Seattle’s CARE chief: City’s police alternative has grown — but SPD contract is limiting response

CARE responders are dispatched around four times a day in the East Precinct (Source: seattle.gov)

Barden

The chief of Seattle’s police alternative for mental health and addiction crisis response told the City Council this week the same thing she has been saying in the CHS comments — Seattle City Hall has funded the growth of the new Community Assisted Response & Engagement Department but CARE crisis responders remain hamstrung and sidelined by the new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild union.

“Under the constraints of the current SPOG contract, CARE responders are permitted to respond to persons in public space with no evidence of substance use, nor encampment,” Chief Amy Barden said in a briefing of the council’s public safety committee this week. “We had interpreted the contract to mean that so long as a person is not inside a place where they could be trespassed, CARE responders could help them. However, last week, we were advised that we were not permitted to be dispatched to any private property where someone could be trespassed, including outdoor parking lots. What this means — and this actually happened last night — is that somebody could be in a QFC parking lot, clearly struggling mentally or emotionally and when that QFC employee calls 911 and asks if we can send someone to provide resources, our only option is to send an officer.”

Barden says the limits restrict even the use of “dual dispatch” in which a crisis responder is sent along with an armed officer.

The department is costing the city around $6.5 million a year.

So far in 2026 according to the department’s reports, CARE responders have been dispatched 231 times around the East Precinct — around four times a day.

In January, CHS reported here on the growth of the CARE department. CARE transitioned from a pilot to a permanent city department in late 2025. A new contract between the city and the police union removed staffing limits and authorized solo dispatch for civilian responders. This allows teams to handle 911 calls for behavioral health and welfare checks without requiring a police presence, provided the situation is non-violent.

The 2026 city budget includes $9.5 million from a new state-authorized bump in the sales tax to double the department’s workforce. This funding could add more than 20 new crisis responders.

Under the city’s new contract with the police union, CARE has been authorized to begin “solo dispatch” of the crisis responders, meaning Barden’s teams can be sent to appropriate 911 calls without a Seattle Police Department officer to accompany them. But the restricted set of circumstances that qualify has left CARE on the sidelines.

Earlier this month in the CHS comments on our report on the latest crime statistics for the city, Capitol Hill, and the Central District, Barden was candid with her disappointment about where the contract — and its interpretations by Seattle Police leadership — ended up.

“I actually did believe that things would naturally improve after the contract negotiations were over and was really surprised and disappointed to realize I was wrong. I also had flawed assumptions about what the terms of the contract would be,” Barden wrote. “We are working on alternate strategies to deploy the team, but I agree that if we can’t get them out expeditiously to more calls, the City should not be spending the money.”

Barden also pointed to other major cities growing similar departments.

“In Albuquerque and Durham, they rapidly scaled the alternative responder teams to 24/7 and had the full support of local government and law enforcement, so you see really positive impacts by the end of year two,” Barden wrote, citing the large number of calls those departments respond to — and the support of police leadership promoting “the positive impacts on policing and community safety.”

Barden says Albuquerque saw a more than 50% drop in property crime in a year “as law enforcement was freed up to do their work.”

In the meantime, Seattle’s CARE continues to grow. This week, Barden said CARE is on track to grow to 48 responders and nine supervisors this year.

Police leadership could be key to making CARE a more useful component of the city’s public safety response. SPD Chief Shon Barnes has said he supports the department — but that support seemed tepid at best during this week’s hearing. Publicola reported here on Barnes’s statements that suggest “the former Madison police chief hasn’t fully bought in to the way alternative response works in Seattle.”

The Seattle Times, meanwhile, did not even mention Barnes in its report on on the council CARE briefing.

The mayor’s office has its sights on the SPOG contract.

Katie Wilson’s public safety advisor Alison Holcomb told the council committee the mayor is working with City Attorney Erika Evans to examine the contract — and find a solution.

“We hope to have an answer about what potential next steps could look like in the near future,” Holcomb said.

$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE

Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month — or choose your level of support