The Denver City Council Safety and Housing Committee discussed expanding the city’s STAR pilot program Wednesday, reevaluating how officials respond to low-risk situations and mental health emergencies.

The STAR (Support Team Assisted Response) program sends a team of paramedics and mental health clinicians to respond to nonviolent situations and 911 calls instead of police officers.

“You will not find a more comprehensive continuum of care approach anywhere in the country,” said Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen during the committee meeting.

The STAR program was approved last fall with a $3-million budget and began operating on June 1, 2020.

Since June, STAR teams have responded to 748 calls, none of which required police intervention. STAR teams are sent for 911 calls with no weapons and low threats of violence, including public intoxication, suicide incidents, welfare checks, trespassing and indecent exposure.

For similar situations that involve weapons or potential for violence, Denver also uses its Co-Responders Program which sends a mental health clinician paired with a police officer to respond together.

“What STAR has really done is put more tools in our tool belt and allow us to better serve that 911 mission of sending the right response at the right time to the right person,” said Denver 911 Director Andrew Dameron. “This is a much-needed resource.”

911 operators are responsible for screening calls and deciding whether situations should be responded to by the police, a STAR team or a Co-Responders team.

According to Dameron, approximately 2.8% of Denver 911 calls are STAR-eligible, making up over 10,000 calls annually.

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Currently, STAR responds to an average of 9.43 calls per day. Of those calls, 68% involve people experiencing homelessness, 28% are welfare checks, 26% involve suicide and 17% are disturbances.

“We are so supportive,” Pazen said. “This helps the person in need, this helps the community and it just makes sense from all perspectives.”

Officials are now hoping to expand the program throughout the city. As of now, STAR operates primarily in downtown Denver and the Broadway/Lincoln corridor. The current program also only runs Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Under the proposed expansion, the STAR program would begin regularly operating in sections of southwest and northeast Denver and be open daily for 16 hours.

The $1.4-million expansion would also increase the number of STAR vans from one to four.

“To me, that suggests that our officers would be available to respond to the calls that are stacked up,” said Councilman Kevin Flynn. “That might mean a better response by police officers to calls where they’re actually needed.”

Flynn was in support of the expansion proposal, saying one of the most common complaints he hears from constituents is slow or delayed response from police to calls like shots fired.

While committee members were generally in favor of the STAR program, disagreements arose regarding the particulars of the expansion.

Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore expressed concern about where the STAR program is expanding to and if it is really reaching the neighborhoods and communities most in-need.

“I’m asking you to reconsider your rationale and become more focused on the varied areas of the city, primarily communities of color that need these supports,” Gilmore said.

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Officials said they determined the new southwest and northeast regions for the STAR program based on the frequency of 911 calls made that would be eligible for STAR; however, Gilmore said communities in need aren’t always making frequent 911 calls.

While there aren’t actually hard boundaries for where the STAR vans are allowed to respond, they would be focused in the downtown, southwest and northeast areas of Denver, which Gilmore said raises another issue.

“I don’t see how you’re going to serve folks in a timely manner,” Gilmore said. “I’m concerned that if they do call in, the response time is going to be too long and a police car is going to be sent out there.”

Though there is no data regarding STAR’s response times, their average on-scene time to resolve incidents is 26.37 minutes, compared to the 34.46-minute average of traditional emergency response services.

In addition to expanding the current program, officials also want to add community and neighborhood support services to the downtown STAR team by the end of March.

Nachshon Zohari, with the Denver Office of Behavioral Health Strategies, said this would help connect people with underlying conditions to local resources to address long-term issues, in addition to the short-term issues.

However, some council members expressed doubt regarding the availability of community partners.

“I have reservations about the bandwidth and ability of a small neighborhood organization to take that on,” said Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer, “but I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next year.”

Zohari said they are also working to form a community advisory committee for the STAR program to “help us make sure that we stay faithful to the initial values and components of this program.”

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Since the program began, STAR has put in 13,000 hours of active public safety response time in the area of Park Avenue West and Broadway alone, Zohari said.

Of STAR responses, 41.8% came from 911 calls, 34.8% came from dispatched police officers requesting STAR and 23.4% came from STAR responding to incidents discovered in the field while driving in the van.

Under the expansion, the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment would take control of the STAR program from the police department; however, as the proposal is now, the corresponding police budget would not be transferred to DDPHE, something Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca raised issues with. 

“Flat rates of calls for service, increased patrol budget, no data for response time and moving successfully proven pilots to DDPHE without shifting dollars with them,” CdeBaca said. “This feels like a set up for failure when we’re talking about something that’s been wildly successful.”

Pazen countered, pointing out that Denver has fewer officers today than it had in 2008 despite a population increase of 200,000 people, and attributed the increase in police funding largely to the increased cost of living in Denver.

“We want better outcomes for our community,” Pazen said. “This isn’t about expanding a budget, contracting a budget. It is, ‘how can we get people in need the best possible response?’”

“This is a big step in the right direction.”

If approved, the expansion is planned to begin in the late summer to early fall of 2021. The expansion will need to be approved by the Safety and Housing Committee and then passed to the Denver City Council for a full council vote.