COMMUNITY PROFILE and a mental health clinician address individuals who are in crisis. They can get us better outcomes. I can tell you that our officers all say, ‘Hey, this is great! It frees up police officers to focus on crime issues, property crime and violent crime, and traffic safety.’” According to Pazen, the mayor is committed and has essentially put $3 million going forward into expanding the project. This will bring more vans, a larger coverage area, and extended hours. The city would like to see the program expanded to additional police districts. Pazen calls the program’s success a “win-win for the people that we are serving, which is most important, right?” STREET PERSPECTIVE Denver still wrestles with grief around the trauma and heartbreak caused by some of the community’s high-profile deaths at the hands of the Denver Police over the last 25 years. If these deaths could have been avoided by a STAR team with a lighter touch, then names like Michael Marshall, Paul Castaway, Paul Childs, Marvin Booker, Jessica Hernandez, and Aurora’s Elijah McClain might not be seared into the DNA of the city, still painfully echoing years after the deaths. Cities may never truly grieve or accept the loss of life at the hands of their own police. “STAR IS DEFINITELY AN IMPROVEMENT, YOU KNOW, FROM LIKE SENDING BADGES AND GUNS IN TO TELL PEOPLE TO CALM DOWN.” — THERESE HOWARD Therese Howard of of Denver Homeless Out Loud (DHOL) was involved with the inception of STAR. She has watched the police presence and accompanying trauma and criminalization inflicted on the unhoused for many years. But she does not see the STAR van as a strong presence yet out on the street. “I don’t know that people on the streets even know who they are or what they are,” said Howard. “It’s not like a presence that people are that aware of. I mean, there’s only one unit.” Howard thinks the social workers, Sailon and Richardson, are good at de-escalating crisis situations. “Carleigh and Chris, I’ve spoken to both of them. They’re great. I personally really like them both a lot. They’re both really good at connecting people and resources.” Howard also thinks it is better than the previous heavy-handed police involvement in the unsheltered communities. “STAR is definitely an improvement, you know, from like sending badges and guns in to tell people to calm down. Yeah, that is not necessary. So, it has actually cut down on trauma. STAR is able to be part of an official presence but to do it in a more humane way. They are able to de-escalate.” But for Howard, “a huge amount of their time and energy is being spent nicely telling homeless folks to stay off private property. Having nice people to tell them to move is of course better, but, ultimately, the issue is that they don’t have anywhere to be. It’s not wrong that they have mental illness or whatever. The issue is housing.” Howard supports the project. She also feels that it is heavily tilted toward police influence and needs more community direction. Howard says, “It’s like it’s one of those situations where we have agreement on enough of a front. There is a lot that we like. But moving forward, there definitely needs to be a lot of work to keep the city from just turning it into another basically nicer police department.” “WE USE OUR POLICE IN OUR CITY TO CRIMINALIZE UNHOUSED PEOPLE.” — VINNIE CERVANTES Vinnie Cervantes recounts that Denver Alliance for Street Health Response (DASHR) was one of the program’s main drivers. “In 2017, members of the community created DASHR specifically to bring a nonpolice response to street crises in Denver, which eventually became STAR. It’s been a good proof-of-concept that we can do something different and that it could be a more effective, humane approach to issues like homelessness, substance abuse, and health crisis.” Cervantes has been involved for many years in criminal justice reform efforts, “And, you know, we were pretty successful in those efforts, but from my end, I really wanted to do something that more closely aligned with my values.” This brought him to help implement STAR. Now he is focused on creating alternatives to police, in general, getting away from using the criminal justice system to solve social conflict. “The calls STAR receives are overwhelmingly around trespassing,” Cervantes says. “I knew that that would be a big component of this program. We use our police in our city to criminalize unhoused people, and it hasn’t had the really deep impact that I wanted it to with the homeless so far. I think as the program continues to build and to expand, becoming more effective, it will continue to become ingrained into the communities around Denver that need this kind of support.” Cervantes says DASHR has talked to about 10 different cities around Colorado about this kind of nonpolice intervention to address public safety crises. According to Cervantes, Aurora will be rolling out their version very soon. “I think it’s in a really interesting stage right now because the pilot program still is under the Police Department,” says Cervantes. “That’s where it started. But it’s already been expanded. So, the program and its expanded model actually live with the Denver Department of Health and Environment. It’s not gonna be with the Police Department, won’t even be in the Department of Safety, but still kind of a Department of Safety umbrella. So, I think that there is kind of a fear that it lives with the police too closely, right now.” He projects that it will be healthier when it moves further away from the Police Department, becoming more accountable and community-driven. STAR LIGHTS A NEW DIRECTION FOR OUR COMMUNITY Many 911 calls reflect not violent emergencies but cultural, economic, racial misunderstandings and conflict. Police are ill-equipped to deal with many of these nonviolent emergencies. For Denver, the STAR van is pointing in a new and hopeful direction for our community. It provides part of a possible answer to the protests against police brutality that exploded last summer in Denver. It definitely lowers the heat on unhoused communities. ■ CREDIT: PAULA BARD CREDIT: PAULA BARD April 2021 DENVER VOICE 9
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