Chief Amy Smith’s plans for Seattle’s CARE Department

In the next five years, Smith wants to add at least 60 more 911 dispatchers and call takers and get staff vacancy down to below 10% from its current 17%. She also wants to scale up the number of CARE responders to be able to work citywide, 24/7. Smith did not say how many responders that might require. 

As part of its evolution, Smith envisions CARE will have a community violence prevention and intervention component and coordinate with existing violence intervention programs at the city and county level.  

In 10 years, Smith wants to improve technology at the 911 center to rely more on machine learning and AI to “mitigate risk, reduce bias and promote efficiency.” By the decade mark, she hopes the CARE response team will have grown to its appropriate size, and that the community trusts the 911 call center to dispatch the correct responders for a given situation.  

On Tuesday, Councilmember Tammy Morales relayed a story of a recent visit to Austin, Texas where she came across a woman in crisis, called 911 and discovered that the city’s 911 operators ask if the caller needs police, fire, medical or mental health response. It’s something she wants to see implemented in Seattle.  

Morales also said she wants a fully funded CARE Department. Currently, CARE has an annual budget of about $30 million, compared with SPD’s annual budget of about $400 million.  

By the 20-year mark, Smith imagines that two-thirds of CARE’s time and money will be spent on prevention and early intervention, and that the department will primarily divert people to services and programs rather than into the criminal legal system.  

Seattle already has nonprofit and government entities doing violence interruption, homelessness outreach, diversion for low-level crimes and more. Seattle Fire has Health One and Health 99 to respond to mental health and overdose response. Seattle Police has a Crisis Response Unit that partners with mental health professionals.  

During the July 23 confirmation hearing, Councilmember Cathy Moore shared an anecdote about doing a ride-along with CARE responders and arriving on a scene where people from many agencies and nonprofits were all working at the same time to help a woman in distress. Ultimately, none of the responders were successful in aiding the woman, according to Moore, and the Councilmember expressed concern about all the overlapping efforts.  

Smith said there’s work to be done at the 911 center to improve who gets sent to calls and to improve coordination among all the entities doing this work.  

At the July 23 meeting, Smith said there are efforts underway to give CARE oversight of homelessness-outreach contracts. That contract oversight moved to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to better coordinate regional responses. But Harrell moved homelessness outreach and prevention contracts back under the city’s Human Services Department earlier this year.  

“I don’t have oversight of the outreach contracts yet,” said Smith at the Council meeting. “I know that’s something that’s being discussed by the executive. I do think that would be a good model. If I had oversight of who is doing diversion, who is doing outreach, so we can get this organized for the first time.” 

Asked about the change in contract oversight, a mayor’s office spokesperson said, “It is an area of ongoing discussion, but we don’t have any plans currently.” 

Though the CARE chief agreed there needs to be better coordination among responders, she also said the current response system is far from enough.  

“We just need more of everything,” said Smith. “Health One is such a tiny unit. Health One, CARE and police co-response is six people per unit. There’s a false narrative that we’d already tackled this when we hadn’t gone nearly far enough.”