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Description

Colorado State Representative Leslie Herod saw a gap in mental health services in Denver and decided to do something about it. With the help of a van, a mental health professional, and an EMT, the Support Team Assistance Response (STAR) program was born – and six months in, it has proved effective at fielding mental health calls received by the Denver Police Department. Rep. Herod joins us to talk about STAR’s success, her personal stake in it, and other state-level measures being taken to modernize the current system of policing.

 

Keep up with Julián on twitter @JulianCastro and Instagram @JulianCastroTX. 

 

Resources from the episode:

• Caring for Denver, the foundation helping to fund STAR
• STAR 6-month evaluation
• Servicios de la Raza, community services for Denverites
• SB 217 explained, courtesy of Colorado Public Radio
• Eugene, Oregon’s CAHOOTS, the program that started it all

 

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 anytime, or chat with them online. The Crisis Text Line also provides support over text at 741741. For people who identify as LGBTQ, the Trevor Project’s Lifeline can be reached at 1-866-488-7386.

 

Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows.

 

To follow along with a transcript and/or take notes for friends and family, go to https://lemonadamedia.com/show/our-america shortly after the air date.

 

Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Rep. Leslie Herod & Julian Castro

Julian Castro  00:01

In past episodes of OUR AMERICA, we’ve talked about issues like gun violence, racism, and poverty. These are all factors that can impact a person’s mental health and well-being. In fact, health outcomes heavily depend on a person’s job, economic standing, geography, social supports, and access to health care. Nearly 1 in 5 adults in the US struggle with some sort of mental health challenge. And yet, the reality is that too often, mental health is misunderstood, mismanaged, and met with violence from law enforcement.

Reporter on TV

Several Rochester police officers arrived at the scene, prudes brother called 911, worried that his brother was having a mental breakdown. The video shows prude followed police orders.

Police Officer 

Put your hands on your back, behind your back, don’t move.

Julian Castro 

Three minutes later, Prude stops moving.

Julian Castro 

In the last year alone, the research group Mapping Police Violence counted 94 lives lost after police responded to mental health emergencies. It’s more clear than ever, that this idea of criminalizing mental health needs to be turned on its head. But what change should actually look like has been hotly debated. There are over 18,000 police departments in America and very little federal policy dictating how they police as a whole, which means that across the country, a little bit of state level innovation is proving necessary and effective.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

I mean, it’s quite amazing to see, it is a safer and better way to respond to these calls. You know, we’ve saved lives. Point blank, we’ve saved lives.

Julian Castro

Colorado State Representative Leslie Herod is one of the policymakers reimagining how Denver prioritizes mental health. This week, she tells me about the Support Team Assistance Response Program, four STAR that she’s helped to create, and her personal stake in improving her community’s current system of policing.

Julian Castro  02:08

This is OUR AMERICA. I’m your host, Julian Castro.

Julian Castro 

Before the STAR program started up in Colorado, Representative Herod looked to other programs in the country to see what was working and what wasn’t. That search landed her in Eugene, Oregon, where a similar program called Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets, or CAHOOTS, has been in place since 1989. Could you walk me through your experience in Eugene, Oregon, that galvanized inspired Denver’s STAR program?

Rep. Leslie Herod 

Well, I gotta be honest with you, I was approached by a commander of our Denver police department and was told that I would love this program called CAHOOTS and I had no idea what he was talking about. He was like they call it CAHOOTS because this mental health team is working in cahoots with law enforcement. I was like, that doesn’t sound great. Let me find out more. And so I actually journeyed out to Eugene, Oregon, to see the CAHOOTS model myself. And I was blown away. This community based alternative response had been working on the ground in Eugene for over 20 years, and had made real change in the community. But I didn’t really understand the impact of it.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

I like the idea, but I didn’t understand the impact of it until I went on a ride along. So let me take you with me. I got in a van. There was a mental health professional and an EMT riding along in a white van. And all of a sudden we get a call. And it is a 911 call that was dispatched into our van saying that someone was having a mental health crisis. We drive into a neighborhood, it’s a suburban neighborhood. You know, kids are playing outside a normal day, a white neighborhood, and a mom was out there with her mom. And so three generations outside, and we were told that the father was inside of the house, threatening to kill himself. He was locked in the bathroom, he had box cutters, and it was clear that the family was in duress.

Rep. Leslie Herod  04:26

But from watching the kid, I knew that this was something that has happened regularly. And so we went upstairs to where the man was locked in the bathroom. He was erratic. He was unclothed. He said that he was just ready to give up. He was done. We talked to the man for a while to get him to try to come out and he just wasn’t ready to come out. I’m saying we were probably there for an hour. So then we went back and we talked to the wife and the mom. We checked the scene to make sure that she didn’t need help herself and to get her the resources that they needed. And then we left. Well, about 15 minutes later, we got called back. Police had arrived on scene.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

And so we went up and as soon as police saw us arrive on scene, they retreated back, we were in kind of a hallway of such where there was stairs, and I was standing up at the top of the stairs. And I noticed that there was like a makeshift office, there was a computer there. And there were papers all over the desk falling onto the floor, unpaid medical bills, to the tunes of hundreds of dollars, every single one that was in the dollars, every single bill that I saw, and he said that he wanted to give up, but also he couldn’t burden his family anymore. He couldn’t pay the debt. And he was just dragging everyone down. I understood that despair. I mean, he was in despair.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

But eventually, eventually, he came out. And as law enforcement worked with the CAHOOTS team, to make sure that there was no threat to others, they were able to remove the box cutters from the situation. And then the most amazing thing happened. They left, CAHOOTS stayed on scene and got that man made sure that man took his medication, took his vitals and then kneel down while he sat on the couch, and had eye-to-eye conversation about everything that he was going through, and what resources were available to get him through this tough situation. Eventually, his wife came in, brought him a sandwich, he ate his dinner. And they talked about getting him care the next day. And CAHOOTS went and got him to that appointment the next day even.

Rep. Leslie Herod  06:41

And in our debrief, we talked about what would have happened and we talked to law enforcement about what would have happened. And they had said the day had been transformed by the presence of CAHOOTS. And if CAHOOTS wasn’t there, if this team hadn’t been in Eugene for 20 years doing this work, that man would have been placed on either a 72-hour hold, he what may have been arrested if he didn’t give up that weapon. And of course, he was not at the beginning. And there could have been forced that was authorized to be used against him, the scene would not have been good. And so what I’m saying is I was transformed by that experience, because it was so powerful.

Julian Castro 

So, you went out to Eugene, Oregon, and you saw how powerful how impactful that CAHOOTS initiative is there. Talk to me about how the STAR initiative actually came into being in Denver.

Rep. Leslie Herod

I went into office knowing that our criminal justice system is completely broken, and that it was our responsibility to fix it. What I didn’t really realize was how much money we were pouring into a system that just doesn’t work. But I learned that on the Finance Committee, we weren’t funding education, we weren’t funding mental health. We weren’t funding in so many areas that we really needed to, because we were paying for it in incarceration in the foster care system, and all these other systems where if we just got people access to the services that they needed, we wouldn’t be in the same situation.

Rep. Leslie Herod  08:09

And I knew that from my sister, my sister has been incarcerated for about 30 years, on and off, all starting from untreated substance use and mental health trauma, she was seen as someone who could just be thrown away and thrown into the system and never addressed again. And that’s quite frankly, what happened to her. And so I pressed at the state level for more funding, for more resources, and we couldn’t get it done. So I said, why don’t we start locally, I ran a ballot measure called Caring For Denver. See, in Colorado, a citizen with the right number of signatures can put an initiative on the ballot.

Rep. Leslie Herod

So I said Denverite’s, will you give 25 cents on $100 sales tax increase to provide about $35 million dollars’ worth of mental health and substance use treatment right here in Denver for all of us, but including those who may go into the criminal justice system. And I was shocked that 70% of Denverite’s said absolutely. We passed that measure Caring For Denver is now the largest mental health foundation in the state and likely in the country. And so we were able to not only see the program in Eugene, but I was able to come back and put resources behind getting it started.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

But Mr. Secretary, here’s the interesting thing is that it only cost $200,000 to get started. $200,000 for the pilot project of STAR to get working in the highest need area in Denver. We got going with a van, a mental health professional and an EMT. We patched into 911 and we worked with local community providers like Servicios De La Raza to get the pilot off the ground and it’s working.

Julian Castro 

It is working. In fact, just recently the results of a Six months study of the STAR program were released. And what they found was that in 748 interactions that STAR mental health counselors or technicians had with people that they got a call about, none of those lead to arrest. All of them were resolved non-violently. What is a typical scenario when it comes to the interaction that a STAR mental health clinician will have with a Denverite?

Rep. Leslie Herod  10:35

Yeah. So the pilot area where we launched the program is really in central Denver. I mean, it is where we have some of the highest needs specifically around homelessness, mental health crisis, addiction and drug use. And so what a typical situation is, is someone calls 911, which I think is important, because while I may not call 911, when I see someone in crisis, I might know another number to call, most folks will call 911. They will. And instead of about law enforcement officer being the first arrive on scene, it’s a mental health professional, and at that EMT, and the scene usually looks like this.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

It is someone who possibly is overdosing, that needs access to Narcan. It’s someone who has a decent exposure, and that person is in crisis, and needs help. So then the STAR team, what they will do is, first they will approach that person did I mention they’re in plainclothes? They are in plain clothes. They approach someone and say, “Hey, what do you need?”

Julian Castro 

So they don’t look like police officers?

Rep. Leslie Herod

Not at all. They don’t look like police officers at all. And they don’t report to police officers, right? And so they go and they say, “What do you mean?” They de-escalate the situation using the tools that they have been trained to use, right? And they can get that person on maybe their own medication, they can get them to a place where they feel safe and comfortable. Maybe that’s a mental health drop-in clinic, or maybe it’s the Harm Reduction Action Center, right? Where they can talk about safe use, where they can be around folks who they trapped, maybe it’s just back home. But STAR can provide all of those resources to someone.

Rep. Leslie Herod  12:21

And what I think is really important is they’re not time limited on these calls. There’s not a rush to turn people out, which usually ends up escalating situation. And making officers think that they have a couple of options which is jail, right? Typically. Or to walk away. And usually, you know, unfortunately, too often jail is used, or force is used. And so they’re able to stay on scene for an hour, two hours, and make sure that person gets secured where they’re going, and provide other resources to the person and they even follow up. I mean, it’s quite amazing to see it is a safer and better way to respond to these calls. You know, we’ve saved life. Point blank, we’ve saved lives.

Julian Castro

What has been the reaction of the Denver police department to the STAR program?

Rep. Leslie Herod 

Yeah, well, what I find really interesting is just that point like to be clear, these models are moving across the country. And they are a part of the platform and the movement for Black lives, you know? And I believe wholeheartedly if that narrative, and that conversation had not been highlighted not only over the summer, but really worked on by activists for years that we would not be here today in Denver. And these models would not be accepted as options across the country. But this is truly in partnership with someone like me, who believes that we need to reimagine policing. And Chief Pazen, who was a commander at the time, who’s now a police chief. He’s a Latino, he’s from the west side of Denver.

Rep. Leslie Herod

He believes that what is happening in the police department is not working, and it’s harmful for our communities. He’s been working alongside of me on these efforts to change policing, since I met him, to be honest with you. And so it’s really interesting when you have these movements really led by Black and Brown people demanding change in our communities. But that’s how we got here, make no mistake. It’s because we were seeing the disproportionate treatment in our communities, because of my firsthand experience with my sister, Paul Pazen’s firsthand experience in his community that we said, now that we’re in these roles, we have got to make change, and we are.

Julian Castro  14:48

You were a huge part of actually making things happen. In Colorado, y’all put together legislation that you spearheaded with major reforms to increase accountability to improve the ability of communities to essentially evaluate their police departments. This legislation took on things like qualified immunity. Talk to me about what y’all did in Colorado last summer, as perhaps the first or one of the first states to actually substantively do anything after the murder of George Floyd.

Rep. Leslie Herod

Let me start by saying, this past summer, our community and communities across this country really had to reckon with our violence against black and brown communities at the hands of law enforcement. And that while I think we have moved forward from the days of the civil rights movement, the images of what was happening on the streets in Denver and streets across the country, were not very different than the images we saw at that […], right? That the very desire for people to stand up and say no more killing, Black and Brown, low income, no more killing us that we are not going to accept it any longer was met with such force and such resistance. And in some communities, it was actually deadly.

Rep. Leslie Herod  16:11

So when the George Floyd murder happened, I remember hearing that there was going to be a protest and rally out in front of the Capitol, my office, I went down to see what was going on and to participate. And all of a sudden, someone shot, eight shots into the crowd, an agitator who did not want the movement for Black lives to move forward. And in that moment, I was rushed inside of the Capitol, there was a bullet that went into the building. We were on lockdown. My colleagues, they called me and said, “What can we do to support what can we do to help?” And I said, “I don’t want your niceties. I don’t want folks to make statements. I want a bill; I want to change the law. And I want to hold law enforcement accountable when they harm members of our community.”

Rep. Leslie Herod 

At the same time we were grappling with and I was working on a bill in response to the murder of Elijah McClain, but I couldn’t get support to move that effort forward. And so we worked. And I said, I want change. The Black Caucus stood up and said we want change. And my colleagues they agreed. They heard the calls from people that cries from their own communities saying we support the movement for Black lives and we want change to hundreds and 1000s of Coloradans stood up and reached out to the look their legislature and said, We want to see real change you are in session right now you have an obligation to do something about this.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

So we introduced Senate Bill 217, The Law Enforcement Accountability and Integrity Act. In that bill, we did in qualified immunity for law enforcement officers across the state of Colorado, we required body cameras. And we said that if you tamper with your body camera, or turn it off, that you have a presumption of guilt of wrongdoing. We also said that if you do harm to your community, if you have excessive use of force, that you lose your certification to be a police officer, and you can never be a peace officer in the state of Colorado ever again. And you’ll go into a database so that other states can see who you are, and say no, you’re not coming into our communities either.

Rep. Leslie Herod  18:28

We also did this thing that I didn’t realize the breadth of at the time, but we created an opportunity for the Attorney General to step in and do a pattern and practice investigation and with the federal government won’t. And we have actually seen that provision working. The Aurora Police Department responsible for the murder of Elijah McClain, but also responsible for a lot of harm in our community out in Aurora, which is outside of Denver, was immediately as the bill went into effect, put under a pattern in practice lawsuit by the Attorney General, and said that if you do not change your policies, and stop harming people of color, your policies that are bias, you will be sued by the state of Colorado.

Rep. Leslie Herod

And then finally we changed the use of force standard. And so that you can no longer use force for a fleeing felon, which has been used in Colorado far too often. And that law enforcement again would be held criminally and civilly responsible if they don’t intervene when they see harm doing being done by a member of law enforcement. So they have to intervene when in a George Floyd incident. They have to step in, and they have to say get your knee off of his neck and back off. If they don’t, they can be held criminally and civilly liable as well.

Julian Castro 

This has been a passion of yours. And it’s been personal too. Could you tell me a little bit more about your sister’s experience and how that’s driven you to legislate on these issues?

Rep. Leslie Herod  20:03

Absolutely. So my sister’s older than me, I’m not supposed to say much older anymore. But she’s older than me. She was, I’ve never lived with her. She grew up in Oakland, California. And when my mom and her father got divorced, she was 16 chose to stay in Oakland. And my mom joined the military. And she left California met, my dad had me and my brother. And you know, we kind of went on as a family. And eventually, when I started to come into consciousness, when I was a young girl, I realized that my sister was in trouble. I mean, oftentimes, she would be on the run from the law, or we would know that she was using drugs. And honestly, we didn’t have the tools to help her. We didn’t know what was going on.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

And the bias against mental health against substance use at the time was so strong, especially over like military life, that we didn’t offer the right support to her as a family, you know? And we didn’t, we just didn’t know what to do. And so she became incarcerated, got out, went back in multiple times, all this stuff, and said, you know, I just can’t make this work. They won’t hire me, I want to take care of my kids, I can’t. The system is set up for me to fail. And as I started to talk to her in my now adult life, I say, well, well, why would happen, like, why did you turn to drugs? And she said, well, Les, I was, I was raped. You know, I was raped when I was about 16. She didn’t tell anyone, you know, she didn’t tell my mom, we did not know. And so what we thought was acting out or my mom at the time thought was acting out.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

It was honestly a response to sexual trauma. And if someone would have just asked her, why she would have gotten access to better care, if someone had said that they cared and wanted to know what was going on, or stopped or at any point in the process and said, here’s some substance use treatment, here’s some trauma informed care. You know, I truly believe if she would have gotten that, that she would not be in and out of the system right now. My nieces and nephews would be better off as well. But us as a family would have known how to respond better to. And so I commend all of the folks who are really working to de- stigmatize mental health and substance use, and saying that we need to get people the help that they need, because I know it would have made a difference for my family. And I know it will make a difference for families moving forward.

Julian Castro  22:32

Last summer, as protests were happening across the country, one of the taglines that was used was “Defund the Police.”  In November, that became a hot button issue in different parts of the country. And the right wing is tried to use that to slash at Liberals, Progressives, Democrats. What do you make of the slogan “Defund the Police.” But more importantly, how do we actually translate the necessity to make sure that no matter who you are, you are treated with respect, you are treated equally. How do we translate that into policy?

Rep. Leslie Herod 

That mean that is where we have to start is by treating everyone with respect. And by holding folks accountable who do not, you know, I think the conversation around defund the police has moved this nation forward and created these principles that I think we can all agree with, right? That our resources are unbalanced, and they’re not working, that our approach to community safety is not working, and that it doesn’t actually adequately address and acknowledge how oppression and how our response to that oppression is all linked. And it’s not an easy knot to untie. And so what do I think about the movement for black lives and the conversations that have boiled to the surface last year?

Rep. Leslie Herod  24:04

I think that they are so very needed, and we need to have more of them. And we need to look at what people are asking for, look at what the community is demanding and figure out where we have that common ground and make change. Now, one thing I didn’t mention is that my father who raised me is law enforcement. 30-year correctional officer at Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, okay? Worked his way up from groundskeeper to being the head of Internal Investigations. And so I believe, wholeheartedly that there are law enforcement officers and correctional officers who are getting into that work, right? Who are getting into that line of work to make our communities better.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

But our systems are set up to just incarcerate and to throw people away and to make sure that folks who need to be held accountable aren’t so I worked with my father on 217, I worked with him and asked him why he never had to pull his weapon on anyone in Super maximum prison, you know, and how we could utilize the tools that he trained his folks to do, and put that into the policies and the laws of the state of Colorado. And that’s where a lot of my work on 217 came from. But also, he was like, listen, there are people who don’t need to be in prison in the first place.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

And that’s why we have to look at the entire system, you know what I’m saying? And that looks at and acknowledges the fact that the war on drugs was put in place to harm our communities, and to tear up our families. We need to get rid of it, which we did here in Colorado, we defelonize possession of drugs. And that’s when people get out, they should have a chance to succeed. We ban the box in Colorado, but we’re also creating workforce programs, not $1 a day programs in prisons.

Rep. Leslie Herod

But ones where people can actually go into the community and work a living wage, and be able to be secure when they’re released. And so we have a lot to do to change the entire system. But it starts where you started, which is recognizing that people should be treated with dignity and respect, and that we all deserve the same treatment, the same care as those who walk around with privilege that we have never been able to afford as people of color in this country.

Julian Castro  26:30

What you’re describing really is a holistic approach to reforming our criminal justice system that starts with the cop on the beat, or instead of a cop on the beat a mental health professional, that could be more helpful in getting people the assistance they need to the way that we prosecute simple offenses right now, low level offenses. You’re there in Colorado. There are state legislators in the middle of legislative sessions right now, in all 50 states. Why is this such a pressing issue that you believe, legislator to legislator, that they should address?

Rep. Leslie Herod 

Well, there’s a lot of reason first, for me, if the humane reason, right? Like it is really centered on the fact that everyone is human, and deserves access to care. For too long, I think we’ve seen people get diverted from the criminal justice system, and go and be placed in a mental health facility or treatment facility or resort or retreat, and then able to go back into society and live their lives, you know, with little consequences compared to..

Julian Castro  

Totally different standard for most people.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

Compared to us, right? Like it’s just wrong. And so we if we acknowledge that we know we need to change the system, it’s also about the money. You know, if this is what motivates you, when you’re conservative, and you want to make sure that we are spending our dollars well, we are not right now, by incarcerating people by paying for their incarceration by having recidivism rates in Colorado of 50%. You know, we can we must do better. And it’s a public safety issue. Because if we are just letting putting people in prison, and then not giving them the tools they need to succeed, when they get out, they get out and guess what? They reoffend.

Rep. Leslie Herod  28:23

What is it that keeping our communities any safer? Absolutely not. But I think also, in the middle of this pandemic, we have seen that our reliance on prisons and jails is the over reliance. It’s actually not what we need to keep our community safe. And as we’re talking about recovering from the pandemic, and providing the resources that we need, the money is there. It’s just sitting in our prisons; we can change that.

Julian Castro

And have you seen some success stories there in Denver? People who either had a mental health issue that they were able to get addressed, maybe that they hadn’t had before or able to become more stable and lead the kind of life they want, or folks who had a substance use issue and are able to get the help that they need?

Rep. Leslie Herod

Absolutely, you know, the shining STAR stories are happening over and over again now. And it is because of that work that has gone on for so long to change the conversation. But I want to talk about my friend, Tomas Hernandez. Tomas was incarcerated. He was a felon. He was you know, in the life as we say, and probably, you know, thrown away again, as someone who was just a troublemaker, gangbanger, whatever you want to call it, and was a burden on society and deserve to be thrown away and put in prison. Well, he got out and he said that he was ready to change his life.

Rep. Leslie Herod

Probably not the first time probably not the second time, but he was ready, ready to change his life. And so he went and got sober and now run sober living facilities, targeting men of color, to deal with toxic masculinity, to deal with their substance misuse and their trauma. And he created a group living home. And now he’s creating another one.

Rep. Leslie Herod  30:17

And he is fighting in the community for change when it comes to substance misuse treatment for men of color. And he worked with me to advocate, to advocate for real replacement of the dollars from prisons into mental health and substance use. And we defelonized simple possession of drugs, so that people like him and my sister, when they go into prison for a possession, don’t actually have to go to prison at all. They don’t get felonies at all, and they have a better shot at success.

Julian Castro 

What else do you think needs to happen? To make sure that what happened to George Floyd, what has happened to so many others, especially Black men and women, does not happen in the future? What else do we need to do?

Rep. Leslie Herod

Yeah, I think we need to listen to the needs of the community, we need to actually respond in a way that gets people help. But we also need to hold law enforcement accountable, we need to have oversight, statewide oversight, we need to make sure that we have sweeping change within the police department and police practices, we need to change the entire criminal justice system. I mean, like secretary, I’m gonna be honest with you, there’s a lot of work that we need to do, 217 was a huge step in the right direction. But it will not fix every problem in society right now, we have to keep at it. We can’t let law enforcement be held accountable. But we also can’t continue to fund these prison budgets to the tunes of millions of dollars without actually providing services that people need.

Rep. Leslie Herod

And we can’t keep on underfunding and education, and health care and economic development and allow this discrimination. And these disparities to persist. And so it’s going to take all of us legislators, activists, families, to start having real conversations about what they expect from their government, from their communities, from their friends, families, and neighbors, and ask everyone, all of us to do so much better. It’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of action, to make the changes that we need to undo the generations of violence and harm that has been done to our communities. But we have to get started, we have to start somewhere. And we have to be bold in our approach.

Julian Castro  32:35

What’s your advice to communities across the country that look at the success of this STAR program, and they might want to do it in their community.

Rep. Leslie Herod

I say get it going. But don’t forget that this is not padding, police budgets, this is really about making sure the community is engaged. And we have a community response to mental health and substance misuse. But it does have to be integrated, we do need to make sure that it’s tied into 911, that it is a truly community response and that people have somewhere to go for treatment too you know? That is so important. And so what I would say is, is that you can actually start with the resources that you have, and get this going, you know, you can get a van, you can repurpose a police van and change the colors, you know what I mean?

Rep. Leslie Herod

And you can repurpose a mental health professional that’s already doing this work, and EMT and get them on the scene, you just have to believe that it will work. And it does, you know, and acknowledge the fact that law enforcement does not have the tools to respond to these calls in a way that’s actually healthy for our communities and good for our systems. So I say just work together to get it done.

Rep. Leslie Herod

And try to listen to each other, we’ve got to have a very clear understanding and data behind what the calls are, what the calls for are for that are going into 911. What are police responding to that they shouldn’t be? They don’t need to and where do we need to put these resources. And then of course, make sure that you’re providing an equity lens over everything, that you’re actually looking at how you can best serve communities that are disproportionately impacted by the prison system, right? By the police system, and who are under resourced. That’s essential.

Julian Castro  34:25

What do you hope is the future of the STAR program?

Rep. Leslie Herod 

I’m proud to say that city council and the mayor are putting together a budget of now $3 million to completely fund the STAR program and have it existed in every single precinct across Denver. And so my hope is that it expands there. But my hope goes beyond that. It’s that we have star in all of our communities, that we have this community response where we’re meeting people where they are, where we’re providing the right response to the right incident at the right time, you know, everywhere across Colorado across this country, so that our over reliance on policing and jails is quite frankly gone.

Julian Castro

Representative Herod, thank you so much for joining me, thank you even more for the fantastic work that you’re doing and the difference that it’s making in the lives of so many people, particularly from vulnerable communities. Please keep it up.

Rep. Leslie Herod 

Thank you so much, and thanks for all you’re doing is great talking with you today.

Julian Castro 

Yes, we’re still far from where we need to be to ensure that mental health crises are not treated like crimes by local law enforcement. But cities like Los Angeles, San Antonio and New York, are also borrowing from Eugene’s CAHOOTS model to launch alternative emergency responder programs. The calls for funds to be redirected away from police are only increasing and training for new officers is adapting to what we’re learning about crisis intervention. And speaking of crisis intervention, if you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 anytime, or chat with them online.

Julian Castro  36:19

The Crisis Text Line also provides support over text at 741-741. For people who identify as LGBTQ, The Trevor Projects Lifeline can be reached at 1-866-488-7386. Next time, we’ll talk about the politics of power grids with energy analyst Julie McNamara of the Union of Concerned Scientists and hear from a woman whose family was forced to evacuated after the widespread power outages in Texas.

Julie McNamara 

One thing that just amazes me is we were all had we were all getting those alerts on our cell phones, on our weather apps for two weeks, right? We all saw it. We all saw this big winter storm was coming. And so we should not have been surprised. This shouldn’t have taken us by surprise. How is it that now we’re hearing from folks that you know, we were knocked within an inch of the grid going out for months? How is that possible?

CREDITS

OUR AMERICA is a Lemonada Original. This episode was produced by Matthew Simonson. Jackie Danziger is our supervising producer. Our associate producer is Giulia  Hjort. Kegan Zema is our technical director. Music is by Hannis Brown. Executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer and Julian Castro. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. Follow us at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms, or find me on Twitter at @JulianCastro or in Instagram at @JulianCastroTX.