(The Center Square) – The city’s Community Assisted Response & Engagement program isn’t fully capable of doing its job of handling mental health emergencies, a recent evaluation by Seattle’s Office of Inspector General shows.
The program provided crisis intervention by crisis workers rather than police officers, but the report said the current union contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild maintains armed officers as the standard practice to respond to behavioral health emergencies.
A 2025 contract between the city of Seattle and the Seattle Police Guild, which represents police officers, was supposed to expand the type of calls crisis workers could respond to, the OIG said. But the OIG analysts said in the report that specific terms written into the labor agreement severely restrict civilian responders from reaching a substantial portion of community members in need.
CARE, officially known as the Community Assisted Response & Engagement department, is an agency established three years ago to respond to non-violent mental health calls.
CARE acts as Seattle’s third emergency response in addition to police and fire. They are separate from walk-in mental health centers operated by King County
The OIG said that while the 2025 collective bargaining agreement eliminates hiring limits and introduces new dispatch pathways, it simultaneously establishes strict boundaries on where these workers can operate.
Under the contract, alternative crisis teams are strictly barred from conducting welfare checks inside homes or public-facing businesses, such as grocery stores.
CARE staff are also prohibited from responding to nuisance complaints like trespassing if a property owner requests criminal charges, as well as situations involving drug use, unhoused encampments or individuals experiencing crises on private property.
Furthermore, the OIG said the labor agreement permits the Seattle Police Department to override 911 dispatch decisions regarding CARE assignments and cancel joint responses at its own discretion.
The OIG concluded that these administrative hurdles systematically exclude many of the city’s most vulnerable populations from receiving non-law-enforcement support.
CARE Chief Amy Barden has complained to the city council that her department is being hampered in the types of calls it can handle over the last several months.
But in an August 26 statement to The Center Square, Barden said Seattle’s utilization of crisis response teams has improved recently despite the police guild contract’s limitations.
“In the past three weeks, we’ve seen a 32% increase in CARE response compared to the prior 12-week average,” she wrote.
That included 911 dispatchers and responders “self-dispatching” to community members who appear to need resources or services, she said.
Barden attributed the increase to the CARE teams’ newly expanded hours, and to stronger relationships between the teams and SPD precinct captains.
The CARE program added late-night and early-morning hours to its schedule in August
Barden wrote that overall utilization of CARE teams has improved since the beginning of the year, and the department is currently operating at about 80% of its maximum capacity with current staffing levels.
Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, a spokesman for Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, said the new OIG report put an “important spotlight” on limitations faced by CARE crisis responders.
“CARE crisis responders were curtailed by past City leadership, through no fault of their own,” he said. “CARE is trained for exactly the type of mental and behavioral health responses we need more of. We are optimistic about the positive and productive collaboration Interim (Police) Chief Sayles has formed with the CARE department and other community safety partners. That commitment to partnership will be an essential qualification for our next permanent chief.”
The police department and police union did not respond to requests for comment.