The Evanston City Council voted Monday evening to approve an initial plan for community responders to take on certain 911 calls instead of police during peak call hours in the afternoon and evening.
Under the community responder program, unarmed civilian staff in the city’s Parks and Recreation Department will respond to 911 calls in “low-priority” categories instead of police. The category includes nuisance complaints, well-being checks and city ordinance violations. These categories were identified by the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a police-led criminal justice reform group the city contracted with in November 2022 to study EPD’s 911 data and develop a community responder framework for Evanston.
The first phase of the program, set to launch by June according to a staff memo, will result in the hiring of four community responders to work in two-person teams from 1 to 10 p.m. each day, plus another two responders to focus on outreach. This is a reduction from LEAP’s recommended program design outlined in its report to the city, which called for hiring six pairs of responders to provide 24/7 coverage. Council Member Devon Reid (8th Ward) said he has “reservations about” not following LEAP’s recommendation.
“I do think without that we are potentially not setting the program up to be as successful as it could be,” Reid said. “And potentially that could harm the results that we’re looking for without fully funding [the program].”
The city’s 2024 budget provides $400,000 for the first phase of the program, with more funds needed for further expansion. Council Member Juan Geracaris (9th Ward) said expanding to 24/7 coverage will likely cost $1 million to $3 million in the 2025 budget, and said he’s “committed [to] finding the money to do this right going forward.”
‘You need both programs‘
LEAP’s report recommended housing the community responders program within the Parks and Recreation Department, noting that the Youth and Young Adult Division’s outreach team already “receives referrals from the police department” for at-risk youth. Evanston Police Cmdr. Scott Sophier attended the meeting to “affirm [EPD’s] support of this program,” and Parks and Recreation Director Audrey Thompson said the separation is important to make the program a true alternative to a police response.
“Law enforcement has their way, and an alternative community response has its way,” Thompson said. “You need both programs … for our youth outreach team to say, ‘Hey, that’s a law enforcement response, but that’s not an appropriate response for this.’”
Council Member Bobby Burns (5th Ward) called it a “wonderful thing” that EPD is fully on board with the program, noting that police in other cities have opposed proposals for alternate response programs. Burns chairs the working group in the Reimagining Public Safety Committee that worked with LEAP on the study and program design.
“I’m incredibly pleased and happy, not only that our police department here supports it, which I knew coming into the meeting, but that they were willing to come here and affirm it, and I think it says a lot about what’s possible here,” Burns said.
Implementing ordinance to come
Council members ultimately voted 8-0 to adopt the plan and give the green light to hire and train the responders in skills like radio communications, de-escalation and mental health first aid, as well as equipment procurement.
During this ramp-up period city staff will more precisely define the program’s parameters and will return to City Council with an implementing ordinance codifying responders’ abilities and the system’s implementation ahead of its intended launch in June, according to interim Corporation Counsel Alex Ruggie.
The program is the first major product of the Reimagining Public Safety Committee, which Mayor Daniel Biss created in May 2021 in his first act after taking office. He thanked Thompson and Reimagining Public Safety Administrator Rachel Williams for their work and praised the program for avoiding the “pitfall[s]” of unreliable execution or pitting the program against the police department rather than the two working collaboratively.
“This is a big moment. It’s the fulfillment or something that a lot of us up here have talked about for a long time,” Biss said.
In the Firefighters Park neighborhood a 311 call in response to loud student parties would result in police ticketing, setting court dates for offenders. Does this team have any authority to quell offenders of the City’s noise/nuisance ordinance?