DURHAM, N.C. — When a business called 911 about a man accused of trespassing at a strip mall, Durham did not send an armed police officer. Instead, Rob Crisp, a peer support specialist, and Allie Craft, a mental health clinician, arrived with water, snacks, hygiene supplies and fresh socks. The man had been carrying several garbage bags and a sofa. Crisp spoke with him slowly, drawing on his own past experience with drug addiction and housing instability. The team eventually helped move the man and his belongings to a nearby vacant lot, resolving the immediate dispute without an arrest or use of force. The response was handled by Durham’s Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team, known as HEART. Launched in 2022, the city’s unarmed community response program has handled more than 25,000 911 calls and now operates citywide. HEART responds to selected calls that city officials determined are unlikely to involve violence, including certain mental health crises, trespassing, panhandling, intoxication, indecency and welfare checks. The program also has a co-response unit that pairs clinicians with police officers, as well as a clinician stationed inside the 911 call center. “Honestly, I would say if you can send a social worker to a call that you could send a law enforcement officer and you got the same results, then it’s already a success,” said Ryan Smith, director of Durham’s Community Safety Department, which oversees HEART. Durham’s approach reflects a broader shift in emergency response after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. The number of U.S. cities with programs that send unarmed responders to some 911 calls has grown from six in 2020 to nearly 100, according to a national community responder database. Early research suggests Durham’s program may be changing how residents use emergency services. A preliminary study by Duke University researchers found an increase in 911 calls after HEART began, which could indicate greater public willingness to seek help. A separate study by the Research Triangle Institute found the program was associated with fewer arrests, that most surveyed police officers viewed it as helpful and that officers were rarely summoned to provide backup. The program has also earned acceptance within the Police Department, according to Patrice Andrews, who helped launch HEART while serving as Durham’s police chief. Officers initially worried about being responsible for protecting unarmed responders and questioned whether the program was an ideological challenge to traditional policing. Those concerns eased as HEART and police operated on the same dispatch channel, allowing officers and civilian responders to hear one another’s calls. Andrews said police came to view HEART as another part of Durham’s emergency response system alongside police, fire and emergency medical services. “They’re not police officers, but they are a part of the public safety net,” Andrews said. Durham officials designed the program after reviewing three years of 911 data and consulting residents, first responders and similar programs in other cities. The goal was to identify calls that rarely ended in violence and could be handled by clinicians and peer specialists instead of armed officers. That distinction matters because callers do not always describe an incident as a mental health crisis. They may report aggressive panhandling, loitering or a person refusing to leave a business. Leigh Mazur, an assistant director in the Community Safety Department, said dispatch decisions must be based on clear criteria rather than subjective judgments. Otherwise, she said, dispatchers may understandably choose police “on the side of caution” even when an armed response is unnecessary. Still, HEART cannot resolve the conditions underlying many of the calls it receives. On another recent response, a woman seeking help with an unsafe living situation asked the team about finding new housing. The only immediately available option was a homeless shelter, which she declined. Housing requests are common, Craft said. The limited supply of housing, medical care, behavioral health treatment and food assistance can leave responders able to stabilize a crisis without being able to offer a lasting solution. Nationally, researchers caution that relatively few alternative-response programs have been studied, and many lack the funding needed to take on more calls. Call volume can show how extensively a program is being used, but it does not reveal whether residents’ long-term circumstances improve. Durham is trying to expand beyond the initial 911 response. The city created Stabilization Services within the Community Safety Department last year to connect residents with longer-term support after a crisis. Anise Vance, who leads the initiative, said a successful 911 response should leave people in a more stable situation, but that stability is not the same as being connected to the resources they need. “Those services have to include some of the basic things in life,” Vance said. “They have to include housing. They have to include medical care. They have to include behavioral health care. They have to include food.” The longer-term goal is to address those needs early enough that fewer residents eventually require an emergency response. Whether Durham can build that broader support network — and whether its unarmed teams can safely handle a much larger share of 911 calls — remains unsettled. For now, HEART offers the city a different way to respond when a crisis calls for care and de-escalation more than enforcement.