Durham County will study whether the city’s HEART alternative-response program can be expanded beyond municipal boundaries. County commissioners authorized a feasibility study of countywide expansion. HEART teams respond to selected mental-health, welfare and nonviolent service calls. Alternative response programs depend on dispatchers correctly identifying calls that are safe for civilian teams.
The city program uses unarmed responders rather than police for eligible calls. The program director said HEART saved police about 8,000 response hours last year. Countywide service would cover a larger geography and may require different staffing and travel assumptions. Changes in crime reports or arrests can have several causes and do not alone prove a program’s effect.
City data cited by ABC11 showed fewer crime reports and arrests in the period examined. The same data indicated response times improved by more than three minutes. Police-hours saved measure workload transfer but not every outcome for the person receiving help.
Durham’s new police chief attended the county discussion. The study will consider whether operations can cover communities outside the city. Feasibility work typically precedes a funding and implementation decision. The county has not approved an expansion, and the cited outcome figures require fuller methodological context.
County expansion would require rules for calls originating outside city dispatch boundaries and for situations in which civilian teams request police or medical backup. Travel time becomes more important across rural or unincorporated areas. A feasibility analysis also can distinguish fixed program costs from costs that scale with call volume, shift coverage and the number of response teams available at once.
What to watch: The feasibility study’s staffing, cost and dispatch recommendations. Public discussion and any county funding vote.