Students tell Ann Arbor Human Rights Commission city process stalled on unarmed crisis response

A group of University of Michigan School of Social Work students told the Ann Arbor Human Rights Commission on April that the city’s effort to stand up an unarmed crisis response team has produced little public clarity and that locally developed organizations have been sidelined by restrictive procurement processes.

The students said the city adopted a directive in 2021 to create an unarmed crisis response option for some 911 calls — for example, mental-health crises or calls involving people experiencing homelessness — and that an early respondent to a city request for proposals, Coalition for Reenvisioning Our Safety (CROWS) and a related team now known as Care Based Safety, did not win approval after the initial procurement. A subsequent narrower RFP issued in 2024 drew no applicants, the students said, and they described limited publicly available information about why the original proposal was rejected and what next steps the city has taken.

Why it matters: The students framed the topic as a public-safety and equity issue. They noted research and advocacy findings discussed in their project…