When the city of Rochester dispatches its crisis intervention team of social workers instead of police, the goal is to provide an alternative response to what often are low-risk situations with no criminal element. But more than half of those calls result in no services being rendered.
That can be because first responders determined they are not needed, or because the person refused services, or that they simply can’t be found, among a myriad other reasons.
Now, the Person in Crisis Team is set to go under a full evaluation to determine what’s working, what isn’t, and how it can better serve the city.
PIC got its start in the wake of the late 2020 social justice protests that flooded city streets, after the release of body-worn camera footage of the arrest and restraint of Daniel Prude. Prude was in the midst of a mental health crisis and later died at Strong Memorial Hospital.
The city and the Rochester Police Department faced a reckoning, leading to the firing of the police chief, a flurry of federal lawsuits, and a call to rethink policing as a whole. That led the city to launch PIC in January 2021.
PIC is a team of social workers tasked with responding to mental health, substance abuse, and domestic crises in tandem with or independently of the Police Department.
On Tuesday, the Rochester City Council unanimously approved a $100,000 contract with Brooklyn-based Reimaging DEIB to fully evaluate the program. The evaluation will include finding out whether PIC is actually reducing arrests or hospitalizations, reviewing what emergency calls PIC is best fit for, and finding the best stream of city funding for it.
Reimagining DEIB was selected via a request for proposals process. Four vendors submitted proposals, including RIT, the Center for Governmental Research, and ARoom Consulting.
“PIC is now considered really one of the pioneers of doing this work and really taking the concept and building it out,” said Alia Henton-Williams, manager of the city’s Crisis Intervention Services Unit. That unit houses PIC, alongside other emergency social work programs like the Homicide Response Team.
The PIC Team is based on Eugene, Oregon’s Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets (CAHOOTS) Program, a police alternative program led by the White Bird Clinic. The White Bird Clinic also provided administrative assistance as the city began development of PIC.
CAHOOTS began in 1989 through a diversion of public funds from the police force to the White Bird Clinic. The clinic had already been a well-established provider of mental health and social support services in Eugene for about two decades prior.
Chelsea Swift, a crisis social worker and medic with CAHOOTS, said the model is novel even compared to many of the programs it has inspired nationwide. For example, CAHOOTS does not initiate mental health holds, something Swift described as a "fully voluntary" model.
"Those are things that not only exist in programs that have stood up since the social justice movements in 2020, but are now kind of getting baked into the design of what communities want and expect from their programs," Swift said.
Swift said a "values alignment" is needed in the industry surrounding crisis mental health services. She said the paramount goal should be harm reduction. That tack, she said, both helps build trust from the community and lowers the fear from clients that they won't be involuntarily committed or arrested.
"If I meet someone who does not know who CAHOOTS is, the first thing I say to them is, 'We're medics and crisis workers, we cannot force you to do anything, we're just here to see how we can help,'" Swift said.
PIC is a relatively small program, boasting 13 full-time emergency response social workers, two of whom are bilingual, as well as a small number of part-time and on-call social workers.
PIC has received 33,142 calls from its start through Feb. 26, 2025— or roughly 150 calls a week, according to a city program database.
Of those calls, 6,445 were responded to in tandem with the Rochester Police Department, and 4,797 were responded to by PIC alone.
Not all of those calls resulted in services being rendered. In some instances, there was no action to take, or the team wasn’t able to find the person, or the person reported to be in crisis refused help. When assistance was needed the most common outcomes were either treatment rendered on site or a mental health transport. Only 45 arrests have been made on calls involving PIC.
Despite PIC being accessible through non-emergency numbers, like the 988 Lifeline, the vast majority of calls came in through 911.
“That’s why we’re doing the evaluation, now that we have our data in place, now that we have our processes in place, what are the next steps for our team?” said Sarah Fletcher, deputy commissioner of the city’s Department of Recreation and Human Resources. “Where is the country going in this work, and are we following the best practices?”
Part of the goal of the evaluation is to evaluate what PIC is capable of doing.
Henton-Williams and Fletcher are planning on a March visit to Albuquerque, New Mexico to see progress in the Albuquerque Community Safety Department to compare progress in a team focused on nuisance trespassing and how it interacts with the mental health response team.
Albuquerque’s department is similar to Rochester’s Crisis Intervention Services Unit and was launched in September 2021, about nine months after PIC was launched.
“That would be an example of a city that we’re kind of modeling our work off of,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher also pointed to the newly announced ACTION Team as another complement to PIC’s work. Announced last week, ACTION is planned to be a civilian team that responds to non-urgent calls requiring conflict resolution and help direct citizens to other support services or resources. The team would work in tandem with PIC and independently of police, a similar dynamic to the programs in Albuquerque.
Mayor Malik Evans said ACTION would set out to “address non-urgent, and non-violent situations that have traditionally been handled by the police.”
ACTION is set to launch in September.
Henton-Williams was drawn to crisis work from tragedy. Her 16-year-old brother was murdered in 1992, a moment which she said drew her to community advocacy and working with families. In 2018, three years before taking her post at the city, her older sister was killed in a domestic violence incident.
She stands by PIC as a critical resource and complement to the city’s public safety mechanisms. She also said there is work to be done to perfect the formula.
“It’s just really important to me to make sure that we're getting it right as much as humanly possible,” Henton-Williams said. “I know 100% is not realistic, but when the PIC team goes out on a call, I want to make sure and know that they're trained appropriately, they're comfortable, they're safe, and that they can really support a community member around whatever that crisis call may be.”
The evaluation is expected to take up to a year to complete.
