City of Anaheim: Police Department's Homeless Outreach Team Program

Anaheim Police Department (APD) with support from the Orange County Health Care Agency (OCHCA), mental health agency, City Net, the City’s contracted homeless service provider, and a contracted project evaluator propose to plan, implement, and evaluate the Community Care Response Team (CCRT) project with Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) Officers as part of the City’s multi-layer police mental health collaborative. The City of Anaheim, California has a population 349,964, with a demographic makeup of 2.7% Black, 16.8% Asian, 66.4% White, and 54.3% Hispanic. Anaheim has the highest homeless population in Orange County, California with 1,054 homeless living predominately in high poverty areas. The CCRT project will benefit Anaheim’s homeless residents, most who have mental illness (MI) or co-occurring mental illness and substance abuse (CMISA) issues and are high frequency utilizers of police/emergency services and the criminal justice system. The CCRT project is being implemented to: 1) divert approximately 20,000 annual calls for homeless non-emergency, non-violent services to the CCRT call center/dispatch to facilitate a quick connection between homeless individuals and appropriate services; 2) conduct community engagement and outreach to increase public safety; 3) hire HOT Officers and provide mental and behavioral health training for them to appropriately respond to homeless criminal activity or a concern for potential violence particularly related to MI and CMISA; and 4) conduct a project evaluation of the CCRT project to make data informed decisions. During the three-month planning phase, the project partners will: gather all partners for a kick-off meeting an finalize agreements and identify data sets and sources; hire and train two (2) HOT Officers; contract with a project evaluator to develop a list of metrics, data elements, and documentation needed to conduct an evaluation of the project, and develop the CCRT planning and implementation report. During the implementation phase, project partners will: deploy HOT Officers with the CCRT with a priority on situations that involve criminal activity or the potential for violence, and engage citizens and Orange County Recovery Collaborative partners through officer outreach and education to improve public safety; collect data using performance measures identified in a planning report to creating a strong case for sustainable funding through data informed decision making.

The $550,000 in federal funds requested will provide: salary, benefits, and training for two HOT officers and a contracted project evaluator. The City will provide a match through in-kind services. APD has not received JMHCP funding.