The Redding Police Department’s Crisis Intervention Response Team includes two officers and a specialist trained in responding nonviolently to mental health emergencies. They also do outreach at homeless encampments, providing resources on housing and treatment, and can follow up with those admitted to a hospital.
Redding Police Captain Chris Smyrnos said his department has really only had one-and-a-half teams because they never were able to hire a second mental health clinician. Now they’re cutting that half-a-team because they need patrol officers.
“Everything we have in our special services unit, they're very nice to have. They're great for our community. They're very effective in what they do. But again, our core function is to respond to emergency calls. We need to make sure we have enough staff to do that,” said Smyrnos.
He said the crisis teams responded to nearly 1,500 calls last year. He believes in the model.
“Rather than taking the same person to the hospital 10 or 15 times… then they just get released back on the streets, these teams can help get them into more long-term, stable situations,” said Smyrnos.
Unfortunately, Smyrnos explained, the department has limited resources.
“An unlimited budget, we'd have… all these cool units and programs and all these officers assigned to do some pretty cool things. But we don't. That's not the reality that we live in. And so we have to manage the budget that we have,” he said.
The department has not hired for several positions until a pending budget is finalized, according to Smyrnos.
Two officers from the Crisis Intervention Response Team will be moved to patrol. The department will still have one team available, which gets 15% of its funding from the city’s general fund and the rest through grants.
Smyrnos said the department received around 105,000 total emergency calls in 2024.
