Baltimore rethinks who answers 911

Baltimore is changing what happens after some people call 911. The city already diverts certain behavioral-health calls away from police and into a crisis line staffed by clinicians, and now it is using opioid-settlement money to build a broader around-the-clock response for situations where officers are not needed. KFF Health News and WYPR reported on August 5 that the effort is meant to connect callers to mental-health care, social services and other support before an encounter escalates. Baltimore officials have paired that work with police crisis-intervention training and consent-decree reforms that formalize how behavioral-health calls are handled. ### Which 911 calls is Baltimore trying to route away from police? Baltimore launched its Behavioral Health 9-1-1 Diversion Pilot Program in June 2021. The city says call-takers identify eligible behavioral-health calls and transfer them to Here2Help, a mental-health services line operated by Baltimore Crisis Response, Inc. and staffed by trained clinicians. The pilot began with two suicidal-ideation call types and expanded in April 2022 to include a third similar call type. (kffhealthnews.org) A successful diversion, according to the city, is one in which the caller is linked to the crisis line and the encounter is closed without a police or fire/EMS response. The city says the program is designed to reduce unnecessary police encounters with people in behavioral crises and match callers to the most appropriate available resource. ### What does the city already have in place? (baltimorecity.gov) Behavioral Health System Baltimore, the nonprofit that functions as the city’s mental-health department, oversees mobile crisis teams that can send a clinician and a peer counselor to people in distress. KFF Health News reported that dispatchers can send those teams when a caller needs mental-health help rather than an armed police response. (baltimorecity.gov) Behavioral Health System Baltimore says the 911 diversion program reconnected 643 callers to the 988 hotline in its first 17 months, helped 62 callers through the mobile crisis unit and saved 372 hours for the police and fire departments. The same organization says the broader Central Maryland Crisis Response System is backed by a $45 million, five-year regional investment to expand 988 capacity, mobile crisis teams and community-based providers in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Carroll County and Howard County. (kffhealthnews.org) ### Why is Baltimore expanding the model now? Baltimore has received roughly $400 million from opioid-related legal settlements, KFF Health News reported, and the city is using part of that money to widen its non-police response capacity. WYPR reported in March that Baltimore had already allocated $15 million to the new service, and later reporting said the city wants a broader 24/7 system for crises in which police are not needed. (bhsbaltimore.org) Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration has also tied the work to its public reporting on opioid-resti­tution spending. A city release on April 21 said Baltimore published its first annual opioid fund report and dashboard, which track how settlement dollars are being invested. ### Where do police still fit into the picture? (kffhealthnews.org) Police are still part of Baltimore’s response system when a situation involves danger, criminal conduct or other emergency needs. The city’s own diversion materials describe some cases as “co-notification,” meaning the crisis line is involved but police or fire personnel also respond. News4Jax reported on August 6 that officers around the country are receiving specialized crisis-intervention training to handle mental-health calls more carefully. (baltimorecity.gov) A 2025 study protocol published in *Psychiatric Research and Clinical Practice* said police still routinely encounter people in mental-health crisis even as alternative response models expand, and it described a multi-site randomized trial of Crisis Intervention Team training for law enforcement. (baltimorecity.gov) ### What should readers watch next in Baltimore? Baltimore’s consent-decree materials say the diversion program is set to expand over the next year through federal investment so that more behavioral-health calls can receive a non-police response. The city’s public dashboard and Behavioral Health System Baltimore’s crisis-services pages are the clearest places to watch for new call categories, response volumes and staffing growth. (baltimorecity.gov) (news4jax.com)