People's Alliance Urges HEART Expansion and 911 System Merger

The Durham County Sheriff's Office should team with the City of Durham and Durham Public Schools to expand the city's Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team (HEART) and also should merge county and city 911 emergency call response.

That's the recommendation pushed by the People's Alliance in a Jan. 2 blog post, coming days ahead of the Board of County Commissioners considering Sheriff Clarence Birkhead's request to approve a $16-million firing range upgrade and training facility on Electra Road.

Although PA voiced support for training, the organization indicated that armed response is just one aspect of community safety:

"Many of Durham's emergency calls do not require an armed response at all, but would be better served by unarmed mental health responders trained in de-escalation and care navigation."

The HEART program, launched in 2022, includes four crisis response units:

• Crisis call diversion, with mental health clinicians embedded at the city's 911 call center.
• Community response teams, which provide unarmed 3-person teams as first responders to non-violent and quality of life calls for service.
• Care navigation, which provides post-meeting connections for community-based care.
• Co-response, pairing clinicians with Durham police officers to respond to calls that might have greater potential safety risk.

Last year, according to HEART's data dashboard, the program handled 11,612 responses, including 2,146 dealing with trespass or unwanted visitation, 1,443 mental health crisis incidents, and 1,373 non-urgent welfare checks.

The advocacy group is frustrated that the HEART program that it praised under Durham's city leadership hasn't expanded to the county or to the public schools, and noted that one reason for this delay is the segregation of 911 call services between city and county.

"This segregation disadvantages county residents who are denied access to HEART response teams," the PA blog entry states.

People's Alliance wants the sheriff to enter a memorandum of understanding with the city to expand HEART services and to merge city and county emergency call response within 90 days.

"Merging and consolidating emergency response systems will improve services, increase efficiency, and save money overall," the statement reads. "Acting quickly will mitigate the risk of cost overruns and allow county commissioners to consider the training facility request in a context of collaboration that will improve public safety outcomes in Durham."

The work session on Monday, Jan. 6, starts at 9 a.m. in the County Commission chambers downtown.