City Council - Public Safety & Criminal Justice and Public Health, Homelessness, & Recovery Joint Committee Hearing on Dockets #1346, 1661, & 1662

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For the record, my name is John Fitzgerald, Boston City Councilor for District 3, and I am the Chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Public Health, Homelessness, and Recovery. Today's hearing is hosted jointly by myself and the chair of the Committee on Public Safety and Criminal Justice, Council Henry Santana, to my left. Today is November 18th, 2025. The exact time is 2.10. This hearing is being recorded. It is also being livestreamed at boston.gov backslash city-council-tv and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, Fires Channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.ps at boston.gov or ccc.health at boston.gov. and will be made part of the record and available to all counselors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of the hearing.

Individuals will be called on in the order in which they signed up and will have two minutes to testify. If you're interested in testifying in person, please add your name to the sign up sheet near the entrance of the chamber. and if you're looking to testify virtually, please email our central staff liaison, Megan Cavanagh at Megan, M-E-G-H-A-N dot Cavanagh, K-A-V-A-N-A-G-H at boston.gov. for the link and your name will be added to the list. Today's hearing is on docket number 1346, message and order authorizing the City of Boston to accept and expend the amount of $262,809.86 in the form of a grant. for the FY26 DMH-CIT-TTAC grant awarded by the Mass Department of Mental Health to be administered by the Police Department.

The grant will fund the implementation of a four-hour Crisis Intervention Team training for officers under the umbrella of the BPD Street Outreach Unit. This matter was sponsored by Mayor Michelle Wu and was referred to the Committee on Public Health, Homelessness, and Recovery on July 9, 2025. Act number 1661, message in order authorizing the city of Boston to accept and expend the amount of $80,000 in the form of a grant for the DMH FY26 co-response grant awarded by the Mass Department of Mental Health To be administered by the Police Department, this grant will fund one full-time recovery coach through BEST. Docket number 1662, message in order authorizing the City of Boston to accept and expend the amount of $20,000 in the form of a grant for the FY26 DMH Training Grant awarded by the Mass Department of Mental Health to be administered by the Police Department. The grant will fund overtime costs to backfill the Crisis Intervention Team training and other mental health training for officers. These matters were sponsored by Mayor Michelle Wu,

and were referred to the Committee of Public Safety and Criminal Justice on July 17, 2025. Today I'm joined by my colleagues in order of revival, Chair Council Santana to my left, and Chair, I don't know if you have any opening remarks.

Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Fitzgerald. Appreciate you co-chairing this hearing with me and thank you to the administration panel. for coming to speak on these important grants. I look forward to the discussion on the grants awarded by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health to fund mental health co-response and crisis intervention initiatives within BPD Specifically, dockets number 1661 and 1662, which are in control of the Committee of Public Safety and Criminal Justice, would fund valuable mental health and crisis intervention team training and full-time recovery coach through BEST. These trainings are essential in keeping both our offices and our residents safe. I look forward to the productive discussion on these grants and hopefully being able to vote on them at the next council meeting. So I appreciate you sharing this today. Thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Coach Santana.

I'll just say for myself going forward on these grants here, they affect a lot of my constituency as I have Mass and Cass in District 3. and I know a lot of what the CIT team does and a lot of the outreach team does is really sort of try and find help and recovery for those down there as well as the impact of the public safety issues that come up with this. We're also joined by Councilor Gabriella Coletta Zapata. Councilor, if you have any opening remarks, now is your time.

No opening remarks. Thank you for being here. I look forward to the conversation. Thank you.

Love it. Appreciate the efficiency. With that, I would like to now introduce today's panelists. We have Deputy Director Savage and Lieutenant Messina with us. If you guys would please like to introduce yourself, and if you guys have any opening statements or presentations to make, now will be the time, and then we'll go into questions. Thank you.

All right. Good afternoon, sir. My name is Lieutenant Peter Messina. I am the commander I'm Andre. I'm the commander of the Street Outreach Unit. These grants have been absolutely critical for us as a unit in Boston Police Department. Us focusing on de-escalation, treating those with mental health issues are critical for the Boston Police Department. We have been able to train upwards to 270 officers to date and we have a lot of interested officers who are looking to attend this training. So these grants have been huge for us and a great success for Weber, the Department, and the Outreach Unit.

Excellent. Thank you.

Hi. Do you want to introduce?

Oh, sure. We've been joined by Councilor Weber. Do we continue? If you'd like to drop an opening line, you can. No, no. Please continue. Thank you, sir.

Hi. I'm Jenna Savage. I'm the deputy director of the Boston Police Department's Office of Research and Development. I do a lot of the mental health grants. You've seen me a lot here before for mental health. So yeah, these grants are extremely important. We get them every year, thankfully from DMH. We rely on them very heavily. especially the TTAC, the Training and Technical Assistance Center for the Crisis Intervention Team Training and I'm assuming you're going to want separate testimony to come on each one or do you want me to testify on each one now?

No, I think if you can go through them at your leisure and how you feel in order of importance or whatever it may be.

Yeah, I'll just do all three. All at once. Yeah, okay. So the docket number 1346, which is for the CIT TTAC grant, Again, all three of these grants come from the State Department of Mental Health. They all come out annually. The CIT TTAC grant we've had since I think the last four years maybe. So we now actually have 40 hours CIT training. It's crisis intervention team training. where officers go through a full week of training on de-escalation, recognizing mental health, recognizing substance use. There's special sessions on elderly, on veterans, on suicide by cop. you name it, verbal de-escalation, non-verbal de-escalation and our partners from throughout the community are brought in to co-teach so you know who you can go to. We have been sending officers to these trainings elsewhere And the weakness there was that then they were learning about the resources elsewhere. And we were really excited to start our own training that is very BPD specific. So it's not only, what are you encountering in Boston? What are your resources in Boston?

and not only is the training good for Boston police officers, but any officer, including also EMS comes to these trainings as well. But veterans, VGA officers, Mass State Police, hospital officers, University officers, anyone who's responding potentially to a mental health crisis in the city would benefit from going through these trainings. We don't charge anything. So we've had many external partners come through as well as the almost 300 officers of ours who have gone through it. The feedback has been incredible. We hire professional actors to come in and do scenario work, which everyone is very hesitant about at first. And then without fail, the officers say it's an incredible experience where they get to really test out what they've learned. So we are really, really proud of this training. And so this annual grant basically supports the full-time salary of a CIT training coordinator who is a civilian housed out of the street hours unit, Lieutenant Messina's unit. but also supports the place, the location for the training, supporting the trainers coming in, kind of all the supplies, equipment, everything to kind of make the training happen.

So that's that grant. The related to that is the training grant, which is docket number 1662, which just provides backfill for officers to attend these trainings and other mental health trainings. So the overtime that's in the CIT TTAC grant Thank you. Thank you. So that just makes it easier to have officers go to these trainings. And again, not just CIT, but they can go to other mental health trainings as well. So those two are very related. And then the third one, 1661. is a co-response grant. It's the grant that we used to use as actually the first funding we had to support our co-response clinicians before they got put on the operating budget. But we got creative with this grant. We no longer need it to fund are co-response clinicians, but we have used it to fund a peer specialist who previously was Kelly Young. And we had trouble filling that position after she left.

But the position's super important. So it's someone who has lived experience with mental health, with substance use, who can help someone kind of go through that process, help walk them through what to expect. Largely, now that we have so many hub tables running throughout the city, they also are heavily involved in our hub tables. They can help recommend people to the hub tables. So they really just are someone who can help along in the process, can go out with officers and be a resource for the person who's the subject of the encounter because they themselves have been there before and they can really provide some really enlightening assistance.

Excellent. Thank you. I assume that will conclude the presentation. Thank you so much for that. I also want to recognize we've been joined by Councilor Ed Flynn of South Boston. Before we go into questions, I'll just take the opportunity to sort of ask the first one where I think it might be helpful, just a table set. Could you please explain sort of the difference and overlap or coordination of CIT and BEST? because I think that will just help folks, anyone listening, to understand how that works.

Okay, so CIT, and feel free to jump in, CIT is the Crisis Intervention Team Training. falls under the training of that, the provision of that training falls under the Street Outreach Unit, the BPD. But almost every session of it, and again, it's 40 hours long, there's several different modules every day, many of them are co-taught with our co-response best clinicians, So we currently have maybe 13 clinicians out in the districts who co-respond with officers. They're a huge resource. We depend on them very heavily, and they do amazing work. By bringing them in to co-teach some of the sessions, officers are getting to know them, get to familiar with them. And they have specialties. They all have their master's in social work. So they co-teach a lot of the classes. They also have done teaching at the Academy for new recruits. So they're often helping to train our officers in addition to co-responding with them out in the districts.

In addition, they're also part of the training scenarios. So during CIT training, we have one day long session with, we bring in actors, and we have the officers going through scenarios, whether it be a jumper or a person in crisis. on how to deescalate that individual. So we have purposely put the best clinicians as assessors for this training to offer the officers feedback. So that's twofold. One thing is their expertise. They're offering us their expertise on scene. for those scenarios. But then on top of it, the officers are now getting to know these best clinicians as people getting to put that name on the face.

Gotcha. And you mentioned hub tables. Could you say a quick definition of what a hub table is?

Sure. We have hub tables now. So it's a model that I think originally basically from Canada is where we took it. And Chelsea has a great one. But it's a meeting that takes place weekly. We have multiple in the city. Again, we've got one in East Boston, Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and Dorchester. tables of multidisciplinary people who all might be interacting with individuals who are at risk of crisis in at least three areas. So the idea being that no one agency is going to necessarily be able to provide what this person needs because they're at risk of crisis. For example, maybe they've run away from home, but they also have domestic violence going on at home and they're also in a gang. So you kind of have three different factors that any one agency is probably going to have trouble addressing all of those needs.

but the hub table what's great about it is that it has a four filter process that allows you to kind of get around information sharing concerns and so what will happen is there's a basically a person who presents a case to the hub table can say I have a female she's in her 30s, and describe her in very general terms, but enough so that people at the table all kind of know who you're talking about. And once you've all decided that, yes, this person meets the criteria for a hub table, only those people who have worked with that person stay in the room. Anyone else leaves. So now you've gotten past the kind of information sharing barrier and you have all these people who in the moment discuss what is this person dealing with right now and how can we help them right now. And this is where that peer specialist can be really helpful because they're often going out with the hub people to go find this person, locate them, and help get them connected to services kind of in real time. So it's not case management. It's very much like, how are we averting a crisis right now?

Thank you. I think that's helpful understanding what these grants support. With that, I will turn to my colleagues in order of arrival for questions. We've also been joined by Councilor Pepen of Hyde Park and I will look to co-chair Council Santana. You have five minutes, but I remind all my colleagues you do not need to use all five minutes and don't feel like you need to answer until five minutes is up. Okay. Go ahead, Council.

Well, thank you. Again, I really appreciate you being here. Deputy Director, I think you mentioned it. How many officers, sir, are we able to cover with With this grant specifically, the one, three, four, six, you said 300?

So to date, we've had about 270 current officers trained. I think we have trained more officers than that, but I think some have retired. So in terms of the active duty list, I think currently, almost I think nearly 300 officers that are currently with the VPD have gone through the training either with us or through previously through Brookline or Somerville.

Is this required? Is this optional?

No, it's fully voluntary. That was kind of one of the hoops we had to jump through to get this all off the ground, is that we can't really require officers to do anything. And so not only is it voluntary, but which is a kind of a great self-selection process because if you're interested in this and you're kind of the person that you want like the people who end up coming to this are so the people that you I mean everyone needs the training and I do hope that someday we will get 100% training of everybody but we're kind of going in the order of those people who are Interested, which is great. We also do have a protocol where we try to coordinate so that if there is a mental health crisis call, they'll try Certain CIT-trained officers have voluntarily identified themselves in the system as being CIT-trained, which, again, we could not force them to do. But now there's people who have voluntarily just said, sure, put me in the CAD system as being CIT-trained, so if there's a call going out, 9-1-1 call operator can actually see if there are any CIT trained officers to dispatch to that call so and they're voluntarily doing that.

That's awesome and how do you you know you both mentioned how critical these grants are I mean I think All those things are extremely important. How do you track metrics here? Like if this training is working, it's impacting our officers?

It is very difficult to quantify a lot of the stuff we do, especially regarding mental health. I guess one measure of success would be just regular use of force incidents. We also do give, I mean we give a daily, there's a daily survey that the people going through the training take.

And there was a question on a scale from one to five, how helpful was it? What is the likelihood that you'll use what you learned today on the job? And the feedback is off the charts positive, which isn't

Exactly quantitative, but definitely the feedback is that people... That feedback is some of the best feedback I've ever seen for any training that we've gone through in my 20-plus year career. I don't think I've seen any negative feedback regarding this training to date.

All right. Well, that's pretty good. That's my last question here is just the docket 1662, the $20,000. That's just to, I think you explained it, backfill. the people who are coming. Is that $20,000 included in the like overtime number that we see at the end of the year or is that different?

I think they do include grant funded overtime in all of those calculations. I'm not completely certain but if I had to guess I would say it probably is.

Sounds good. Thank you again for being here. I think these grants are very important and obviously it's doing good work for our officers so I'm looking forward to being able to pass it on to our next council meeting. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councillor Santana. Councillor Gilliland-Zapata, the floor is yours.

Thank you so much. I certainly will not be taking it my full time. My council colleagues already asked a majority of my questions, but thank you again for your work. Thank you for being here and for outlining how these funds are going to be used. I was just curious to know how long we've been receiving these grants. Were these new grants that we got from Department of Health after we sought to enact alternative response legislation here in 2021, or have we been receiving these for a very long time?

We've been receiving co-response grants since 2010, which is when we first started our co-response program. So that's how we literally funded our first co-response clinician. We've been getting the CIT TTAC grant, and the only time it stopped is that we did, in 2020, we did fully move all of our co-response clinicians to the operating budget, but then we did get creative and just asked for them to fund something else instead. We will never not try and do more, and there's always more you can do. So we haven't gotten this every year, but I think it's mostly just been due to hiring. We had it last year. We had to give it back basically because we couldn't due to hiring difficulties, but I'm confident we'll be able to hire this year. and the TTAC, I think it came out, maybe I think we started in 2021.

I feel like it was 22, but I might be wrong.

Somewhere around there.

21, 22.

Which one was that, the CIT? That's the CIT. Okay. Excellent. And that was around 200 officers or so, did you just say?

To date, yes. About 270 officers to date currently who are with BPD.

Thank you for your creativity and still going after these funds. It's important. You did talk about a hub table weekly meeting in East Boston. Any other instance where these funds, besides the obvious, where we're training police officers in A7 and A1? I represent East Boston, Charlestown, the North End, and the Wharf District. Kelly Young you brought her up the she is the one-time full or one-time recovery recovery coach okay how does she interact with with my district or how do these funds impact the district one in particular besides the obvious

In her current role or do you mean when she was a recovery coach?

Whatever her role is now. Sorry, I must have that wrong. I took down the wrong notes. But whatever this one $80,000 grant is going to be.

So it has been vacant since she left that position to go head CRT. So we were close to hiring someone, and then I think that person ended up also going to CRT. So it's been hard. So we haven't had a replacement since she left. So I can't speak. to what she does now as far as how it impacts A7. But again, A7 has one of the best hub tables. Joanna Cataldo and the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center are incredible. They've been doing phenomenal work. They were one of the first two who really just kind of took off. There is no doubt that when we have a peer specialist or a forensic recovery coach, that person is going to sit probably on every table, including East Boston, and again, probably help with those cases and help refer cases. probably read incident reports to see if this person might be eligible. So I think they'll probably work very closely with the hub table. And I'm sure Kelly did when she was here. I think she could only be in so many places at once. I think Kelly tended to be focused a lot in Roxbury. Is that where she is? Yes. But we do hope to kind of have the peer specialists get kind of shared around.

Great. Thank you. And I'm really grateful for Joanna Cataldo and everybody that's in the EASTY Coalition.

They're awesome.

And just grateful for their work and grateful for you both. So thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilor Coletta Zapata. Councilor Weber, the floor is yours.

Okay. Thank you very much, Chair. And I didn't acknowledge your, I don't know what it is, yesterday, assembling a I don't know what it was, a pun based on our attendees. We had Mr. Bloom and Mr. Rose. Very good job. Thank you. I don't have, there's no way to combine your names to make something funny, so I'm not going to even try. So just in terms of the CIT training, it's a four-hour?

Forty.

40 hours, sorry. And then is there, once somebody has done that, is there anything else that they can do that?

There's going to be a recertification process that they're working on right now. I think people who've already gone through it, I think the idea is maybe after three years to maybe have like a one-day, a three-day refresher? Oh, three years. Three years. I think there's going to be a one-full-day refresher that we're working on putting together right now. just to make sure people kind of stay abreast of not only the skills they learned, but also probably new drugs came out and things just kind of staying up to date on the resources available.

Is that going to use these funds?

Oh, yes.

OK. So the recertification.

Yeah. Because we're a formal CIT TTAC, it means that DMH, like, we kind of have that stamp. If we called it something else, we wouldn't be able to call it TTAC. It's like a, or call it CIT, sorry. That's like a national model. So the... we had to meet certain criteria like a template of like okay the very basic standards to make this a CIT training but then we were able to tweak it to make it Boston specific so everything we do including a refresher will have that CIT stamp of approval on it and DMH will support us doing it.

Okay, and then maybe you said this and I just didn't pick it up. Do you have data on how routinely these skills are used by...

BPD it's so hard to do it's very difficult to quantify and honestly you just you just know it when you see it when you see the officers on the street who have this training versus the officers who don't have this training and I wish I can give you a better answer, but that's like, I've seen firsthand myself. My officers are all, they teach some of these classes, a lot of these classes actually, but when we go out in the street and we see district patrolmen coming to assist us on a call, we see that difference on de-escalation and how they speak with people.

I mean, is there not, these don't get coded or recorded as like a mental health call or?

Oh, it's a whole, phone-ly. We have a lot of trouble tracking mental health calls. There is a, There's an EDP nature code that is related for calls for service that are primarily mental health in nature, mental health related in nature. But we'll find, especially if you look and see what our co-response clinicians are going to, that's actually a small percentage. largely their investigate person or domestic violence or fight call. So many things can have a mental health component that are not necessarily coded as that. I would love for us to have a checkbox because we have one for domestic violence, we have one for There might be something else, too. Juvenile. There's checkboxes, key factors. Mental health, adding that would be hugely helpful to my job, just personally. I would love for us to do that. We've talked about doing it many times over the years. If you would like to try and push for that to happen, I would fully support that. But it's very hard to quantify as of right now.

Okay, thanks. And then just in terms of the You know, getting these kinds of grants, do we expect to have these in the future? Do we have to plan for them evaporating? That's a good question.

The federal grants that we've been getting have We've gotten several federal grants. I don't expect to see new RFPs coming out necessarily anytime soon, but those are always kind of more innovative. We've managed to not really have Thank you. Thank you. We have gotten these every year and I'm hopeful we'll continue to get them every year, especially because Boston is such a, we have such a huge impact in the state that I think we do get a pretty disproportionate share of the funds of whatever there is. So I'm hopeful they'll continue to support us.

Okay. Sorry. Just one last probably dumb question for me. The coordinator or the trainer, is that person employed by the BPD? Do we contract that out? Okay, this is just to hire, bring someone on.

First ever civilian employee in the street average unit, and she's wonderful.

Okay, great. Okay, thank you very much, and tip of the cap to you, Chair.

Back at you, sir. Thank you very much, Council Weber. Council Flynn, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the Panel for being here. And Lieutenant, it's good to see you. And General, thank you for the work you're doing as well. I think Jenna, you were talking as I was coming in, so I apologize for being a few minutes late, but can you talk to me about what you previously said about how this impacts or supports veterans I know you mentioned that in your opening comments.

Yeah, there are different modules, like special populations. There is definitely a veterans module. They are at high risk for suicide, for substance use. and we have a lot of them that not only do we employ by the BPD, but we encounter them on the street among the homeless population quite a bit. So given that, I don't know who we partner with to teach that module. Do you remember?

We teach it internally.

OK. We don't have anyone coming from Veterans Affairs or anything?

Last session I was at.

Oh, sorry. He's back from nine months deployment, so.

We teach internally. Okay. Just from veterans amongst our ranks.

Okay. Yep. Yeah, thank you, Jenner, and thank you, Peter. Do you know when the next training would be for... That training in terms of supporting veterans, do you have something scheduled?

Two weeks? So December 1st, it's a 40-hour training. So the entire week from December 1st through the 5th. And we encourage anyone who wants to go observe. It's a phenomenal training. So if anyone's interested, please reach out. You have our emails, but we would absolutely love to have you come watch. It's really something.

Yeah, I would like to see that. I interact a lot with homeless veterans that I see on the street and I do enjoy speaking with them and talking to them and trying to provide them some encouragement or or support. So is that is that training specifically to support veterans that you see on the street that that training is coming up? Okay, okay. It would What are you going to focus on?

It's been a while since I was at the last training because I was just coming back from a leave of absence. But normally it's just de-escalation and diverting them. There's so many resources available for veterans, returning veterans right now. and veterans of the global war on terror, that it's a lot of officers don't know these resources that exist. Even veterans, they don't know the resources that exist. So we package those up into one spot to push them out to the officers. so we can divert those veterans that we're interacting with on the street to the proper services.

And also I think just also how to speak with them in a way that de-escalates. One little thing stands out. I remember it was suggested like ask someone either what their nickname was when they served or something like that, but something that just makes them immediately kind of get more comfortable. So just kind of tricks of the trade for how to make someone at ease and make them more comfortable when you're speaking to them. So that kind of thing as well.

And it's a different language with a lot of these veterans that they're used to. So learning, having the officers on the street learn that language and be able to communicate with them deescalates the situation.

If you would like, I could ask, I could get a hold of the slides that are used for that. I mean, A, I could find out That would be both.

That would be great if you're able to do both. That would be perfect. I'm actually sharing a Hearing this Friday in the Veterans Committee, and maybe it's an opportunity for me to at least mention some of the great work your team is doing. and how we can support homeless veterans, how we can support veterans in need. So and I also, Field to Neglect. To mention, thank you, Lieutenant, for your service in the U.S. military as well. Thank you. So, Lieutenant, do you have an idea of where you mostly see homeless veterans or veterans in need?

Is it citywide or is it any particular neighborhood or is it calls for distress sometimes?

All of the above, but predominantly since I started doing this, a lot of it down here in A1. and in South Boston, so this area predominantly. But we do get calls obviously citywide for veterans in distress.

OK. And we do have a lot of homeless. We do have a lot of veterans that obviously live at Court Street. Yes. I was at the Patriot home in South Boston yesterday off of, actually on D Street in West Broadway. But what is the reason for, South Boston Lieutenant. Is it just because there's a high concentration of veterans in the neighborhood?

That would be my only guess. I don't have an exact answer for that. But I know that I guess the Military lineage runs deep in South Boston. So that would be my guess.

OK. Thank you. Mr. Chair, do I have time for one final question? Sure. Go ahead. OK. So this is my final question, and thank you, Mr. Chair, to Lieutenant Messina. Lieutenant Messina, do you see, and one of the issues I've focused on for eight years is trying to hire more police officers We see a lot of police officers consistently working 16 hours a day. But at some point, it has an impact on your marriage. It has an impact on your children, your spouse, your family life, your health. What are we doing in terms of services to support that police officer or that family as it relates to challenges they might be experiencing with mental health?

So the Boston Police Department does a fantastic job with officer support, one being the Peer Support Unit. They provide so many services to the officers and the officers' family. And honestly, like, I can't... Speak positive enough about the peer support unit as to what I've experienced with them personally and my office of experience with them. So that will be my number one answer to your question. And our command has been absolutely fantastic. to each and every one of us.

and officers are encouraged to reach out if they are in support. But do they also get the support in terms of if they need an opportunity to take a break and spend time with their families as the Is the command also okay with giving them an opportunity to be with their children, with their spouse? That's a big part of supporting our officers as well. Is that part of it?

Like I said, the command has been absolutely fantastic with us and Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Great. Thank you, Council Flynn. Council Pepén, you have the floor in five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the both of you for the work you do. I'm intended to thank you for your service. Thank you. Very glad to see the commitment from the Boston Police Department in regards to just anything related to mental health, mental health training for our residents. I think that that is such a huge benefit to have in a major city where it leads to de-escalation and to a better relationship with our community members and police officers in general. I'm very also glad to see that there's a relationship with the best team and with the BPD making sure that There's a clinician that goes with you out to these calls. And it leads me to my question. I don't know if you said this already, so I apologize. But how many calls do you get where you do bring out a best team member with you?

You know, I could pull that up. I actually just submitted FY25 data from our co-response questions to City Hall just kind of, I think, ahead of the budget hearings. Kind of like, what are we getting for our money kind of thing. just had like a year in from FY25, so I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but I would be happy to send you that report that kind of breaks down, because they capture some great metrics that the clinicians directly, you know, like, what do you think of the chances that someone might have been arrested if you hadn't been there? even just subjective things like that, but how many emergency department diversions, arrest diversions, referrals to services, how many times did you help deescalate, how many times did you write a section 12. They have all those numbers for a full year. But they also do have the number of times that they not only went out and co-responded, but they do a lot of follow ups, which is also super important. So we have data on all of that that I can get to you.

And that program is It's awesome. It has expanded so much since I... I think they started the program back in 2010, 2011? We started...

So Best has existed for a long, long time. So they have their own mobile crisis 24-7. We've had our... Ben Linsky was our first clinician starting in 2011.

And that program has grown, and honestly, the officers heavily rely on best clinicians citywide.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure those officers appreciate having that support. make sure that they're responding appropriately too. And which leads me to my next question is, does the Boston Police Department feel like You also have the right resources when you are making those calls. Let's say if it is a veteran, if it is someone that is seeking housing assistance so that you do have a connect with the Veterans Affairs Department or the Housing The Office of Housing Stability. Do those partnerships exist? Do you feel like you have that support?

They do, and honestly, that's what CIT is. It's providing officers the resources they need on the street to make those decisions and to divert these individuals to whether it be the street outreach unit internally or externally to the Department of Veterans Affairs or a number of resources, Pine Street, or we have a lot of resources in the city that can assist.

That's great. That's great. I don't have any further questions. I'm just Glad that we're having a discussion about these grants. I'm glad to see that we are making these investments into the department to make sure that we are responding appropriately out in the community. So thank you so much for being here and thank you for your work. Thank you.

Great. I don't know. I'll just leave it out to one more, but I think everyone has asked their questions here, so I do appreciate it. I do appreciate the panel for being here. Thank you for your service, both on the military and the police, and Deputy Director Savage, thank you for your service. I will say, as much as I know there's a spot given, I do want to give a shout out. There's a gap when Kelly Young left CIT, but we are very happy to have her with CRT and all the work that she's doing. And she has been doing a great job in making a difference, especially in District 3, District 7, Mass and Cass, as well as District 2 with Councilor Flynn. With that, I don't know if we have any virtually or in person. I don't think there is any public testimony. And so with that, I can assume that we will forego closing remarks from everyone. Is that okay? And with that, this hearing on dockets number 1346 and 1661 and 1662 is now adjourned. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.