Phoenix Community Assistance Coalition Wants To Redefine Policing

PHOENIX, AZ — Local residents came together during the protests last summer in Phoenix that took place in response to the police killing of George Floyd, as well as similar protests around the country and globe.

Samuel Merten, Jacob Raiford and Amy Meglio were moved by the protests to create a proposal for a neighborhood crisis assistance program to prevent such killings from happening in the Valley.

The trio proposed a Phoenix-based Neighborhood-Organized Crisis Assistance Program, or NOCAP, to create a first responder department for noncriminal and nonviolent calls.

The program is modeled after the Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets program — or CAHOOTS — in Eugene, Oregon. NOCAP sent a letter to Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and city councilmembers asking for a similar program.

NOCAP's vision is in line with CAHOOTS' mission, which has been in operation since 1989 to respond to Eugene's nonviolent and mental-health-related 911 calls, Merten said.

"The creation of the program came at a time where police violence was at the forefront in Phoenix and across the nation," Merten told Patch. "So we were looking for police alternatives. And CAHOOTS is really the most successful one. So we reached out to them. We had an interview with them, and we discussed specific things that we needed to know to be successful."

The recommendations included advice on how to reach out to various members of the community and ways to achieve NOCAP's goals, Merten said.

"Really, the goal for NOCAP is making sure that a program that started in Phoenix is focused on involving the community from the point of inception," Merten said. "And that's what we learned that was most important is that programs like this have failed in other cities because there wasn't really a trust in the community."

It's that belief in trust-building that led NOCAP to hold Zoom calls with community members to workshop and fine tune the group's letter to Gallego and the Phoenix City Council at large.

In its letter, NOCAP laid out its reasoning for a nonpolice entity to establish a new mental health crisis department.

"We are aware of [City Manager Ed Zuercher's] intent to introduce a similar program and understand that the Phoenix Police Department has presented crisis assistance models in the past," the letter said. "However, we believe that the responsibility for developing this program should not be given to the Phoenix Police Department or come from top officials with no community input."

NOCAP's letter included 18 items that it saw as essential to the establishment of a proper crisis assistance service.

On that list: Have a department that's separate from other first response departments, and make the new department the only one to respond to nonviolent and noncriminal calls.

Gallego's office declined to respond to NOCAP's letter, saying that the city's latest budget already included many of the things NOCAP sought.

The 2021 fiscal year budget included the addition of a new victim services caseworker to serve as a point person for services for relatives as a result of a police shooting or in-custody death, Jeanine L'Ecuyer, the mayor's director of communications, told Patch.

The budget also added paramedic trainers, radio technicians and 911 dispatchers to deal with mental health calls, as well as 75 civilian staff members in the police department to improve accountability, transparency and relationships within the community, L'Ecuyer said.

But the city's budget items do not go far enough in addressing the root concerns mentioned in the program's letter, NOCAP said in an email to Patch.

"This is not the first time that a representative from the mayor's office has informed us or journalists that items from our demands are included in their proposal. We have not seen anything and when we have asked the city manager for clarification or to guarantee these items in an ordinance, he has said that the program is not established enough to make those commitments. There is no concrete evidence to support their claim, and the city manager has said legislation has not been written yet. The section that the mayor's office is referring to does not offer any clarification about their iteration of a CAP. That section does not guarantee any of the NOCAP Coalitions 18 demands are met."

The various items are of grave importance to NOCAP members such as Raiford, who has seen police violence tear apart Phoenix's minority-majority neighborhoods.

"One of the reasons that it's important that we have a program such as this is when analyzing the depth and history behind the death of people in the Black and brown community, the majority of these calls stem from cases where there should not be presence of police culture," Raiford told Patch.

"So since [NOCAP] specializes in behavioral health, crisis assistance calls pertaining to the shelter community, it shows that there's been mismanagement from offices that do not have the capability of being trained in these areas," he added.

The state had 74 police shootings in 2020, with 26 by Phoenix police, according to data collected by The Arizona Republic. Those numbers are up from 2019, when there were 56 police shootings statewide and 15 by Phoenix police.

Black men such as Muhammad Muhaymin Jr. and Dion Johnson were among those killed by Phoenix police, cases that point to the need for structural change to policing in Phoenix, Raiford said.

Muhaymin was shot and killed by police in 2017 after he tried to take his dog into a public restroom in west Phoenix. Responding officers discovered that he had a warrant for his arrest and attempted to detain him, the Republic reported. Four officers held Muhaymin down, and some of them put their knees on the man's neck and head, the newspaper reported. Muhaymin, 43, died soon thereafter. He was unarmed at the time.

Johnson, 28, died in a 2020 police shooting on May 25, the same day as George Floyd, in an incident that sparked summer protests in Phoenix.

Johnson parked in a gore point near Loop 101 and Tatum Boulevard in Phoenix. A Phoenix police officer killed Johnson, saying he lunged at his weapon, police said. Several witnesses corroborated his version of events, but protesters argued that there was no police body camera or car camera footage to back up the police account.

Both incidents speak to a need for a new department to oversee nonviolent crimes in Phoenix to protect those suffering mental health problems or who are part of the city's unsheltered community, Raiford said.

"Time and time again, we see that officers are not trained or do not have the capability of meeting these areas, even outside of those fields — like noise complaints, check welfare dispatches, etc.," Raiford said. "These are things that are categorically defined by the police. These are some of the reasons why we felt it was important to create something like this, with a uniquely Phoenix approach."

NOCAP spells out the chain of command it wants to see within the new department. Crisis program responders should be the first people on scene, the group said. Department members should also be the ones to assess a situation and should have the power to decide which reinforcements to request if a situation escalates.

NOCAP's vision is for a future where Phoenix police don't have any involvement in nonviolent cases, Meglio said. "I'm just saying that [police departments] don't need to be involved in this at all," Meglio said. "That's the reason why we're creating this program. People speak about how they'll be trained and reach out to the community. And these things historically do not work."

Phoenix Police Department declined to comment on the Muhaymin and Johnson cases as both are in litigation, Sgt. Mercedes Fortune of the department of public information told Patch.

"The Phoenix Police Department is an organization which takes great pride in finding innovative opportunities to improve on our policies, training, and outreach. We will continue to work with policy makers in finding ways to better serve our community," Fortune said in an email.

Fortune highlighted a number of changes that the department has undertaken in recent years, including reorganization to improve response times, increasing de-escalation training and increasing the number of body cameras for officers, to name a few, in response to NOCAP's proposals.

The project's organizers said that its proposals have received overwhelmingly positive response from community members. "There hasn't really been any pushback," Merten said. "It's been pretty much accepted throughout Phoenix. Because everyone can see aspects of it that are good. So it's been really successful from that standpoint as well. We've had a lot of collaboration with our letter, and it's really grown because I think it's needed in Phoenix."