Dorian Griffin | January 19, 2025

This past October Partnership for the Public Good announced the launch of a Community Responders Pilot Program in Buffalo with $100,000 in initial state funding.

Community responders are first responders who respond to nonviolent, noncriminal calls without police. Over 100 American cities now use community responder teams to address low-level health and social needs, which saves police and ambulance time and allows them to respond faster to higher-priority calls.

 
According to new data released in the report by The Partnership for the Public Good, over 82% of 911 calls to Buffalo Police in 2020-2022 did not involve crime or violence, and were often people with an addiction or mental illness. Yet police are almost always sent. Instead, community responder teams composed of health professionals and trained peers can be safely deployed without police to many calls and prevent situations from escalating into a crisis.

Partnering with several other community focused organizations in Buffalo, The Community Responders for Erie County Coalition consists of representatives from the Erie County Restorative Justice Coalition, Little People's Victory, Voice Buffalo, Evergreen Health, as well as members of the Buffalo community. The first goal on the agenda for the Coalition is to see how the inhabitants of the city respond to the program and what they might envision for these first responders in their own neighborhoods.

-Community Listening Sessions -

On Saturday, January 25, a Community Listening Session will be held at the Merriweather Library, 1325 Jefferson Ave. at 12 noon. Register at linktr.ee/CommunityResponders4EC

It will be the second such event. On December 14 the first in what's to be a series of Community Listening Sessions was held at The Beverly Gray Exchange Center to field questions and input from city residents. Among the attendees, which were only a handful, were newly minted Erie County Legislator, Laurence Dupree, and mayoral hopeful and former Fire Department Commissioner Garnell Whitfield.

 
Alia Williams, a local East Side community resident, kicked off the event with early remarks laying out their hopes to have the program begin in the Cold Springs, Masten, MLK park area. Following her came policy report author, Colleen Kristich, who discussed where the program lies currently, noting, “we’ve seen this great model around the country. CAHOOTS, a Community Responders team in Eugene, Ore., has been active for nearly 30 years."

What might the Pilot look like in Buffalo? “It wouldn’t be 24/7, it wouldn’t be citywide, it would be a limited location with limited hours, run by a non-profit," continued Kritich. " Though we eventually hope 9-1-1 would be able to divert calls to this type of team we're not starting out there. We really want to train community members and have people from the community who would want to have the opportunity to be on this team.”

After the introduction when the floor was opened up for wider discussion, the two local political figures had a lot to offer at this first Listening Session.

“I think this is good conversation that we need to continue have to move this forward” said Legislator Dupree. “We have to get people to stop calling 9-1-1 for everything.”

As to what you can expect from the Pilot Program moving forward, the Coalition has an initiative to hear from at least 200 members from the community before moving into the next phase of their development. The Coalition was also recently awarded an additional $40,000 in funding from the Buffalo Bills Social Justice Committee.