Workgroup: Crisis Response Team - Mar 31st, 2011

Scope

Facilitator reviewed the scope list that had been generated for this group at class one;

• Alternative to 911
• Phone tree
• Triage skills – connections and resources
• Emergency Health was decided to NOT be within the scope of CRT

Participants offered additions to scope:

• CRT has local scope: Santa Cruz
• Pre-Crisis Support (NVC, Mental Health)
• Protect people not stuff
• Acknowledge some incidents may be beyond scope of CRT: “If I’m in an accident and break my back, please call 911.”
• Offer new approaches/strategies to deal with domestic violence
• CRT will not be patrol-based, rather On-Call system
• DIY: CRT people don’t “handle a situation” but help people handle it themselves
• CRT to offer pre-crisis help to minimize potential conflicts 

The following scope additions came out of the strategy discussion:

• Willing to use "protective force"
• CRT will never call police
• Quickly acknowledge when a situation is beyond our scope

Comment: It’s helpful and possible to intervene in a violent situation as a citizen within certain situations but when observer saw a man beating a woman in a car downtown, observer was grateful that cops showed up with guns drawn to take action (others thought that even here there may have been other options than police and guns)

Goals
Here are the goals that were contributed by group members:

• What resources do we need?
• What resources do we have?
• What has been done before and elsewhere RE ccommunity response?
• What infrastructure do we need?
• What skills do we need?
• How many folks would be needed to make this happen?
• Trustworthy: Guarantee a response and be reliable
• Accessible: Known to those who need it
• Confidentiality/safe
• Transparency, well-documented
• Redundancy
• Provide resources, not just handle crisis
• NVC (Nonviolent Communication) Helicopter – bring skills in quick
• Know how to deal with police
• Know how to deal non-violently with a variety of situations

Strategy Brainstorm
Generated from a discussion of CRT

• Research phone/voicemail system
• Skill Learning: develop confidence and skills in protective use of force
• Dealing with disasters: response to looting / limit reactivity (addressed by scope issue of "people not property")
• How to deal with cops if they arrive where CRT has responded
• Create list of mental health resources (for CRT to distribute/use)
• Create Phone System for CRT
• Phone System shall be centralized and routed out to CRT neighborhoods/areas
• Create a personal “business” card with contact info. to distribute in neighborhood: Help!
• Learn techniques of protective use of force
• Create crisis response kit
• Create team that can respond to early conflict with empathy: NVC
• “Illegal” people have reluctance to call 911 = reflects need for CRTs
• Make CRT accessible to Spanish-speakers (translators)
• Likewise, enslaved people have special need for CRT
• CRT must be confidential and safe: don’t disclose people whom CRT contacts
• Assume that local police will not support CRT: how shall we deal with this?
• Police Liaison from CRT
• Public Relations for CRT
• CRT members will never call police AND will acknowledge when a situation is “out of our league” like discovering a dead body…
• Research legal realms of different scenarios for CRT
• Transparency of CRT discussion/action is highly valued; open source model
• Provide further resources to people whom CRT contacts; like Defensa de Mujeres, etc…

ACTION LIST (Next Steps)

• Participant will investigate other experiments with CRT elsewhere
• Participant will draft a list of resources, mental health, physical health, etc
• Participant will explore phone possibilities and voice system technology
• Many participants offered to explore/bottomline various strategies as we move into future discussions/actions

It was a productive discussion that most of the participants felt excited about being part of.