By Ryan Stanton
mlive.com
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — After over four years of talks, Ann Arbor now has a model for an unarmed response program that could launch in 2026, using social workers instead of police to handle 911 calls such as nonviolent mental health crises.
SPROUT, a new Supportive Resources and Outreach Team proposed to be housed under the city’s Supportive Connections office, would function independently, handling some calls on its own, and team up with the Ann Arbor Police Department on other calls.
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SPROUT would serve as a compassionate, community-based alternative to traditional crisis response, said Jonathan Laye, Supportive Connections director.
“The SPROUT teams will meet residents where they are, providing supportive intervention and connection to care for those experiencing behavior health, substance use, or any number of social challenges,” he said.
Laye, a licensed social worker, and Police Chief Andre Anderson discussed the proposed program during City Council’s annual planning session Monday, Dec. 8.
“Ideally, what we would like to have is a social worker right inside the 911 center, right there when the call is coming in — that person can intercept those calls right there,” Anderson said. “Ideally, that person can actually call a person out where we do not even have a police officer respond at all.”
Laye described a multi-tiered approach to handling calls. In some cases, there could be a clinician-led response focused on deescalation and connecting people to helpful resources, and other times there could be a joint response by a social worker in a vehicle with a police officer trained in crisis intervention.
In a co-response scenario, there still would be a focus on deescalation and connecting people to resources rather than arrest or citation, but those hybrid units also could handle calls involving potentially violent behavior, Laye said.
It’s been a long journey to get to a model that fits, said Laye, whose office connects people with social services to avoid contact with law enforcement and the criminal legal system.
SPROUT clinicians would be Supportive Connections staff, expanding the office, with the program administered independent of the police and fire departments, Laye said.
Across the country, communities are recognizing the vast majority of behavioral health crises do not need police enforcement, Laye said. They need someone who will show up and say, “Tell me what’s going on,” and then, “How can I be of service to help you?” he said.
Over the past year and a half, Ann Arbor leaders have crossed the country to look at programs in other communities that have found success, from Albuquerque to Atlanta, Denver, Durham and Seattle, Laye said. They all come at it with the same approach: leading with compassion, care and support, with a focus on connection rather than punishment, he said.
What’s planned for Ann Arbor is a pilot program, and things like hours of operation and types of calls for the teams could change as the city feels out the right approach, Laye said.
After initial response by either a two-person clinician team or a co-response unit with police and a social worker, Supportive Connections would provide followup support, he said. It would keep records separate from police that can’t be used punitively against people, he said.
At least one of the clinicians on a response team would be a licensed social worker with a master’s degree, while the other could have another social service background, he said.
A clinician team would be able to respond to nonviolent mental health crises, suicide threats not involving a weapon, some nuisance calls, cases of lost people and family crisis care, drug use, and welfare and wellness checks, among other things, Laye said. They wouldn’t be able to make arrests or issue citations.
The co-response units could handle calls with heightened risk, support Community Mental Health crisis teams and serve court-ordered involuntary mental health petitions, he said.
As for how response teams would be dispatched, Laye said there could be various ways, and first they’re exploring direct 911 dispatch with the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office. They also could be self-dispatched by monitoring 911 calls, self-selecting calls clinicians feel fit the service, he said.
Police also could arrive on a scene and realize it would be better served by SPROUT, he said.
Another model the city has looked at in Tempe, Arizona, involves embedding social workers into county dispatch to deescalate situations over the phone and divert callers directly to social services, Laye said.
Anderson noted there’s already a national 988 suicide and crisis lifeline. But since 911 has been around for several decades, “our muscle memory cannot get us to shift to call 988,” he said.
“People are going to call 911,” he said. “And when they call 911, as it stands, it will require a police response.”
Admittedly, policing efforts over the years have led to unnecessary uses of force, Anderson said, saying police have lost some credibility and lack of training is a problem. He expressed hopes of moving to a new model and training Ann Arbor police officers to play a role as part of a new Crisis Intervention Team.
The team is described as a community partnership of AAPD alongside Supportive Connections, Washtenaw County Community Mental Health and addiction professionals such as Dawn Farm, Home of New Vision and Trinity Health.
Not every police officer is capable of being a Crisis Intervention Team officer, Anderson said. They have the ability to do other things, but not the same compassion as Officer Kasey Whitford, the team leader, he said.
AAPD is working toward getting 20% of officers specially trained in crisis intervention, Whitford said, saying it’s important officers with the right mindset self-select to be part of the team.
The officers with advanced training in deescalation are expected to work in road patrol across all shifts, responding to calls of mental health crises.
Down the road, they’ll be piloting the co-response team with Supportive Connections, Whitford said.
From June to November, Ann Arbor police responded to 594 calls about people experiencing a mental health crisis, she said. Being trained to assist with mental health crises, substance use disorders and available resources for those unhoused allows officers to respond with empathy, Whitford said.
The unarmed response program is expected to be funded by $250,000 in annual marijuana tax revenue, nearly $1.2 million in annual rebate funds from a countywide mental health and public safety millage and nearly $300,000 in funds reserved from opioid litigation settlements.
If council authorizes moving forward, it still would take several months to put the program in place, but it could happen within 2026, City Administrator Milton Dohoney said.
Council has affirmed its commitment to a truly unarmed response model multiple times, said Council Member Cynthia Harrison, D- 1st Ward. She asked at Monday’s meeting how the proposed pilot preserves the original promise, rather than shifting into a law enforcement-adjacent service.
Having the program under Supportive Connections gives it the autonomy to keep it social work-focused and say, “This is our program, we’re borrowing the police, not the other way around,” Laye said.
Senior Assistant City Attorney Jennifer Janetsky said the city would be delivering both unarmed response and “law enforcement lite” response, and officers in co-response teams with social workers would be specially trained and not in traditional police uniforms.
Laye noted Supportive Connections also will be adding solution-focused brief therapy to its program in 2026 as a way to engage people while they wait for substance use treatment, mental health treatment, transitional housing and other help.
“We all know that wait lists are long,” he said.
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