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Council presses county ties for Mission Street Recovery Station and co‑response teams amid plan for enhanced outreach
Summary
San Jose officials described plans to expand outreach, create an enhanced engagement team and expand use of the Mission Street Recovery Station for certain arrestees. Councilmembers asked for clarity about MOU coverage, PERT clinician availability and co‑response options for 911 triage and diversion to behavioral‑health responses.
San Jose staff told the council the administration wants to expand coordinated outreach, link an enhanced engagement team with the San Jose Police Department, and broaden an existing county MOU so some misdemeanor arrestees could be routed to the Mission Street Recovery Station instead of jail.
Lede: City housing and police leaders described a push to bring outreach earlier in an encampment lifecycle, collect more uniform data, and use county treatment placements as an alternative to incarceration where appropriate. The approach would also rely on co‑response models—such as the county’s PERT clinicians riding with police—and better 911/988 triage to divert suitable calls to behavioral health teams.
Enhanced engagement and data. Housing Director Eric Solivan said the enhanced engagement team will add staff and focus on earlier, repeated contact and systematic data collection so outreach can identify people who may require expedited placement or clinical intervention. Solivan said the team will “figure out a standard operating procedure for how information gets from the housing department... over to the police department.”
Mission Street Recovery Station MOU. Chief Joseph and other staff described an existing MOU that allows San Jose to bring some arrestees (for example, certain DUI or low‑level drug offenses) to Mission Street Recovery Station; they said police hope to expand the MOU to include other misdemeanor arrestees when county capacity and criteria permit. Council members repeatedly asked for the city to secure county commitments before moving to enforcement tied to refusal of shelter.
PERT, TRUST and 988/911 triage. Chief Joseph and council members discussed the Psychiatric Emergency Response Team (PERT) clinician embedded with SJPD and concerns that county changes could restructure clinicians into broader mobile crisis teams; staff said the city currently funds one PERT clinician who rides with SJPD and that the county had indicated it may reassign clinicians into the mobile crisis response system. Calls for better triage were frequent: staff said defining clear transfer criteria for 911→988 and embedding county clinicians in dispatch are priorities but noted county capacity constraints.
Why it matters: City leaders emphasized the policy will only be effective if county treatment capacity and court diversion resources are available and if outreach data are improved. Council and staff said co‑response models and Mission Street placements are possible alternatives to routine booking and short jail stays that do not address underlying behavioral health needs.
Public safety interface and no‑encampment zones. Staff described expanded bicycle creek patrols (funded in part by Valley Water) and no‑return zone enforcement for waterways; officers will act as eyes on the ground to guide resources for abatements and encampment prevention. Councilmembers asked how these enforcement patrols would interact with the enhanced engagement work so abatement is not just displacement without services.
Next steps. Staff will continue to negotiate with county partners on MOU expansion, refine SOPs on outreach‑to‑police information transfer, and try to narrow criteria for which 911 calls can be safely transferred to 988 or alternative response teams. Councilmembers requested a joint city‑county meeting and said they want a publicly available set of performance measures and SOPs returned to council.
