By Matt Mitchell
POINT REYES, Calif. — Many 911 calls in Marin County, north of San Francisco, involve non-emergency incidents that may require a hasty response, but not necessarily an armed officer.
Citing the success of civilian crisis teams elsewhere in the county, the Marin County Civil Grand Jury is urging officials to bring the alternative response model to West Marin, where for some, calling the police carries the added fear of immigration detention.
In a report issued over the summer, the grand jury found that police and ambulance crews in West Marin continue to handle 911 calls that could be better served by SAFE teams, short for Specialized Assistance for Everyone.
SAFE teams already operate in San Rafael, Novato and Petaluma, responding to crises involving mental health, addiction and homelessness. Designed to divert people away from the criminal justice system, the programs were embraced by city leaders after the county’s Mobile Crisis Response Team proved unable to meet the growing demand from first responders.
In September, the Board of Supervisors disagreed with the grand jury’s conclusions, saying it could not state unequivocally that West Marin’s behavioral health calls would be better handled by a different response team.
The debate reflects a broader conversation about the role of non-police responders in handling mental health calls. Alternative response programs have existed for decades but gained newfound traction after the 2020 killing of George Floyd and the nationwide calls for police reform that followed. Today, more than half of the country’s 20 largest cities are testing non-police units for certain 911 calls.
“Most 911 calls actually have nothing to do with crime at all,” said Allie Preston, a senior policy analyst for criminal justice reform at the Center for American Progress. “Only a very small share—often between 3 and 5 percent in many cities—involve violent crime, the kind of situations police are specifically trained to handle.”
Unnecessary dispatches of law enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency medical crews, Ms. Preston said, can place additional strain on first responders, often at significant cost to local governments.
In the two years that SAFE teams have operated in Sonoma and Marin Counties, the reduction in emergency room visits alone has saved regional hospitals an estimated $2.5 million. In San Rafael, deploying the SAFE team rather than police officers resulted in close to 70 emergency room diversions, nearly 50 jail diversions, and over 100 ambulance diversions in 2024.
Aziz Majid is the program director who oversees SAFE teams in Petaluma, Rohnert Park, San Rafael and Novato. He said that responding to nonviolent incidents helps ease the strain on public safety agencies by freeing law enforcement officers to tend to higher-priority calls. As a result, response times have improved.
“On a community note, there’s also a lot of trust,” he said. “People are more willing to reach out for help because of our approach and our rapport building. We don’t force care on people.”
Without a local SAFE team to provide support, West Marin depends on the county public health department’s Mobile Crisis Response Team, a skeleton crew of mental health clinicians, social service workers and peer counselors responsible for serving the entire county.
The team, which launched in 2015 and coordinates with the sheriff’s office to respond to behavioral health emergencies, can typically reach Marin’s urban areas within an hour. But in West Marin, the wait is often over twice as long.
Alexa Davidson, the executive director at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center, said she has seen firsthand the limits of the team’s reach. “There have been times when they say they don’t have a team available right now,” she said. When that happens, units usually follow up later in the day, but in the meantime most calls end up falling to sheriff’s deputies.
For some, the growing nexus between ICE and local law enforcement under the Trump administration has led to concerns that the Latino community may be reluctant to seek help.
“I think there’s a general fear of anyone in uniform right now,” said Stefhanie Gallegos, a coordinator for West Marin Community Services. “If someone has that fear, it’s definitely going to keep them from calling 911 to respond to a mental health crisis.”
In 2024, the sheriff’s office shared information with ICE about 14 people booked into the county jail, up from 13 the previous year. Marin’s current policy only allows ICE notifications in cases of serious or violent felonies. Before the passage of S.B. 54, which prevents state and local resources from being used to assist in federal immigration enforcement, the sheriff’s office made dramatically more ICE notifications, with 137 in 2017.
In October, the sheriff’s office drew new public backlash for its participation in a federal program that reimburses local governments for the cost of incarcerating certain undocumented immigrants. The initiative, known as the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, or SCAAP, provides funds to offset officer salary expenses for jailing immigrants without permanent legal status who have at least one felony or two misdemeanor convictions and are held for a minimum of four consecutive days. According to the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the sheriff’s office received $461,446 in fiscal year 2022, $416,677 in 2023 and $338,136 in 2024 through SCAAP.
Joe McGarry, an organizer with the Marin chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, believes the line between local law enforcement and ICE has effectively vanished for many undocumented residents. He called for crisis-response teams that are completely siloed from police.
“All law enforcement is seen as a possible first step to ICE detention, and that not only creates a reluctance to engage with cops but more accurately a fear and avoidance of Marin County police,” he said. “Why can’t a large chunk of the money Marin spends on policing be taken from these horrible systems and put into systems like the Mobile Crisis Response Team to allow them to stand alone as a separate entity?”
Sheriff Jamie Scardina said the agency does not arrest or book people into the county jail solely for experiencing a mental health crisis or homelessness.
Under its policy, deputies are also barred from arresting or detaining someone based only on their immigration status or on a civil immigration violation. The policy further states that requests for ICE detainers—which hold someone beyond their scheduled release so immigration agents can take them into custody—are honored only if accompanied by a judicial warrant or probable cause of a federal criminal immigration offense.
Lieutenant Scott Jensen, who helps oversee the Point Reyes substation, said the sheriff’s office would be open to partnering with community responders in West Marin, though he stopped short of acknowledging a need for more help handling behavioral health calls. “I don’t know if I would feel comfortable saying that,” he said. “But if there was an opportunity to partner with somebody, we’d be more than willing to.”
In the near term, efforts to expand alternative response programs to West Marin face steep challenges, particularly around funding. The San Rafael SAFE team, for instance, costs about $700,000 a year to operate, and the city will have to cover that expense—or find new funding sources—once the three-year pilot ends on March 28, 2026.
Geography presents another obstacle. West Marin is home to only around 7 percent of the county’s population but takes up nearly two-thirds of its area. That expanse could make coordination difficult.
“The Mobile Crisis Response Team has a lot of really great things going for it,” Ms. Davidson said. “But how can we make sure there’s additional capacity and a western focus when needed? Or do we need to create a new mechanism, like SAFE teams, or something else?”
This story is part of “Aquí Estamos/Here We Stand,” a collaborative reporting project of American Community Media and community news outlets statewide.
