LYNN — The city is about to take a huge step on June 3 with the start of the Lynn Calm Team (LCT) pilot program. The LCT is an unarmed alternative response group. The launch event will take place at 5 p.m. at the Lynn City Hall front steps.
The Item spoke to both Mayor Jared C. Nicholson and the woman who helped lead the charge for the program – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer Faustina Cuevas – to learn about the team before it gets started.
“The idea for an unarmed response team was originally put forward by community members led by the Lynn Racial Justice Coalition, and that was in 2021. And it has been a project that the city has been working on in collaboration with those community members and other partners ever since,” Nicholson said. “The launch next week is a major milestone that’s been a long time in the works.”
He expressed that the launch date finally being around the corner is really exciting, commending Cuevas and others involved for the work that they have been doing to get the team to this point.
“It is the launch of the pilot, so we still have a lot of questions about how it’s going to work on the ground, but we’ve approached the preparation for this moment with a lot of care and thoughtfulness, and I think we’re in a great position,” Nicholson said.
The City has made some new hires for the team to get started, and Nicholson is excited about those who stepped into the roles.
“I’ve been running point on the project, first under Mayor (Thomas) McGee and now under Mayor Nicholson,” Cuevas said. “I think for me, it’s been a long journey to get here, so it’s really exciting to see it almost begin at its sort of launch point.”
She described the journey as a labor of love and a call to action brought forth by a grassroots organization.
“They said to then Mayor McGee, ‘Hey, this is important.’ And then Mayor Nicholson said, ‘Absolutely,’ and signed right on. I think maybe day two of his administration, he said, ‘We’re going to do this,’ and that really excited me because I was able to continue the work I had started, and here we are. Like the mayor said: It is a pilot, so we have a lot to learn, but it’s important that we start somewhere,” she said.
When asked what inspired her to take a leading role in the program, Cuevas noted her title as the DEI inclusion officer and how it closely relates to the work that will be done by the LCT.
“The idea is that people are able to access help for mental, behavioral, and community concerns in a culturally competent way, and that they’re able to get access to these resources from folks that look like them (and) speak their language,” she said.
Also mentioned was Eliot Community Human Services, which has partnered with LCT.
“They have a really deep set of experience and capabilities in the mental behavioral health field. When we were going through this process, we learned that they had recently launched a team on the ground here in Lynn, the Community Behavioral Health Center, as part of a statewide initiative,” Nicholson said.
While Eliot was getting that team started, Lynn was in the middle of planning for LCT, and the city saw a perfect opportunity to partner up with them.
“The other really important aspect of that is the conversations we had with Eliot and its leadership and its folks on the ground who expressed a really strong commitment to the values that we were seeking to honor in this work,” he said.
Nicholson said the partnership has been really productive, and they are “looking forward to the next phase.”
Another thing LCT looked into was other response teams to help find what would work for the city.
“We worked with several consultants on this to do nationwide benchmarking around what other programs are doing, what the successes are, and what the challenges are. We actually looked at many, many different programs,” Cuevas said.
These programs included one in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a program in Eugene, Oregon, called CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets), and another called the Denver STAR (Support Team Assisted Response) Program. Cuevas explained that CAHOOTS was one of the longest-running programs in the country.
“We learned a lot about the varying factors. Some of these programs are just different. They’re in different communities and they have different needs. So what we did, and what our consultants did, was take that information, come to Lynn, do some forums, talk to the community, and see what would work here in Lynn, and where we landed is what works,” she said.
Cuevas also noted that the program would eventually have its own number and would be separate from emergency response, as it’s for nonemergency community concerns.
“We put a lot of thought into defining success. We have a community advisory committee that we formed, and it’s a great group of folks that are really excited about this initiative, and we’re hiring for a program administrator that is going to be working for the city out of the Public Health Department,” Nicholson said. “That person will be charged in part with tracking the success of the program, measuring the success of the program, evaluating the success of the program.
“We have worked with outside consultant partners, and one of them is the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, and they wanted to stay on board with this project in order to help us with that data evaluation piece.”
Nicholson also emphasized that this team is meant to complement the existing public safety team and that it’s important to see the bigger picture.
“We have tremendous support coming from our existing public safety agencies for the people that they serve. We see this as fitting in as an independent alternative, that then complements what those other agencies are doing,” he said.
Nicholson continued that currently, none of those agencies are collecting information about immigration status, and right now, there are concerns, and maybe misconceptions or apprehensions, that he views as completely understandable.
“We hope that having this alternative will prove to be valuable for that reason as well,” he said.
Nicholson also mentioned that the funding for LCT is coming from the budget, opioid settlement funds from the Opioid Working Group, grants and ARPA funds.
