DENVER – Members of Denver’s Support Team Assisted Response Community Advisory Committee are sharing concerns that they’re being pushed out of the program they helped launch.
STAR, which sends mental health counselors to non-life threatening 9-1-1 calls in place of police, has been used a model by other cities across the country and is managed by the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment (DDPHE).
But recently, a DDPHE staff member abruptly ended a July meeting with the advisory committee after committee members criticized the department.
“In shutting down that meeting, the DDPHE personnel proved that they don't care about our voices, they don't care about the public's voice in this program. And that is the real consequence for what happened in July,” Vinnie Cervantes, STAR community advisory committee member and organizing director of the Denver Alliance for Street Health Response (DASHR). “The STAR Community Advisory Committee is the only mechanism of community and public input into the program. And that mechanism has been shut down.”
Cervantes said the end of the July meeting was the culmination of disagreements over how DDPHE runs STAR.
“We have heard that from 911, that STAR is filling in for co-responders in cases where a co-responder isn't available. So the STAR team is showing up alongside police,” Cervantes said.
STAR community advisory committee member and director of community relations for the Denver Justice Project, Alexander Landau, said the STAR team responding with police officers undermines the program.
“This is not the way this is intended to be. To gain the necessary and appropriate trust with this community, to actually be able to serve them in the best way possible,” Landau said. “We're not saying that the city has no role in this at all, but what we're discussing is an overreach of policing, an overreach of DDPHE.”
Landau and Cervantes said another issue involves DDPHE hiring a program specialist to oversee the committee, without initial input from committee members.
“So we were allowed a handful of committee members into the process. But that was only after pushed back by us as committee members,” Cervantes said. “There are already five layers of administrative leadership in DDPHE for the program. So there are a total of eight administrative positions in this program that have some level of decision making — an oversight of the program — which actually rivals the amount of responders that we have.”
Cervantes said the advisory committee is mostly made up of community leaders of color, and in some instances they’ve observed racist remarks and behavior.
Committee members recently met with DDPHE executive director Bob McDonald to express their concerns.
“You know, there have been disagreements, and perhaps some things we could have done better. But the fact that my staff members sometimes have missteps doesn't mean that they're racist, that means that they're human,” McDonald said. “It was actually my idea to get somebody on in this department, who can spend and devote their time entirely to this committee, to hear their ideas, to advance them, to hear their concerns. Now, I again, I think we could have gone about it a little differently and getting their feedback before we move forward on hiring that person, but the intention was good.”
McDonald said there are also no plans to make STAR a co-responder program involving the Denver Police Department.
“Well, there's absolutely no movement in that direction” McDonald said. “I need to be clear on this: It is an advisory committee, we're we really appreciate that… There will be some limitations to what we can do for a wide range of reasons. So just because sometimes, you know, the answer is no, we won't be able to move in that direction, it doesn't mean we didn't listen.”
McDonald said he doesn’t want to exclude the committee from decision making and hopes to continue working with the committee to improve STAR.
“I want to work with the advisory committee to set up a system where, after our engagement, if somebody decides, you know what, maybe I do need some help, I want to reach out, how do they find us, right? How do we get feedback from those that we're helping about the engagements that we are providing value to them. So those are the things that I want to get feedback on from our citizens. They're a big piece of that, those are the things that I want to focus on moving forward,” McDonald said.
Landau and Cervantes said more than 34 community groups have signed a statement in support of the work the advisory committee does.
Landau and Cervantes said there are systemic issues within STAR and they hope DDPHE is truly willing to address those issues for the betterment of STAR and the Denver community.