MORE THAN 200 years ago, the City of Lynn saw a need to be filled, and founded the Lynn Fire Department in response. The Lynn Police Department, as we know it today, started about 150 years ago. If the city’s newly launched “Calm Team” lives up to our hopes, Lynn will look back to this moment for many years to come as the launch of a similarly vital public safety initiative. 

We have long asked police to respond to almost every kind of trouble imaginable. Whether a violent incident is taking place or a person with known mental illness is in the throes of an acute episode, the way to beckon help has been to dial 911 for police.  

Recognizing that there are situations where a different type of response could be the best way to deal with a situation, a growing number of communities across the US are exploring ways to handle calls for help other than by sending police officers.  

The Calm Team is Lynn’s unarmed alternative to police response. It’s a mobile team of social service professionals with strong community ties who will be charged with responding to some of our residents’ most challenging and sensitive issues in real time.  

The number to call Lynn’s newly formed unarmed response team (781-905-CALM) went live on July 21. The Lynn Calm Team is a city service independent of the police department. Originally called for by community activists who part of the Lynn Racial Justice Coalition in response to George Floyd’s murder in Minnesota in 2020, this initiative has been years in the making. 

Understanding there is a critical need to address mental health at the intersection of racial justice and through culturally responsive services, our administration has sought to meet these new challenges in a way that complements and enhances our existing public safety infrastructure. 

This is something that is being implemented in communities across the country, from an experiment going back to the 1980s in Eugene, Oregon, to more recent initiatives in bigger cities like Denver and efforts closer to home in Amherst and Worcester. 

We have contracted with a Massachusetts-based behavioral health provider, Eliot Community Human Services, to hire the core team members and triage calls to leverage Eliot’s expertise and facilitate access to Eliot’s deep pool of behavioral health resources, including the state-funded Community Behavioral Health Center. The core team’s work will be supported by a full-time program administrator in the city’s public health department, who has a background in public administration and conflict resolution, as well as the city’s opioid specialist. 

The Calm Team is an important example of the broader effort to bring all relevant skills and experiences to our critical problems, particularly mental health and substance use, in a way that honors the impact of civil rights activism after George Floyd.  

It will help us reconcile community members’ demands to address individual suffering and law enforcement’s recognition of its own limitations when it comes to dealing with mental and behavioral health issues. Having more options for interventions creates more scenarios where community members have a choice when calling for a response to an individual they see struggling. 

Given the passion around these issues, the development of this team has been controversial. At certain points, advocates felt we were moving too slowly. Other times we were accused of not going far enough. Constituents across the political spectrum questioned our actions, doubted the need for any kind of alternative, and criticized us for putting city resources towards the initiative. 

Convinced that this was the right thing to do, we listened to everyone and worked through every controversy with community engagement. We hosted a series of forums in English and Spanish to educate Lynn residents on these new resources we hoped to make available. We negotiated with our public safety unions to make sure they understood what we were trying to do and could get on board. 

Through community guidance, we arrived at a vetted list of calls to which the Lynn Calm Team will respond. Those issues include non-emergency, non-violent mental health crises, drug overdose follow-up, tenant rights, community mediation, panhandling, and at-risk youth support.  

Recognizing the limitations of unarmed, alternative response, the issues do not include calls that require an immediate medical response, or are considered an active threat, such as domestic violence. The Calm Team members will use their discretion to deescalate situations, but will prioritize the well-being of the people they are trying to help as well as their own safety. 

The work will sometimes overlap with existing public safety teams, and that is OK. These issues are so extensive and, in some cases, intractable, that what works for one individual or situation may not for another. Although the program is independent from existing public safety agencies, collaboration with police and fire will be key to its long-term success.  

Today our cities and towns face new challenges. From creating resilience in the face of climate change, to working to be a community that welcomes everyone, Lynn is not unique. But the new effort with the Calm Team is a clear example of our ability to meet every challenge with an innovative perspective and a commitment to bringing people together. 

The Lynn Calm Team’s name invokes the feeling it hopes to create and was selected in part for its simple translation into Spanish: calma, calmness, tranquility. We hope that in the coming months, we are able to restore some of that calm to our community in a time when it is needed most.  

Jared Nicholson is mayor of Lynn.