The Portland Police Bureau has evidently started a pilot project that will place a mental health worker in a day-shift patrol car. The size, scale, the individuals involved, the budget, the data to be collected, the desired outcomes, the duration, are all unknown.

The speaker in the video is Crisis Intervention Training coordinator Liesbeth Gerritson.

Here’s what we wrote last month when a set of proposals were made to address the lack of trust between the Portland police and persons with a diagnosis of mental illness. This “pilot project” was not part of the initial proposal by Dan Saltzman, Rosie Sizer and Amanda Fritz.

“The proposed recommendations from Police Chief Sizer and Police Commissioner Saltzman lack dedicated funding, a time-line for implementation, responsible parties, and accountability benchmarks. Without these defining qualities, the proposal is bureaucratic smoke which obscures political weakness.”

READ – Response to Saltzman, Sizer, Fritz proposal: now do it.