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In early July, the Ann Arbor City Council reallocated $3.5 million in federal funding intended for the development of an unarmed crisis response program to other initiatives. These funds were first allocated for the response program in 2022 through the American Rescue Plan Act and had to be spent by 2024. While the city had an open request for proposals for a response team, only one was received, and the council rejected it in December 2023 citing issues such as the timeline and operating hours. Facing the 2024 spending deadline, the council voted to use the money on five different initiatives, including a Barton Dam embankment project and park improvements.
Ann Arbor has been working for years to develop an unarmed crisis response program, which would work with local human services organizations to redirect some noncriminal emergency calls to trained professionals rather than police officers. In April 2021, the council adopted a resolution directing the city administrator to develop an unarmed crisis response program. In January 2024, after rejecting the only proposal, Ann Arbor City Council issued another call for third party organizations to help with the implementation of the program. In July, the council canceled their search for a third-party organization to implement such a program.
Care-Based Safety is a community organization dedicated to building a nonpolice crisis response program. CBS was the only third party to submit an application to the city. Liz Kennedy, culture and operations director at CBS, emphasized the community’s desire for the program in an interview with The Michigan Daily.
“The community wants it,” Kennedy said. “The community asks for it. There are years, literally decades, worth of organizing from Black, brown, multiracial coalitions working across public safety, social services, social work, public health, criminal justice reform (and) abolition. So many voices, hands, movements (and) coalitions have come together saying, ‘Enough is enough. We have a policing problem in Ann Arbor.’”
Kennedy also said policing causes the most harm to those who are Black, low-income or mentally ill. She believes that an alternative is necessary to end the brutalization and criminalization of these populations.
“We know that Black folks are overwhelmingly overrepresented in Michigan’s jails and prisons,” Kennedy said. “We know that low-income folks are overwhelmingly represented as well, and we also know that folks living with mental illnesses and serious substance use disorders are also being jailed instead of getting the rehabilitation and healing resources that they need to actually recover.”
Rackham student Linda Huber, co-chair of the Abolition Caucus of the Graduate Employees’ Organization, told The Daily that the creation of an unarmed response program is also relevant to GSIs, who often begin to feel more unsafe when police are involved.
“Sometimes you have situations in the classroom where you would like some kind of crisis response service, where you need support,” Huber said. “And particularly as a GSI, really the only resource we have to turn to in some of those situations is to call 911, call the police. And that in many cases feels like it’s making the situation more unsafe.”
Public Health student Kara Mannor, a member of the GEO Abolition Caucus, told The Daily that she was disappointed the city has yet to implement a crisis response team, despite the fact that there are community organizations that would help.
“It’s incredibly disappointing that they have decided to continue to kick the can down the road,” Mannor said. “Especially when we have incredibly vibrant and robust community organizations like Care-Based Safety that are invested in doing this work, that would take those efforts and initiatives seriously through an RFP process to actually implement programming that works in the city.”
Donnell Wyche, one of the founding members of Coalition for Re-Envisioning our Safety, a coalition of groups dedicated to building care-based safety in Washtenaw County, said in an interview with The Daily that he has little hope for the development of an unarmed response program at the city level.
“I don’t know that I have any hope, quite honestly, from the city because there doesn’t seem to be a champion … which I think is different than a sponsor of an initiative,” Wyche said. “The mayor, in his infinite wisdom, sponsored the resolution to enact an unarmed public safety program. But there wasn’t a champion at the table.””
Education graduate student Nia Hall, co-chair of the GEO Abolition Caucus, told The Daily she believes the council’s hesitancy towards an unarmed crisis response program is impacting the city and the University of Michigan’s ability to successfully launch such a program.
“It sounds like a continuous ‘Wait,’” Hall said. “‘Wait until things get worse. Wait until we have all of these things in place for things to go well when we have the money to begin with.’ And so it just seems like there’s a pushing back continuously of an unarmed police response and what that could look like, which has inherently affected University of Michigan being able to have an unarmed police response.”
Kennedy said she believes everyone deserves to be able to call 911 and know that they will receive the proper care and treatment.
“Every single one of us is going to have to call 911 at some point in our life,” Kennedy said. “And so for those of us who are Black, brown, Queer, disabled, mentally ill, living in recovery, etc., that shouldn’t be the last phone call we make, right? We should be met with compassion and support. We should be met with people that can keep us safe, people that can soothe us, people who can empathize with our experiences, people who aren’t going to put us in handcuffs but can actually give us a hug or some water or take us to a hospital if we need that.”
Daily Staff Reporter Michelle Liao can be reached at mrliao@umich.edu.
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