Denver STAR program to expand in hopes of answering 10,000 emergency calls a year

Since June 2020, the mental health clinicians and paramedics working for Denver’s Support Team Assisted Response program have covered hundreds of miles in their white vans responding to 911 calls instead of police officers.

They’ve responded to reports of people experiencing psychotic breaks and people screaming for no apparent reason. They’ve helped a woman experiencing homelessness who couldn’t find a place to change, so she undressed in an alley. They’ve helped suicidal people, schizophrenic people, people using drugs. They’ve handed out water and socks. They’ve helped connect people to shelter, food and resources.

The program, known as STAR, began 20 months ago with a single van and a two-person team. More than 2,700 calls later, STAR is getting ready to expand to six vans and more than a dozen workers — growth the program’s leaders hope will allow the teams to respond to more than 10,000 calls a year.

The Denver City Council last week voted unanimously to approve a $1.4 million contract with the Mental Health Center of Denver for the program’s continuation and expansion. The contract means the program that aims to send unarmed health experts instead of police officers to certain emergency calls will soon have broader reach and more operational hours.

“These programs can and do work, you just have to work through the logistics and the buy-in,” said Chris Richardson, associate director of criminal justice services at the Mental Health Center of Denver.

The city has rapidly expanded the program’s budget from the $208,141 in grant money spent to launch a six-month pilot program in June 2020 to the $3.9 million allotted in the 2022 budget.

“STAR is an example of a program that has worked for those it has had contact with,” Councilwoman Robin Kniech said Monday before the council approved the contract. “It is minimizing unnecessary arrests and unnecessary costs — whether that be jail costs or emergency room costs. It has done so for less than 1% of the calls coming into the city that it might be eligible for. It matters that we’re scaling it up.”

The program garnered national attention when it launched amid nationwide protests of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police, though the program’s creation had been years in the making. National news outlets like NBC News, USA Today and NPR reported on STAR. Politicians, community leaders and police alike have praised the program.

The widespread attention was a little unexpected, but made sense in the wake of Floyd’s murder as communities demanded changes to policing, said Vinnie Cervantes, director of Denver Alliance for Street Health Response. Floyd’s murder prompted widespread conversations and critique of the nation’s criminal legal system, which police and protesters alike have said is too often used to handle non-criminal problems like mental health and addiction.

“STAR was kind of an answer for a lot of things people were asking for,” Cervantes said.

About a year after STAR launched, Aurora replicated the model — one of many cities in Colorado and beyond to find inspiration in Denver’s new program. The program’s staff has been bombarded with requests for more information by officials and organizations across the country hoping to launch similar programs in their hometowns.

“I feel like the last year-and-a-half has been a blur of all the cities and counties that have reached out to us,” Richardson said.

More expansion may be needed

Since its launch, STAR’s paramedics and clinicians have responded to more than 2,700 calls, according to Carleigh Sailon, STAR operation manager. STAR providers haven’t called Denver police for backup to any of their calls, she said.

But those 2,700 calls are only a fraction of what STAR could’ve covered in that time period if the program was larger. Sailon said there were approximately 11,000 calls to Denver emergency services that could’ve been handled by STAR in that time.

The program’s managers hope to scale the program up to six vans by April as part of the expansion allowed under the new contract. As of Thursday, three vans were providing services citywide from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. Although the program was constrained to downtown Denver during its pilot, it has since expanded to cover the whole city.

Staff will keep gathering data once all six vans hit the streets and then evaluate whether more are needed.

“I think next year the conversation will be whether we need more,” Richardson said.

Demographic data from 759 people served between June 2020 and January 2022 show that about two-thirds of the people helped were experiencing homelessness. Nearly three-quarters of those people had diagnoses of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, anxiety or major depression.

Two-thirds of those contacted were men and most people were between the ages of 31 and 60. About 42% of the people served were white, 22% were Black, 7% were Latino and 11% identified as multiracial.

Most of STAR’s calls for service come through Denver 911, where dispatchers are trained to send the STAR van for appropriate needs. But about a third of calls are from Denver police officers who responded to a call and determined it would be better handled by STAR.

“Officers consistently ask when there are going to be more STAR vans,” Sailon said.

Although the program began under the umbrella of the Denver Department of Public Safety, in January it was moved under the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment.

“It’s the future of law enforcement, taking a public health view on public safety,” Denver police Chief Paul Pazen said of the program in a 2020 interview. “We want to meet people where they are and address those needs and address those needs outside of the criminal justice system.”

Other cities considering

Cervantes, like Richardson and Sailon, also has received a flood of inquiries about the program from other organizations and city governments. Cervantes said he has spoken with government representatives or community organizations from Lakewood, Jefferson County, Wheat Ridge, Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins, among other communities, who are interested in learning more about STAR.

“The first thing we say (to government leaders) is, ‘Who are you speaking with in your community?’” he said.

Aurora launched its program, the Aurora Mobile Response Team, on Sept. 8 after hearing demands from protesters and seeing STAR’s success in Denver, program manager Courtney Tassin said.

The response team includes one clinician from the Aurora Mental Health Center and one paramedic from Falck Ambulance and operates from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday in the city’s District 1, which covers the northwest corner of the city.

In the first four months, the team responded to 190 calls serving a broad variety of needs and people.

“We have people who are experiencing homelessness and people who are business executives we’ve been serving,” Tassin said. “Mental health doesn’t discriminate.”

Aurora police on 50 occasions have called the team to incidents that they believed would be better served by AMRT, Tassin said.

“The main feedback we get is, ‘When do we get more of you?’” she said.

Aurora city management already approved the continuation of the program through 2022, Tassin said. The team is talking with city leaders about possibly expanding, which Tassin thinks is necessary.

“People are in crisis in south Aurora, too,” she said.

Centering community leadership

STAR’s launch and expansion have not been completely without tension.

Some of the community organizations that brought the idea to the city and helped develop it have had to fight for continued inclusion in the program’s future, said Cervantes, the director of Denver Alliance for Street Health Response. Several community organizations in April protested what they saw as the city’s attempts to co-opt their work.