AMHERST — In a rare audience before the Town Council on Monday, the co-chair of a committee working on ways to improve public safety for Amherst Black, Indigenous and people of color residents expressed frustration about the slow pace that many of their recommendations are being acted on.
“This sends a clear message to our town residents, especially the BIPOC residents, that they are not a priority and are emphatically relegated to the margins,” said Debora Ferreira told the councilors.
Ferreria and other members of the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee urged the council to renew endorsement of seven recommendations it first made in 2020. Among those are a Resident Oversight Board for police and a youth empowerment center.
The presentation came at the end of a long, and at times, tense meeting on Monday at which the council postponed a vote on whether to act on the request.
Before a vote could take place on a motion from District 3 Councilor Heather Hala Lord for the council to enthusiastically reiterate its support for the recommendations — and to ensure that emergency dispatching of unarmed responders gets underway by the end of 2025 — At-Large Councilor Andy Steinberg used a councilor prerogative (or procedural power) to postpone the discussion. This means that councilors are expected to resume the topic at a meeting being held in virtual format late Friday afternoon.
Steinberg said he wanted to make sure there were no financial implications in supporting the recommendations. “I just don’t believe we can have a good, thorough discussion this time of all the aspects of the motion, which I think is an important motion for us to consider,” he said.
As he made his motion near the end of the five-hour meeting, a member of the CSSJC Committee shouted “again,” recalling that a similar postponement maneuver had been used to close out a 2022 meeting.
District 2 Councilor Pat De Angelis, frustrated with the maneuver, said she would exercise that right on other decisions, and then did so on authorizing spending on the middle school roof.
Lord said that there was no cost to her motion about the CSSJC recommendations.
The Community Safety Working Group began making recommendations in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Of the recommendations, Ferreira said only the Community Responders for Equity, Safety and Service, and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion department have gotten underway. But even those have been poorly staffed and poorly funded, she said, “crippled by town government resistance for providing the necessary support to actualize their potential.”
She also contends that $500,000 earmarked for creating a youth empowerment center has vanished, with no accounting of where this money is, and that the center has been replaced by youth empowerment programming, and that establishing a multicultural center hasn’t even been mentioned.
At-Large Councilor Ellisha Walker thanked the committee for reminding councilors of the objectives and that this could lead to “recentering and regrounding.”
“These issues and concerns very much still exist in our community and very much deserve to be addressed,” Walker said.
Some of the discussion centered on why the emergency dispatching department is not yet directing calls so CRESS teams can respond, reducing the need for police.
“That is a problem in having CRESS actually be able to fulfill its mission and the vision of the CSWG,” co-chairwoman Allegra Clark said.
“This has been a frustrating one, quite honestly,” Town Manager Paul Bockelman said, observing that he believes that many calls could be directed to CRESS.
He said he has brought the police and CRESS departments together with human resources, meeting every two weeks until the dispatching can begin.
“My goal is to have it done by the end of the calendar year,” Bockelman said.
He wants to make sure if dispatching unarmed responders that it’s a safe environment, and to make sure everyone is comfortable with dispatch going to CRESS
Walker said CRESS is doing an amazing job even though limited resources, and can’t be fully utilized as a police alternative since it’s not around the clock. “Starting with dispatch will be critically important,” Walker said.
CRESS Director Camille Theriaque said if an incident is close and a team is out, they can be on standby and provide support if needed. They also regularly are at the Amherst Survival Center when lines are forming to make sure people are comfortable.
“We are self dispatching, but that is something that’s just come about this past summer,” Theriaque said.
Theriaque said diversion efforts are happening during the day. “A lot of the work that is being done outside the police,” Theriaque said.
District 4 Councilor Jennifer Taub describes it as “very sobering” for being so behind on implementing recommendations.
But Bockelman said there have been efforts made on four of the seven goals, and officials should take pride in having a Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Department.
“When we look at the seven goals, we’ve made good progress,” he said.
Bockelman said the town has put a lot of effort into initiatives and that should be recognized.
Theriaque said even with progress, things may be in jeopardy, as the DEI Department is being stretched thin and freezing two CRESS positions and losing another isn’t ideal.
“I think we have to be very, very careful about the progress we have made that it doesn’t backslide,” Theriaque said.
While CRESS has growing pains, Council President Lynn Griesemer said it’s more than police and is creating confidence in the community that people don’t have to turn to police or fire for help, such as those who need social services.
“To me, CRESS has filled in a lot more around those community needs and in the process they have established relationships that otherwise wouldn’t have been established,” Griesemer said.
