AMHERST — Over the last nine months of 2024, Amherst’s unarmed community responders handled 696 calls for service, either from people making direct appeals for help by walking into or calling the office, or having calls relayed from the town’s emergency dispatch center.

But while the workload has continued to increase for the Community Responders for Equity, Safety and Service, created in 2022 and now averaging more than 2.5 calls per day, the bulk of the work being done by the teams are to assists neighbors and for outreach, with 164 of each type of call from April through December 2024.

Members of the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee, receiving the year-end report from CRESS Director Camille Theriaque at a meeting Feb. 12, appeared lukewarm toward the data.

“While CRESS is doing all these wonderful things, it amounts to social services,” said committee member Everald Henry, rather than being the alternative to police it was envisioned and as the mandate it was given.

“When is CRESS going to be a in position where we can say to the community: police doesn’t respond to everything?” Henry said.

Theriaque said the committee should be optimistic and the growing number of calls is a good thing.

“There’s a lack of understanding of what it is that we do and can do versus what is the perception, that we can just go to all of these types of calls,” Theriaque said.

“I feel that in order for the Amherst community to know who we are, we need to be out in the community doing the work,” Theriaque said.

Theriaque said there needs to be frank conversations about CRESS, which when fully staffed has eight responders forming four multiracial teams.

“I think that’s happening now, I think we’re going to more of the calls people would have called APD for,” Theriaque said.

As an example, she pointed to a November 2024 incident where CRESS was asked by a son-in-law to look for his mother-in-law. Both responders and a Clinical & Support Options (CSO) responder found the woman, scared and huddled in the corner of her home, learning she had been scared by a neighbor. In resolving this, Theriaque said emotional service was provided and she was connected to resources.

In August 2024, CRESS went to the food distribution at the Bangs Community Center for a racial incident. The responders assisted him with how to be appropriate in a public space, and while an Amherst police officer was on scene, she deferred to CRESS.

CRESS teams are also doing community outreach, including soliciting neighbor feedback surveys to figure out what is needed, they are crating youth programming with educational and social justice themes, and editing a newsletter that will keep the community up to date.

Emergency calls lacking

But the lack of emergency dispatch calls to CRESS, which were expected to be similar to calls for police, fire and ambulances, remains a sore point.

CSSJC Committee member Debora Ferreira said she still needs more data and wanted to know how many of the calls, precisely, had originated with dispatch. Theriaque said this is not yet possible. “We are not privy to the APD logs in that way,” Theriaque said.

“Most of the calls we get are from referrals or people who call us directly, because they don’t want to call police,” Theriaque said.

CSSJC Committee member Pat Romney said it is encouraging that people are finding CRESS, but with the low number of police referrals, she wondered how this matches best practices in other places with unarmed responders.

Theriaque said the so-called standard operating procedures will be done by the end of the quarter. “The criteria for the calls, those are things still being worked out, because of the dispatchers,” Theriaque said.

During public comment, two former members of the Community Safety Working Group that brought forward the recommendation to create CRESS spoke.

“This is what can destroy this program, and at this point, in my opinion, we should be getting monthly reports,” Russ Vernon-Jones said.

“Basically any call that doesn’t involve a significant crime, weapons and/or violence, is probably one that should be going to CRESS, as long as they are on duty during those hours,” he said.

He called it a failure of Town Hall, emergency dispatch and police “if they’re not getting calls to CRESS.”

Pat Ononibaku said CRESS is not functioning the way it was envisioned, blaming it on larger cultural problems in Amherst that is now leading to the Black schools superintendent to “being disrespected in the media and activist efforts to push her out.”

CSSJC Committee member Erica Piedade praised Theriaque’s work.

“You’re actually mitigating the need for the police to step in, you’re actually doing prevention because if you’re dealing with mental health issues and you mitigate it, that person will not be a future police situation,” Piedade said.

Still, Ferreira said people, including municipal leaders, are “gunning” to put CRESS out of business.

“CRESS needs to be there, it needs to be successful, and it needs to do more to assist all people in Amherst,” Ferreira said.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.