The Phoenix City Council set an end-of-March deadline for crews that handle certain crisis calls without police officers, firefighters or paramedics to have availability around the clock.
Public Safety and Justice Subcommittee members are scheduled to get an update Wednesday on the Community Assistance Program.
The order to establish 24/7 dispatch coverage came down in September, months after civil rights investigators for the U.S. Justice Department said the city and its police discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities.
City officials say the number of police calls transferred to crisis intervention supervisors spiked last year to roughly 2,000. There’s a supervisor available to work dispatch about two-thirds of the time.
Behavioral health units and crisis response teams are currently on the road for all but a combined seven-and-a-half hours per week.
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