SAN JOSE — Santa Clara County leaders are supporting a proposal to simplify access to a community-led mental health response team, which advocates say would serve a growing population of people who experience psychiatric emergencies but don’t seek help for fear that police will be sent out to them.
With a 4-0 vote, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday ordered the county administration to produce a report by Feb. 27 outlining how they can implement a direct line to the Trusted Response Urgent Support Team, or TRUST. The program dispatches four teams — for each quadrant of the county — consisting of a behavioral health professional, a medic and a community member with “lived” experience to provide peer support.
Currently, someone who wants a response from TRUST has to call the 988 Suicide and Crisis lifeline and be triaged by a call taker, or in some cases, navigate a phone tree. Supervisor Otto Lee, who authored the direct-line proposal, and supporters contend that having an option for people who already know they want the program — and the accompanying assurance of non-police intervention — would encourage more people to seek help.
Sharon Watkins’ son Phillip was shot and killed by San Jose police in 2015 during a psychiatric episode in which he voiced suicidal thoughts and carried a knife. She said she believes that the outcome would have been different if their family and friends had quick access to a resource like TRUST.
“I believe if there was a direct number, without having to go through something else, there’s some chance he would still be alive today,” Watkins said in an interview Tuesday.
Watkins is now an organizer with Silicon Valley De-Bug, a civil-rights group that supports the families of people who have been killed in police violence and helped design the South Bay program.
Members of another group backing the initiative, Showing Up For Racial Justice at Sacred Heart Community Service, appeared at the board chambers en masse and also unfurled an art installation consisting of 745 human-shaped cutouts, each showing the name of a person who signed a petition supporting faster access to TRUST.
Nearly four-dozen community members spoke in support of Lee’s referral, with many calling it a common-sense measure that offers needed simplicity for people seeking help while in the throes of a mental health breakdown. All four supervisors on hand for the board discussion voiced support for Lee’s referral, but also noted they have to be mindful of the funding and staffing challenges for a service that requires such specific skill sets.
Supporters note that psychiatric emergencies involving violence or safety threats would still necessitate police intervention, but contend that simplifying access to programs like TRUST can help defuse situations before they reach that point. They also point to the existence of similar arrangements in Oakland, Los Angeles County, Atlanta, Denver and Oregon as examples of its viability.
Advocates have looked to illustrate the human stakes of the matter by citing a news investigation published in October by the Bay Area News Group, KQED and the California Reporting Project that examined a decade of use-of-force records from San Jose police and concluded that people who are mentally impaired — either by psychiatric illness or intoxication — accounted for nearly three-quarters of serious use of force incidents and 80 percent of police killings. The investigation also highlighted broad trends of police encountering people exhibiting erratic behavior, without threats of violence, ending up experiencing serious force and injury.
Watkins asserts that a direct line to TRUST, and a broader movement toward non-law enforcement responses to mental health crises, also addresses an oft-described impact of experiences like what happened to her son.
“To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t know if I would call 911. That’s an effect that happened to me. People like me would hesitate,” she said. “With this (proposal), you are immediately comforted knowing your loved one is going to be alive. You won’t have the guilt of feeling,’Should I have not called?’ and all the maybes and the doubts.”
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