The Columbus Safety Collective Campaign submitted an amendment on March 7 to Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein proposing a division within the Department of Public Safety that would respond to non-dangerous calls, without police presence.
“We would be taking this approach of a non-police response system, a non co-responder model, meaning there will be no police involved in these mental health calls,” said Chana Wiley, co-chair of the Executive Committee for the Columbus Safety Collective Campaign. “We would have trained clinicians, social workers and peer supporters that are earning a robust salary that know their community and that know how to respond to their neighbors in their time of need as a team.”
The group said that according to their polling, around 80% of residents in Columbus would like to see an alternative response to calls about mental health.
The Columbus Safety Collective was created in 2020, with the goal to offer a health-centered approach to public safety.
The amendment calls for the city to allocate at least $5 million by 2027, and increase that budget to at least $12 million by 2031.
Columbus budgeted around $7.6 million in 2025 for alternative crisis response programs. These programs are similar to ones proposed in the amendment, however they currently do not run 24/7 nor offer a response not involving police officers. Instead, the programs have medical professionals and social workers respond to calls along with officers.
Wiley says that a non-police response to calls about mental health or substance abuse can be crucial.
“Sometimes people are in a crisis and that can escalate their crisis when they see someone in a uniform show up,” she said. “Oftentimes, people in crisis are criminalized for their disability or for their mental crisis or their mental health in general, and we want to take that stigma out and we want to support them instead of layering problems on top of problems.”
According to a 2015 study by the Treatment Advocacy Center, individuals with untreated serious mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed in an interaction with police than others.
So far, there has not been pushback against the proposed amendment.
“I have consistently championed alternative crisis response and appreciate the Columbus Safety Collective’s advocacy. That said, I am still studying the petition language which was just submitted on Friday,” Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin said in a statement. “I do appreciate the city’s programs like the Right Response Unit and Mobile Crisis Response Unit and I’m proud of the new study we launched on non-police response with Mission Critical Partners.”
The group is currently waiting for Klein to determine if the amendment meets city requirements and approve the language. The group will then have until July 7 to collect enough signatures for the amendment to appear on the November ballot.
