Baltimore to use $1M in grant funding for 911 diversion program

Baltimore Police Department

By Luke Parker
Baltimore Sun

BALTIMORE — A $1 million federal grant will help expand Baltimore’s efforts to divert more kinds of nonviolent 911 calls away from police officers, Mayor Brandon Scott said Monday.

Speaking to reporters at a Penn North library, Scott, a Democrat, said that with the $1,031,000 award, the city’s 911 diversion program will start servicing [types], broadening past the behavioral health crises the program was established to address.

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The money, obtained by U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume through the U.S. House Appropriations Committee , “will allow us to provide better support and care for our residents, especially those who need it in some of the hardest moments of their lives,” Scott said.

Mfume, a Democrat representing Maryland’s 7th Congressional District, said at Monday’s news conference that he tries to understand what city leaders “are up against when there are not federal funds” for community projects helping “people everyday in real need.”

The congressman said he was “fascinated” that despite efforts to bulk up Baltimore’s police roster, “there are ways to find an opportunity to be able to take some of the burden off of police officers.”

The city began its diversion program in 2021 in response to its consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice. The program’s first instructions, which were expanded before Monday’s grant, were to redirect suicidal types of calls from emergency responders to mental health professionals.

For years, as access to social media has fueled national discussions over police-involved shootings, mental health advocates have urged all levels of government to better train officers about the warning signs of a behavioral crisis and the de-escalation tactics needed to protect residents’ and officers’ safety.

Advocates have also pushed for more financial investment and on-the-job reliance on behavioral health resources. In places like neighboring Anne Arundel County , which has been recognized internationally for its Crisis Intervention Team, this has included pairing social workers or mental health experts and clinicians with police officers — the latter of whom might be ill-prepared to handle an episode on their own.

Since 2021, nearly 1 in 4 people killed by police in Maryland were experiencing mental health crises, according to the Maryland Attorney General’s Independent Investigations Division, which investigates deaths after police encounters.

Behavioral Health System Baltimore did not immediately respond Monday afternoon to a request for comment.

Many police departments have acknowledged their limitations. Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley , for instance, has said that while behavioral health is a “medical issue that we [as police] have to address,” people without badges need to help them do so.

Whether that sentiment is implemented appears to be a separate issue.

An analysis of 911 data last summer by The Baltimore Sun found that while crisis calls to the city have surged in recent years, the number of those calls diverted to mental health services dropped more than 50% . That drop coincided with an earlier expansion of the diversion program to include juveniles and second-party callers.

Diversions in Baltimore rebounded in the wake of The Sun’s investigation, but city officials said earlier this year that long wait times and a continued reliance on police show the system remains a work in progress .

At Monday’s news conference, Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen , a Democrat, acknowledged that the government, in many ways, struggled “to respond to what we were seeing in our streets.”

However, he said legislative priorities and changes have made the city a national leader in writing trauma-informed care into law.

“We are on the right trajectory,” Cohen said.

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