Caption John Cregan, SRPD, Introduces the New inRESPONSE Program
Our speaker for Thursday, March 24, 2022, was John Cregan, Captain, Santa Rosa Police Department. Captain Cregan has a master’s degree in Law Enforcement and Public Safety Leadership and over 22 years of experience in law enforcement. He is a POST (Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training) Command College graduate and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Captain Cregan will be the SRPD interim Police Chief effective on May 2, 2022.
Captain Cregan has spearheaded the planning and implementation of inRESPONSE, SRPD’s new program designed to reimagine SRPD’s response to mental illness, substance abuse, and homelessness calls. SRPD started considering alternatives to its standard response policies shortly after the George Floyd murder and the resultant arrests of protesters in Santa Rosa and throughout the country. The goal was to develop a system that would send trained non-armed personnel to respond to service calls, most frequently involving mental health, homelessness, and substance abuse problems, that do not require an armed police officer or the fire department. The City looked at other programs throughout the country and identified Eugene, Oregon’s highly successful CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistants helping out on the Streets) program. Captain Cregan and his team worked with CAHOOTS program representatives (among others) to develop the inRESPONSE “CAHOOTS plus” model, which improves on CAHOOTS by requiring licensed mental health clinicians, paramedics (more highly trained than EMT’s), a homeless outreach specialist, and “wrap around” support services.
The inRESPONSE team typically gets involved when SRPD’s dispatch team identifies appropriate 911 and other calls and refers them to inRESPONSE. This process effectively diverts responses from SRPD and the Fire Department to a trained team of mental health practitioners. It also results in an increase in services to those who need them, a decrease in local hospital ER admissions, a decrease in jail bookings for mentally ill persons, and an improvement in the number of emergency shelter placements for those in need of mental health support or care for substance abuse. Captain Cregan also noted that Phase 2 of the program involves crisis stabilization, including the use of “system navigators” who provide long-term wrap-around support to people both before and after mental health crises by, among other things, performing wellness checks; taking people to medical appointments, drug stores, and Social Security; giving advice regarding health insurance and doctors; assisting with homelessness issues (including help from Catholic Charities); and providing Spanish-speaking assistance to members of that community.
InRESPONSE was up and running on January 11, 2022. So far, the program is exceeding expectations. The program started with one team but anticipates the addition of an additional team on May 7, which will give inRESPONSE coverage for 15 hours per day, 7-days per week. The goal is 24/7 support.
Captain Cregan recognized the many people and groups who have advocated for and worked to establish the program, including CAHOOTS personnel, the Santa Rosa City Counsel, the mayor, police chief, Sonoma County Behavioral Health, the Fire Chief, Catholic Charities, Buckelew Programs, Humanidad Therapy and Education Services, Congressman Mike Thompson, and members of the team at SRPD. He also noted the strong support given by grants from various public entities, including the City and County, funds from the massive 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), and a major contribution from Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital (and hopefully upcoming donations from Kaiser and Sutter!), among others.
What an amazing, forward looking program for our city! Thank you, Captain, for speaking to us about the program and for all of your hard work designing and implementing it. With luck and hard work this will be the model throughout California and for other states whose citizens and leaders see the value of real solutions to these common community problems! Keep up the good work!
