SAN JOSE — A push to create an additional community-based response team for mental-health emergencies in San Jose has gotten a co-sign from three city councilmembers ahead of the council’s major budget hearing Tuesday.
“TRUST at its current funding level cannot meet the current demand for its services, especially in San Jose,” reads a statement from SURJ. “Already, TRUST is the most frequently utilized of the available alternate crisis response options in the county.” But he added that a true expansion of the program must also include the range of scenarios it is authorized to address. Under current protocols, psychiatric emergencies involving violence or safety threats necessitate police intervention, and advocates contend that increasing and streamlining access to alternate-response programs help defuse situations before they reach that point.
The city report found that 58.5% of flagged mental-health calls did not result in a police report, another 7.5% were determined unfounded, and that 911 calls involving unhoused people resulted in citations or arrests 24% of the time. Supporters of expanding TRUST say the figures for these two categories, which often overlap in common factors and scenarios, all corroborate the need for expanding programs to divert responses away from police officers.