Denver is starting a new program replacing police officers with health care workers to help people in crisis

• Denver's Support Team Assisted Response program responds to nonviolent calls for help in the city.
• It sends health care workers in response to crisis calls, not police officers.
• In the first six months, the STAR team responded to 748 calls. No one they helped was arrested.

During the first six months of the Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) program, Denver health professionals responded to 748 incidents. None of the calls required police assistance or ended in someone being arrested, according to a report published by the local news website, Denverite.

The STAR program was created in 2020 as an alternative response team dedicated to assisting people who have mental-health issues. It also provides crisis help to those experiencing depression, poverty, homelessness, and substance abuse.

Before the program, calls to 911 in Denver were directed to the police or a hospital. STAR created a third path to dispatch certain calls to support providers rather than to the police.

The STAR team is not designed to act on violent situations, according to the report. Using seven approved nature codes, STAR responds to reports of assistance: an intoxicated person, suicidal series, welfare checks, indecent exposure, trespassing, and syringe disposal.

During the first six months of the program, a civilian team traveled around the city in a van from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, providing assistance to those in high-demand areas.

Denver Chief of Police Paul Pazen told Denverite the program frees up officers to fight crime.

"I want the police department to focus on police issues," Pazen told the news outlet. "We have more than enough work with regards to violent crime, property crime, and traffic safety, and if something like STAR or any other support system can lighten the load on mental health calls for service, substance abuse calls for service, and low-level issues, that frees up law enforcement to address crime issues."

The program started during the rise of police brutality protests last year. Denver has seen protests against police brutality for the killings of Marvin Booker and Michael Marshall.

In 2010, Denver sheriff's deputies at a detention center tased Booker while he was handcuffed.

In 2015, Marshall died after choking on his own vomit while being restrained by officers. He was suffering from a psychotic episode at the time of his death.

Insider's Haven Orecchio-Egresitz interviewed five mothers whose sons have died at the hands of police officers responding to mental-health calls.

When Taun Hall's son, Miles, started showing signs of mental illness, she tried to build a relationship with the local police to assure them that her son, a Black man in a rich white neighborhood, was not a threat.

On June 2, 2019, she called 911. She said her son was experiencing a delusion and had broken a door.

Hall told Insider that when the police arrived, Miles was in the street holding a long metal pry bar that he had been using to garden. They shot him dead. He was 23.

After an unsuccessful attempt to get her 18-year-old son involuntarily committed for treatment, Mary Wilsey turned to 911 to assist with his mental-health crisis.

Her son, Keith Vidal, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was in a mental-health crisis. She tried to have him hospitalized on December 27, 2014, but a nurse turned him away after telling her that he wasn't having thoughts about harming himself or others.

A week later during a 911 dispatch call, two officers responded to a call from Vidal's stepfather. They attempted to de-escalate the situation until a plainclothes officer came five minutes later.

Detective Bryon Vassey of the nearby Southport Police Department walked in and said "I don't have time for this," before shooting Vidal, Wilsey told Insider. He died soon after.

In 2015, police records indicated about 25% of the people the police fatally shot were experiencing a mental-health crisis, The Post reported. As of mid-October this year, that figure was nearly 20%.

The mothers who spoke with Insider said if they were put in the situation again, they would not call 911 for assistance in a mental-health emergency, no matter how desperate they felt.