Mamdani said during an interview in September.<\/a> \u201cThere were 35% of calls that B-HEARD was eligible for they did not respond to, and the police responded to.\u201d<\/p>\nAlbany\u2019s CART team is dispatched directly by 911 operators and officers in the field. Police Chief Brendan Cox said the case workers responded to more than 100 calls in October, the program\u2019s first full month.<\/p>\n
CART workers have started by co-responding with officers. But that will change soon as officers and the CART workers adjust to the new approach. Cox says the goal is to send CART officers alone to certain calls.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe easy answer is we’ll just continue to send police on everything,\u201d Cox said recently. \u201cI don’t think we’re providing the right level of service in doing that. \u2026 \u200aI think we found that balance.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a recent afternoon, Macy and her colleague Brooke LaTart drove around the city monitoring the department\u2019s dispatch screen and cradling a radio. They carried brochures about a drop-in center that offers meals and showers as well as instructions for signing up for health insurance.<\/p>\n
LaTart recalled a success story in which an older woman kept calling 911 to report her car was stolen. Officers responded but couldn\u2019t find evidence of a theft. LaTart eventually met with the woman and determined that she had sold the car three years ago \u2013 but couldn\u2019t remember the sale due to dementia.<\/p>\n
LaTart determined the woman had stable housing and access to services for food and health care. So LaTart told dispatchers and the desk clerks at Albany\u2019s police stations to simply forward the woman\u2019s calls to her cell.<\/p>\n
Diana Macy on patrol in downtown Albany.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Vielkind<\/p>\n
\u201cNow she’ll call my phone multiple times a day and we’ll just chat. And she’ll ask the same questions and she’s upset about her car, and things like that, but there hasn’t been one police call since,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Macy and LaTart walked through a library branch to look for people who were sleeping and might need housing assistance. Along Central Avenue, Macy walked by a man with a shopping cart who was sweeping the sidewalk by the vestibule of a vacant store. She recognized him and noticed he was walking with a shuffle because his heels were coming out of his shoes.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wears size 13,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ll see if we can get him a new pair.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sun set and a call came over the radio. Two officers were at a group home in North Albany where a man was threatening staff and his fellow residents. The attendant was working alone that night, and wanted the man removed.<\/p>\n
Macy told the officers that would be difficult to do because the man was entitled to a room in the group home. But she thought of a workaround.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we were able to get you someplace else for just the night so that everybody can kind of just take a break and chill out until tomorrow, would you be willing to do that?\u201d she asked the man.<\/p>\n
He agreed, and Macy called the hotline for a placement at one of the city\u2019s warming centers. <\/p>\n
The officers drove the man to the shelter. No one was arrested.<\/p>\n
And Macy went back on patrol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new program within the Albany Police Department that dispatches unarmed case workers to 911 calls \u2013 including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":{"0":"post-338996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}