Police in America have shot and killed 1,939 people in the middle of a mental health crisis since 2015. That’s 20% of all police killings in the last decade.

Those numbers have helped fuel a movement.

Instead of armed police, more than half of the country’s largest cities now send social workers and EMTs – a new generation of first responders – on 911 calls involving mental illness, addiction or suicidal thoughts.

As these programs kept popping up, Tradeoffs producer Ryan Levi dove deep into how one community is standing up one of these new programs.

Introducing The Fifth Branch – a special podcast series from Tradeoffs and The Marshall Project. The three-part series will bring listeners to Durham, North Carolina, to meet the people who are reimagining the crisis response.

The Fifth Branch follows their journey to get this program off the ground, to make sure it is keeping people safe, and to understand how the community is grappling with what the size and scope of this work should be.

Listen and subscribe to The Fifth Branch wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes drop July 18, July 25 and August 1.

Listen to The Fifth Branch Trailer

This project was supported in part by The Just Trust and the Sozosei Foundation.

Episode Transcript

Episode Transcript

Note: This transcript has been created with a combination of machine ears and human eyes. There may be small differences between this document and the audio version, which is one of many reasons we encourage you to listen to the episode above!

Ryan Smith: Your house is on fire. We send fire. 

You’re having cardiac arrest. We send EMS.

There are shots fired. We need to send law enforcement. [But] People call 911 for a whole bunch of other reasons. 

Dan Gorenstein: And who do you send on those?

DG: EMS, Fire, Police and the 911 Call Center … make up the existing four branches of the public safety system.

Join us for the Fifth Branch … a special series from Tradeoffs and the Marshall Project on how a city radically changes its response to people in crisis.

I’m Dan Gorenstein.

Police in America have shot and killed 1,931 people in the middle of a mental health crisis.

Patrice Andrews: he said, I’m not coming out, and if you come in, I’m going to shoot you all.

DG: That’s 20% of all police killings in the last decade. One of every five.

PA: whether he would have shot an officer or officers would have shot him, I didn’t … have a crystal ball. But I tell you, there were the makings in that for … it not to end well.

DG: More than half of the country’s 50 largest cities have launched programs to send responders to 911 calls historically handled by cops.

San Francisco and New York … Houston, Chicago.

A new generation of first responders.

David Prater: When we arrive at a call…we have no arrest power. We have no weapons.

Abena: I’m a social worker. So this is what I do.

DG: Clinicians, EMTs, unarmed mental health workers all responding to people who struggle with addiction, homelessness and mental illness.

Miss Antoniette: My last thought was to run into traffic. Just run. And. Whatever happens, happens.

DG: To understand this work we head to … Durham, North Carolina.

This southern city has quietly built one of the most comprehensive programs in the country.

Amy Smith: They did it the right way…thinking, designing, assessing, researching, evaluating. And…went to work.

DG: All in the face of skepticism …

John Warasilla: I appreciate all the effort that’s going into this, but this is not functioning as a solution.

DG: And downright opposition. 

Dan Leeder: Nothing is ever 100%, but it was darn close that this was a bad idea.

RS: with police, we needed to build confidence that we could do this and not get someone killed. Point blank.

DG: How did Durham pull off what so many cities have struggled to do: build a successful new branch to the city’s public safety system?

Join Tradeoffs and The Marshall Project for our new series The Fifth Branch that examines this groundbreaking work and the challenges it’s facing in Durham and cities across the country.

DP: Is there a level of risk in this job? There is. Do I consider it an acceptable risk? I do.

DG: Subscribe to the Fifth Branch, a special series from Tradeoffs and The Marshall Project available wherever you get your podcasts.