Guidance for Emergency Responses to People with Behavioral Health or Other Disabilities
The guidance was developed in response to Executive Order 14074, which claims to promote accountable policing and criminal justice practices. It cites Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Supreme Court case of Olmstead v. L.C. (1999) as the legal basis for mandating that states modify their emergency response services, including dispatch systems, to avoid discrimination against individuals with disabilities. State and local officials must also prioritize community-based services to prevent the unnecessary institutionalization of people with disabilities.
The guidance recommends implementing various crisis response models, including
Peer support specialists: Individuals who have “have navigated their own recovery process and who, through shared understanding, trust, respect, and empowerment, help others experiencing similar situations.
Mobile crisis teams: Comprising mental health professionals and often peer support workers, these teams are dispatched instead of law enforcement for intervention, de-escalation, and linkage to behavioral health services.
Co-responder teams: Law enforcement officers and mental health professionals that respond together to crisis situations.
Crisis intervention training: Prepares law enforcement officers to recognize and respond to mental health crises.
Crisis stabilization services: Short-term services that offer crisis intervention and recovery in nonhospital and non-arrest settings, such as crisis apartments or community-based stabilization units.
Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Olmstead v. L.C. require public entities to make “reasonable modifications” to avoid discrimination based on disability. Because states and localities have limited resources, “reasonable” includes an acknowledgement that some possible modifications may not yield a benefit that warrants their costs. Some of the recommendations in this latest guidance may fall into that category, and indeed may not be effective at all. While the agencies issuing it are authorized to produce guidance that clarifies what count as “reasonable modifications” that avoid discrimination, it is possible that this guidance goes further, laying out new regulatory requirements neither intended nor authorized by the aforementioned law and court precedent. These include an interpretation of Olmstead’s import for the operations of public safety agencies that arguably goes beyond the findings in that case.
