Every one of Chicago’s 22’s police districts will have access to an alternate response team to assist non-violent people with mental health challenges, under a long-awaited expansion unveiled Wednesday that may or may not last.
For now, Mayor Brandon Johnson is using $31 million from the final chunk of federal stimulus funding delivered to Chicago during the pandemic to check another key item off his progressive to-do list.
After that, the mayor is counting on revenue from his controversial social media tax and assuming that the innovative source of revenue not only survives an ongoing court challenge, but continues to grow so the program confined to daytime hours during weekdays can expand.
If a coalition of the world’s largest tech companies succeeds in overturning the tax — 50 cents per user after the first 100,000 Chicagoans who log onto Snapchat, Reddit, Instagram and other popular sites — the modest expansion could be short-lived.
“We can’t speculate about what could or couldn’t happen. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Griffin Krueger, Johnson’s deputy mayoral press secretary. “We’re confident we have a strong [legal] position. If we didn’t, Gov. [JB] Pritzker wouldn’t have followed the mayor’s lead” by proposing a statewide tax.
Johnson made no mention of the funding challenges that lie ahead during a news conference at Daley Center Plaza that hailed what he called “the start of a new chapter for safety and health care” in Chicago.
“For too long, too many people experiencing trauma and mental illness were met with punishment instead of support,” the mayor told a crowd of supporters.
“With the announcement of our CARE program expansion today, we solidify our commitment to prioritize compassion over criminalization, treatment over trauma, and to meeting our people where they are with the support that they need… It is a promise that we made and a promise that I kept.”
The highly touted alternate response plan is currently confined to six of Chicago’s 22 police districts. Four vans, each staffed by one mental health clinician and one emergency medical technician, respond to non-violent people in mental health crises on weekdays between 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.
The expansion will double the number of alternate response vans to eight staffed by 20 employees, including two alternates. The city will be divided into two zones — north and south — with four vans in each.
The daytime hours and weekdays served won’t change, though there is hope for a future expansion. The city already has “expanded the size and scope” of when it’s CARE teams can respond.
“Crises happen at 2 in the morning. Crises happen at 9 in the morning. Crises happen when they’re stressed trying to get their kids out the door,” said Alexa James, former longtime CEO of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Chicago.
James said Chicago has “historically not partnered” with other mental health organizations to “fill gap coverage” during the many hours when alternate response vans are not available.
“They have decided that they are going to do this work… but they are not able to do the work in full because they have a restriction both on time and temperament of an individual in crisis,” she said. “Who is filling the gaps during the other 12 hours of the day? And are they… connecting with those organizations so that people are not being left without the help that they need when they call?”
Legal experts have told the Sun-Times the social media tax is on shaky legal ground, largely based on a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision that blocked a Minnesota state tax on newspapers for paper and ink purchases beyond a $100,000 yearly threshold.
Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the court that the tax “singled out the press for special treatment” without justification. Such precedent is “not limited to the journalistic press,” according to the NetChoice suit, which cites another Supreme Court ruling that First Amendment protections extend to “every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion.”
“What is their contingency plan if it doesn’t get upheld?” James said. “We would never say if we don’t have the 911 tax, then we’re closing 911.”
Johnson campaigned on a promise to reopen Chicago’s shuttered mental health clinics and dramatically expand an alternative response program that frees Chicago police officers from a responsibility to respond to mental health emergencies.
Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot also promised to reopen city clinics, but kept them closed. She launched a “Treatment Not Trauma” pilot before being eliminated in the first round of the 2023 mayoral election.