.
“Let’s say you hear your neighbors yelling or screaming and you call in a noise complaint,” Ting said. “A lot of times we’ll go there, and it could be kids playing video games or it could be a domestic in progress so the problem with it is if we were to send CRESS right off the bat without having proper information, we don’t want them endangered, we don’t want to be in danger as well.”
He also said the department is familiar with many of the people who commonly make calls and which should or shouldn’t usually be referred to CRESS. They are considering a parallel response in some scenarios where both departments show up to the scene and determine who will make the call after figuring out more details.
“Would particular communities that you see CRESS fitting into more, would they be able to have a liaison?” Questioned another audience member. “I don’t have a sense of what the priorities are, I hear homelessness, I hear students who might be in some kind of crisis, mental health, but is there an actual liaison to a specific part of the community or a neighborhood?”
“There will be,” Miller said. “When we hired folks, we were thoughtful about having folks who represented segments of our community who we could then send back to work with those pieces of the community. We’ll have four teams; we’ll have eight responders working in teams of two. They will have parts of the community that we expect them to have regular contact with. We’re also doing barbecues at the housing complexes and we’re trying to identify what do you want us to do. We did one at Village Park last weekend. We were able to talk to folks and say, ‘Hey, do you want us to have a community meeting?’ and what they said is, ‘No, bring food.’ They want us to show up and address a need. Eating is a need for them and there are not enough folks who come there offering something.
“When you need help, the last thing you need to do is be made to dance for it,” Miller said. “Have someone film you on the worst day of your life, to have someone take something from you, make you do another piece of paperwork so someone will listen to you, make you go to another appointment, show up to another place, do another thing.”