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Date: 12/26/2023
AMHERST — Members of the town’s Community Responders for Equity, Safety and Service have begun responding to a limited number and variety of dispatched calls for service.
CRESS, Amherst’s alternative to traditional police response, was launched in July 2022 with eight members sworn in by town officials. Beginning with eight, it is currently staffed with five responders and is without a permanent director following the departure of Earl Miller, who resigned the position in October, while still on administrative leave.
At the Dec. 13 meeting of the Community, Safety and Social Justice Committee, Fire Chief Tim Nelson, who is part of the interim CRESS leadership team, offered an outline of the additional calls received via dispatchers that members will be responding to.
911 calls concerning well-being checks, individual mental health issues, assistance for town businesses and departments, individual citizen assists as well as administrative and follow-up responses can now be dispatched and attended to by CRESS members.
“We’re starting out with this group because those seem to bring the least amount of threat, the least amount of danger to the responders,” Nelson said.
Nelson went on to describe the calls as, “fairly straight-forward” and said that the calls and responses will be scrutinized afterwards.
“We’re going to review each call to see how it went, how it went well, how it may not have gone well and learn from that as we march down this path,” he said.
CRESS responders began handling the dispatched calls on Dec. 18 and will be doing so Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Committee member Debora Ferreira asked Nelson why CRESS would only be handling the listed dispatched calls and not others such as noise complaints, disorderly conduct or well-being checks involving alcohol or drugs.
Nelson reiterated the concern for the safety of the responders as they begin this area of their increased duties and reminded Ferreira that the CRESS members would be handling the calls without the assistance of police officers.
“Noise complaints, disorderly, those have a higher tendency to be, to have some degree of danger, some degree of violence,” he said.
Nelson added that while there could be a CRESS response to those types of calls down the road, he doesn’t believe there should be because of the potential for danger.
Ferreira responded that the limited number of calls for CRESS to be permitted to handle was not what the Community Safety Working Group, of which she was a member, had recommended during the formation of CRESS.
“I’m not in agreement with the fact that the noise complaints is not entered and is not part of this, “she said. “I’m not in agreement that disorderly conduct is not part of this because I am, I was part of the CSWG, so I remember our conversations and our recommendations.”
Nelson noted that those were recommendations and said that a line had to drawn somewhere for what was going to be done. Ferreira responded that there was not room to start small based upon what she said the community was looking for.
“We’ve been charged to make this work and we’re going to make this work,” Nelson said. “We’ve got a lot of experience and a lot of smart folks who want to make this work.”
Nelson acknowledged that people were going to have different opinions and there going to be disagreements along the way.
Ferreira responded that it was not what is best for the community.
“It’s a disagreement that will potentially cost more people being intimidated and more people being terrorized by the police,” she said. “And that’s the part and I’m representing the community which is specific to BIPOC community which are the ones that end up feeling it on their skin.”
As other members of the committee shared similar points of view regarding the types of calls CRESS should be sent to, Nelson said the main point was that members would now be going to dispatched calls which has been a goal since the department’s inception.
Pamela Nolan Young, director of the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Office and also a member of the interim leadership team confirmed in response to a committee question that CRESS members were also involved in the decision-making process as to what dispatched calls they would initially be sent to.
“We have been engaged in call type discussion with the responders from day one of the interim leadership team,” she said. “This was a list that was generated by the entire CRESS department.”
Young also said that the list of dispatched calls that CRESS will respond to is just an initial grouping and that the next director of the department will have the opportunity to expand the list.
Nelson and Young offered updated information on the hiring of new CRESS members to fill the current vacancies with onboarding possible after the first of the year. Young also stated that she was not involved in the search process for a new director.