Into Reimagining Mental Health & Policing

09/16/20 • 30 min

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People with mental illnesses are 16-times more likely to be killed by police compared to the general population. As deaths like those of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York gain national attention, cities are looking for alternatives to using police officers to respond to mental health emergencies. And many cities are turning to a model called CAHOOTS run out of White Bird Clinic in Eugene, Oregon. CAHOOTS stands for “Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets.” The community-based program trains, equips, and deploys mental health providers as first-responders. The name is a nod to the fact that the workers are in “cahoots” with the police, sometimes responding to 911 calls with officers, but often going out on their own, too.

The program launched 31 years ago, and they’re increasingly serving as a national model for a better approach to public safety. But they’re also looking critically at their work, and asking how, in the predominately white city of Eugene, CAHOOTS can do a better job reaching communities of color.

Trymaine Lee talks to Ebony Morgan, a crisis intervention worker and communications director for CAHOOTS. Ebony walks us through how the program operates, ways they’re trying to improve, and why this work is so personal for her.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading & Listening:

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading & Listening:

Previous Episode

Into New Rules for School

When the coronavirus pushed school online, discipline went with it. Educators have been handing out Zoom suspensions and other remote consequences to keep the virtual class a safe and respectful learning environment. And for those kids who are back in the actual classroom, there are new rules about masks, even about coughing and sneezing.

Some experts worry these types of disciplines will have a disproportionate impact on students of color. Before the pandemic, Black students were three times more likely to be suspended or expelled than white students. Overall, Black, Hispanic, and Native children are punished more harshly than white children for similar school infractions.

Host Trymaine Lee talks about these concerns with Adaku Onyeka-Crawford, the Director of Educational Equity at the National Women’s Law Center, where she studies discipline in schools and works with educators to come up with better solutions.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Readings

Next Episode

Into Reclaiming Fire to Save the Forest

It’s hard to comprehend the scale of the wildfires burning across the west. Millions of acres have burned, thousands of homes and structures have been destroyed. Dozens of people are dead and more are missing. Hazardous air quality and apocalyptic skies have forced millions to stay inside.

Climate change is a major reason why these fires continue to get bigger, more frequent, and more destructive. But years of fire suppression means the forests are full of overgrown brush, which acts as fuel for these massive wildfires.

Native tribes like the Yuroks in far northern California used to regularly burn the land to clear the brush, until the government banned the practice for decades. But indigenous people are reclaiming their traditions of burning the land, and helping the environment in the process.

On the latest episode of Into America, host Trymaine Lee talks with Margo Robbins, a Yurok tribal member and president of the Cultural Fire Management Council, about her work in resurrecting the practice of burning to help the land.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further reading and watching: