Iowa City, Johnson County pilot program will create alternative response to non-emergency 911 calls

IOWA CITY — Iowa City and Johnson County are taking part in a 15-month pilot program that will aim to develop a field mediation protocol that will serve as another response to 911 or other crisis line calls typically handled by local law enforcement.

Field mediation is meant to serve as an unarmed alternative to law enforcement response for non-violent, non-emergency calls typically involving interpersonal conflict. Field mediation can be used for instances such as noise complaints, disputes between neighbors, custody exchanges and loitering.

The city and county were selected to receive technical assistance from Dignity Best Practices, a nonprofit research and consulting company that helped establish a field mediation team in Dayton, Ohio.

Dayton has a dedicated Mediation Response Unit, launched in 2022, that can be dispatched directly from 911. The team has responded to thousands of calls in the past three years, with less than 4 percent of those calls needing eventual police involvement.

“We want to both support police, fire and EMS to become excellent referral engines to other resources locally, but also to build more of an extended field presence for human services,” said Dan Kornfield, executive director of Dignity Best Practices. “If you call 911 and it's not a fire and it's not a medical emergency, it's just automatically police, even if the issue is kids are loitering on the sidewalk, or my neighbor's trash can is touching my truck, a lot of things we wouldn't imagine our 911 calls are, especially in urban areas.”

The program will expand existing efforts throughout Iowa City and Johnson County to divert certain emergency calls to alternative response teams.

The Iowa City Police Department has a co-crisis responder team comprised of a mental health liaison and an officer, who respond to calls when an individual is having a mental health related crisis.

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“Both mental health crisis and interpersonal conflict calls that are not actually criminal calls, we believe can have a better response. And that better response is often both unarmed and somebody who can take longer than a police officer can usually take on a scene that's not a crime, to try to actually build relationship, help people calm down and talk through what their options are,” said Kornfield.

Cross agency collaboration will develop protocols

Exactly how field mediation could be implemented across Johnson County still is up in the air as specifics will be developed through a cross agency working committee.

The primary goal of the committee is to identify what types of calls could be diverted to a field mediation team and developing specific field protocol.

“We want to build the field protocol, meaning how do responders respond to conflict in a way that's safe and helpful and repeatable. … So, for example, under what circumstances would you talk to two people who are in a dispute separately versus together, or both, but in a particular sequence,” said Kornfield.

The group also will dive into specific procedures, such as how the mediation team should introduce themselves, what they should wear and other details.

The tentative plan is to cross-train CommUnity Crisis Services’ existing mobile crisis responders in field mediation and have them respond to field mediation calls later this year and potentially begin dispatching them from 911 in early 2027.

However, all timelines for the program are tentative, as the working group will dictate plans for implementation.

“Ultimately, there are a lot of people involved in the project who would like to see 911 integration. … Since CommUnity has their own (mobile crisis number), what will likely happen is that we will start with using just that number, and then hopefully eventually be able to provide enough data to get more buy in and more support around what would be needed to get it implemented within 911,” said Remington.

A working group will begin meeting twice a month starting in February. The group will include representatives from the Iowa City Police Department, Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, Johnson County Ambulance Service, county attorney’s office, Iowa City Community School District board, and other community organizations. The full working group roster still is being finalized.

“We are interested in hearing or having involvement from any group within the community that thinks that a program such as this could impact them or be impactful for them,” said County Supervisor Mandi Remington.

Remington brought the program to the county, and eventually Iowa City, after being introduced to it through Local Progess, a national network of local elected officials.

“We asked for letters of support from law enforcement, from the city, from community organizations, and Iowa City was one of the applicants that submitted the most letters of support, which really suggested to us that there was strong alignment in the system to want to go in this direction. … that seems like some real commitment, and also great to have alignment across the jurisdiction,” said Kornfield.

Sheriff Brad Kunkel during the program application process expressed to the board of supervisors concerns about his office potentially losing authority over call response. Kunkel told The Gazette his office plans to be involved in the working group.

Next Steps

Representatives from Dignity Best Practices plan to visit the Iowa City area during the last week of January. As part of the visit, the team will meet with stakeholders, participate in a ride along with the Iowa City Police Department, and hold a community conversation event.

Comments: megan.woolard@thegazette.com

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