Cambridge Has a Good Alternative To Violent Policing. It Must Embrace It.

Policing in America is a violent system.

United States law enforcement officers injure an estimated 250,000 civilians annually and kill over 600 — a disproportionate number Black and brown. One million people annually face police force or the threat thereof. American police kill people three times more frequently than Canadian police and 60 times more frequently than their counterparts in England and Wales.

Defenders of law enforcement may write off some police injuries and deaths as inevitable, but in any case, it’s obvious that a less violent alternative is better. Cambridge has such an alternative in its Holistic Emergency Response Team, and it could take some of its citizens out of harm’s way. It’s high time it commits to it.

By establishing a team of unarmed responders trained in de-escalation in both emergency and non-emergency circumstances, cities can provide emergency assistance without the risk of violence.

Here in Cambridge, an alternative to policing exists, but it’s struggling to survive. Created in 2022, HEART is a community-led organization that deploys trained responders who provide help resolving conflicts, accessing resources and mutual aid, and addressing problems from substance abuse to domestic violence. Sadly, though, it suffers from underfunding and understaffing. Confined, for now, to a case management-like role, HEART is unable to serve its full potential as a true emergency response team.

We must treat police alternatives equally — not as an afterthought. This begins with local governments constituting these groups as full-blown departments rather than contracted organizations. Some municipalities in Massachusetts — like Amherst, with its equivalent to HEART, Community Responders for Equity, Safety & Service — have already done exactly this.

This alone is not enough. Even as an official municipal department, CRESS is still forced to compete for funding with other departments, and it’s sorely losing. As Earl Miller, CRESS’s former director, noted, “the police don’t compete with the fire department for their funding, but alternatives compete with schools for funding, they compete with DPW for funding.”

Creating viable, long term police alternatives means giving them equal financial consideration — if not precisely the same funding — as police departments. Substantial funding for policing alternatives is not a nice-to-have; it’s an essential, like the fire department or emergency medical services.

Despite its shortcomings, there is something to be learned from Amherst’s CRESS: Police alternatives need to be as directly accessible as police. They must be part of the resources that 911 dispatchers have on hand. If individuals are in an emergency situation, they cannot be expected to remember that a police alternative exists. Rather, municipal governments must treat non-police alternatives as their first line of defense wherever possible.

Some callers may still prefer police and want them to show up at the scene. That should perhaps be considered, but it cannot be the final word. The decision to call police affects — often, endangers — others, particularly when the subjects of a complaint fall into groups that disproportionately face police violence. Government should not be an a la carte menu from which we can select our personal favorites as we see fit. Rather, it should pursue the wellbeing of the community as a whole.

Transforming our communities starts with small changes, and this is one we should be able to agree on. We can all agree fewer injuries and deaths is a good thing. While establishing programs like these is an essential step from the perspective of those who advocate to defund the police, one need not be in that camp to favor eliminating law enforcement to see how communities can benefit from a wider range of options.

This is a matter of having the right tool for the job. When community members are struggling with issues like homelessness and substance abuse, subjecting them to the additional threat of police violence does nothing to help. By utilizing non-carceral alternatives, we make our communities safer and more humane for all their members.

​​Allison P. Farrell ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Leverett House.