Make funding CARE program a priority for city's mental health crisis calls

A few weeks ago, I was walking to my office in Albany Park, when I heard someone screaming near the Brown Line Kimball station. I followed the sound and saw a man in visible distress shouting into the air.

He was not yelling at anyone. He was not making threats. He was experiencing a crisis.

I stood there for maybe 30 seconds trying to assess the situation when I heard the sirens. Two police vehicles and an ambulance pulled up. The officers approached the unarmed man. He was agitated but not aggressive. The paramedics tried to engage with him, but he refused to get into the ambulance. Then, the man picked up a plastic bag and walked away.

Just like that, it was over. The officers stood around for a moment. The ambulance drove off. The man disappeared, blending into the neighborhood. And the train station resumed its rhythm, as if the man had never been there at all.

But he was. And he will be again. I’ve seen this scene play out too many times. That man and so many others will keep coming back because the inadequate system we have isn’t built to care for him. It’s designed to manage, contain and eventually forget.

The incident I mentioned and others like it aren’t public safety threats. They’re public health issues, and we need to treat them that way.

That’s why we need to fully fund and expand Chicago’s Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement, or CARE, program.

CARE is part of a national shift in how we respond to mental health crises, substance use and wellness emergencies.

CARE teams include mental health professionals, peer support workers and first responders. They bring compassion, not cuffs. They offer support, not punishment. They show up with the training and experience to de-escalate and connect people in a way that fosters caring. They’re already diverting crisis calls away from police and toward services that heal, and police departments themselves have welcomed their presence.

CARE was born from years of organizing by Black and Brown communities who demanded a system that centers care, not criminalization. By the time I was elected in 2019, Chicago residents had been fighting to reopen our city’s public mental health clinics. Together, we pushed for more — a citywide, nonpolice mobile crisis response. We won a pilot.

Then, we knocked on thousands of doors in 2022 to put the question to voters: Should the city reopen closed mental health centers and establish a program that dispatches mental health professionals and a first responder to handle mental health emergency calls instead of police?

Ninety-seven percent of voters across three wards — 6th, 20th and 33rd — said yes. Those Chicagoans made their will clear. Many other residents feel the same.

Still, CARE remains underfunded and limited in scope. The program faces short operating hours, staffing shortages, dispatch issues and weak coordination with our city’s mental health infrastructure. These aren’t failures — they’re signs that the model needs to grow. And that growth requires investment, especially as federal funding runs out.

We can afford to do this. In fact, we can’t afford not to. Right now, our city is spending hundreds of millions on police misconduct lawsuits and ballooning overtime costs. By sending the right responders to the right calls, we can prevent unnecessary use of force, reduce strain on police, lower incarceration rates and meet residents' needs before things spiral further. Divesting from police overtime and vacancies would give us the resources to do it right and to do it now.

CARE has the potential not just to save lives but to save money by breaking cycles of crisis and building systems of care. This is particularly urgent in this context where the Trump administration continues to cut funding for public health and threatens to institutionalize people suffering from mental illnesses.

Other cities have shown us what’s possible. Albuquerque’s Community Safety Department responds to behavioral health calls entirely separate from police. Denver’s Support Team Assistance Response, or STAR, program, sends mental health professionals and paramedics instead of officers, and it’s working. These cities are saving lives and building trust by treating mental health with the urgency and expertise it deserves.

Here in Chicago we have the vision, the road map and an administration that has shown commitment to this work. What we need now is a budget that meets the moment. We need to expand CARE’s hours and staffing, strengthen its ties to mental health clinics, train dispatchers and ensure no one is left screaming on a sidewalk, unseen and unsupported.

We’ve built so much already together. We cannot turn back now. Let’s invest in what works and help heal our city.

Ald. Rossana Rodríguez Sánchez represents the city's 33th Ward.