The Concord city council voted unanimously this week to begin work to create its own Mental Health Evaluation Team to work full-time within Concord, and to expand the Coordinated Outreach Referral and Engagement (CORE) homeless outreach team from half-time to full-time.
CORE teams serve as the main entry point into the county’s programs to help the homeless. The CORE team that covers Concord and Walnut Creek was created in 2017; Concord officials want to expand the Concord side of that from half-time to full-time. The city will now approach Contra Costa County, which administers the CORE teams, about creating a Concord-only CORE team.
Also in 2017, Contra Costa Health Services and county police chiefs joined to form the Mental Health Evaluation Team program, with teams in east, west and central Contra Costa. Each team consists of an assigned local police officer and a county mental health clinician. Concord aims to form its own MHET team, as well.
Council members said they see these teams as providing more specialized responses to calls for which police alone are not always equipped to handle.
“I want a mental health team going out when there’s a mental health crisis,” Councilman Edi Birsan said.
Councilwoman Carlyn Obringer said she believes a medical professional should be part of the Concord CORE team, and supports adding that element as the plan moves forward. She called Tuesday’s decisions “the next logical step” in improving response to homelessness and mental health calls.
As in several other Contra Costa cities, Concord leaders have been under pressure to de-emphasize police spending and move some of those resources to social services, including homeless and mental health services.
And a number of call-in public commenters told the council Tuesday these steps don’t go nearly far enough, given the need.
“This is kind of a band-aid,” Cora Mitchell said. “And this is a large-scale problem.”
Money to pay for these new programs — about $200,000 a year for the Mental Health Evaluation Team and doubling the CORE team cost from about $100,000 to about $200,000 — hasn’t been identified.
26 comments
Fix the damn Pot Holes !
Agreed
Here’s a thought: As part of Concord’s homeless outreach program, develop some on the job training, such as pot hole repair. Gives job training and the possibility of obtaining employment, fixes pot holes, and helps to off set some of the costs of the homeless outreach.
Where is the ‘fix the roads’ crowd when the discussion is regarding police funding? Where are the commenter pleas to fix pot holes when the topic is tax dollars spent on “$640,500 on 16 new 2021 Ford Police Interceptor SUVs”?
Don’t you get it? If the roads were maintained, The cars wouldn’t wear out so fast. I mean is basic economics. Fix the roads, support the police. Live in peace ☮️
If Concord doesn’t fix the cracks in the pavement on Pine Hollow Road pretty soon, they’re going to have to send out somebody to mow the grass growing in them.
How much money has been collected via taxes and few under the guise of fixing infrastructure- when that money was diverted elsewhere?
It’s fine if the politicians actually took some responsibility re: finances.
Until then…..
@Sam
Like I said. The ‘fix our roads’ crowd is absent when taxes are used for police. Ya didn’t answer the question why no one is applying the trickle down road maintenance logic in lieu of new cruisers.
Geel- Because maybe the police actually offer a service where housing homeless and giving them anything is just like throwing money away? Seems like apples and orange to me. False comparison.
We need to increase the numbers of these experts.
Far too often Police have to deal with all sorts of issues that they are not trained for and can put them in a very challenging situation where they truly want to help but don’t have the expertise to really do so.
Our officers should not be thrust into these situations because society thinks that our police are a one-stop shop for everything that goes wrong in our society.
Totally agree. The mentally ill and drug infested population are soaking up our law enforcement and prisons. Get them help.
The two Council members, Birsan and Obringer are up for re-election which is why they are supporting new programs and getting their name out there.
Also, who is Cora Mitchell? I had to Google her name to figure it out. There really should have been a reference to who in the heck she is if she was going to be quoted.
Really Claycord!?….. You censored my comment just because I mentioned that it was an election year for Birsan and Obringer and that I didn’t know who in the heck Cora Mitchell was???
Sorry my comment wasn’t salacious enough for you.
Sorry Claycord, I woke up cranky today.
@ Hondo Lane ~ So did I but she went right back to sleep.
Do some long overdue paving instead! Better than a bandaid approach to a problem that is unsolvable.I sincerely hope they don’t follow the trend and defund the police to pay for it.
Can the city also make another task force that forces them clean up all the effing trash and junk they’re polluting the streets and waterways with??? Have you seen the flood canals and creeks? It’s absolutely unbelievable what these people get away with.
well for those who oppose police having vehicles that can get to emergencies as fast as needed
i have an option
opt out
notify your local police station and inform them you dont want any police responding in new vehicles to any of your future emergencies and instead inform your local dem politician and inform them you want your cut of police budget
to go to local bums and narcotics to support them and their endeavors as well as some to public schools to indoctrinate your children in all dem favored politics and information and also inform the media to continue and only feed you fake news and false information and a narrative fully tilted so far left you wont even see the sun come up
you see this is america and you can focus your freedom to surround yourself with a comfy lie and pandering from politicians for your votes to keep the lie alive
your liberals spent billions of tax payer dollars on trying to defunct and deface and undo and smear and ridicule and impeach a sitting potus …..
so your claim that police are abusing tax money is well lackluster and phony at best
you would be more inclined and gather more success by pilfering your local businesses and causing chaos ….then complaining about police vehicles
so sit down put on your mask and wait inside for the liberal alarm to come out of hiding from a virus less violent than the common flu …
you will be waiting for years but at least your satisfaction of a controlled life by politicians and their media cronies will become your reality …yay right ooohhh sorry left left left …..
we the people how ever will push for law and order and the use of police to secure our freedoms and allow our children to know all of history not just the parts you want them too
programing our children to be dem drones is wrong yet continues and you complain about a few police cars ….
seems like your ideal germany of 1930 is
Oh Cora Mitchell. These mental response teams, and diverting funding away from police to “mental illness experts” and other non-police response teams are also putting a bandaid on the problem.
The increase in mental illness, drug abuse, violence, crime, and overall degradation of society that we are seeing all have the same root cause: the breakdown of the family unit.
Want to really fix society? Put families first. Fix families and you’ll fix society. Anything else is just a band aid.
Nobody can “ fix” families…. believe me, I started teaching school in the 70’s… but, we can elect legislators who can introduce bills to change laws to get the mentally ill and drug/alcohol abusers off of the streets.
Sadly CC county is doing worse than nothing. They are enabling these folks to continue their miserable lives at taxpayers’ expense…
All this shows me is how fiscally IRRESPONSIBLE the City Council is, nothing more…
Maybe reopen the Snake Pits or Cuckoo’s Nests and load them up.
I am going to tell you guys a story.
A few weeks ago I was driving down clayton road right by where it does the odd split , straight and you get on concord Blvd right keeps you on clayton rd. Its close to too Santos Park. I look over to my left in front of the old pge building and there is a man on the sidewalk clearly homeless in a pretzel position. I waited 10 minutes to see if he would move and he didn’t so I called CPD. They took about 10 minutes, maybe 12 because it was hard to explain where we were. The guy never moved , I thought he was dead. When I see the police car I walked to the corner to flag them down and I see a huge pile of human poop right there on the corner. When I turn around with the police officer the man rolled over . I thought well he is alive. The police go over ask him if he is okay, the day, and some other stuff. They offered him treatment, a hotel room, told him they can get him food and he refused. It was 105 out and he didn’t care. The man kept telling the police to go away , that he never wanted help , and that he was fine right here. They asked again can we take you to a shelter at least and he responded no they don’t let me do what I want there. The police tried really hard and as I replay this I think you want to create all of these social services when the ho.eless don’t even want to take advantage of what we have now. In addition to taking away all of the power we had to force them to detox or a mental health ward.
So stop putting bandaid s on the problem and open up more mental hospitals and cut through all the freaking red tape in the mental health world that you have imposed.
You want to know what these teams mean?
A team of very poor quality providers and line staff who are competitive for higher paying jobs in the industry form together to go out into the field. Burnt out and perceiving to be undervalued, they then become the outlet the police use every time a person going into custody says “I’m suicidal” or “I have mental illness”. Then that buys them extra time until the CORE team shows up so that the drugs or alcohol have more of a chance to get out of the system. Not having the credentials or skill to discern risk in the field, they translates yes/no questions about suicide or psychosis into a referral to the country assessment center. They will help some people, but the cost per life saved is very high relative to how this money could be used otherwise. But hey, we are serious about mental healthcare reform!
*providers who are not competitive for higher paying jobs
You want to know what these teams mean?
A team of very poor quality providers and line staff who are not competitive for higher paying jobs in the industry form together to go out into the field. Burnt out and perceiving to be undervalued, they then become the outlet the police use every time a person going into custody says “I’m suicidal” or “I have mental illness”. Then that buys them extra time until the CORE team shows up so that the drugs or alcohol have more of a chance to get out of the system. Not having the credentials or skill to discern risk in the field, they translates yes/no questions about suicide or psychosis into a referral to the country assessment center. They will help some people, but the cost per life saved is very high relative to how this money could be used otherwise. But hey, we are serious about mental healthcare reform!
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