Community Responders for Equity, Safety & Services (CRESS)

The reason for creating the Community Responders for Equity, Safety & Service (CRESS) department is to provide community safety services in situations that don’t involve violence or serious crime. It will create a civilian, unarmed alternative to calls that might otherwise require a response from the Police Department. The purpose is to ensure that any public safety response is anti-racist, equitable, just, and fair and that we offer preventative services that get at the root of assisting our community members to avoid necessitating public safety involvement in the first place.

Non-violent emergency calls such as: wellness checks, mental health calls, non-violent school calls, non-trespassed vagrancy, community engagement, public safety assist, and citizen assist. Responders have received training from the Wildflower Alliance in fields such as suicide and people who hear voices, as well as Motivational Interviewing, Situational Awareness, and CPR training from various instructors and experts. https://www.amherstma.gov/Faq.aspx