by Police Free Penn (PFP)
Penn announced on Apr. 11 that it will trial a co-responder model for mental health emergencies. This model pairs University of Pennsylvania Police Department (UPPD) officers with mental health clinicians to respond to students experiencing a mental health crisis, despite data and stories from our community showing that police officers frequently escalate these situations.
We saw this before when the City of Philadelphia announced its co-responder model in 2020. Later that same year, Walter Wallace Jr. was murdered by police responding to his mental health crisis. During his moment of greatest need, police shot and killed him. Community members, led by mental health workers, responded by forming the Treatment Not Trauma Coalition to create a non-police crisis response. Despite these efforts, the city continued to expand the co-responder model by including police officers in crisis response teams.
Police do not make us safer, especially during mental health crises. At least one third, and up to one half, of people killed by the police in the US are disabled, according to a 2016 Ruderman Foundation Report. Time and again, across the nation, we’ve seen police officers respond to mental health crises with guns drawn. In 2022 alone, at least 110 people were killed by police officers responding to a mental health crisis or conducting a welfare check.
UPPD officers that currently respond to mental health crises on campus have a disturbing track record in this community. Penn police harass Black and brown Philadelphians in and around Penn’s campus, including its own students. They tear gassed Black residents of 52nd street during the summer of 2020. They arrested and charged 19 protestors, nearly all students, for participating in the Fossil Free Penn demonstration at the Penn-Yale football game in 2022.
Associate Vice Provost for University Life Sharon Smith calls this response part of a “community of care.” But further entangling mental healthcare with policing pulls funding away from the actual resources needed to increase safety and wellness. This co-responder model was proposed to the Board of Trustees in March of this year, but the announcement makes no mention of student input. The Board of Trustees, which is not accountable to the students or the community around Penn, is claiming to have our best interests at heart. Why are they deciding to fund more policing, while ignoring actual needs expressed by the students and larger Penn community?
For years, students have asked for increased availability of mental health providers at CAPS, since students in distress often wait a month or more to talk with a counselor. The Penn Disabled Coalition has advocated for accessibility on campus, and for the continuation of masking and testing precautions during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Demonstrators arrested and charged for protesting Penn’s refusal to save the UC Townhomes, pay PILOTs, and divest from fossil fuels have demanded that Penn drop the charges, stop retaliatory disciplinary hearings, and respect their right to dissent.
As Penn actively displaces Black community members and neglects its responsibility to care for its students, workers, and broader community, we have mobilized to create the care we need. This spring, resident advisors and graduate students unionized to demand that Penn recognize their status as workers and compensate them for their labor. The Coalition to Save the University City Townhomes continues its fight to preserve deeply affordable housing for residents of the Black Bottom. Campus organizers held encampments, teach-ins, and protests to call for divestment from fossil fuels and preservation of Philadelphia’s Chinatown. We are building gardens, creating safety in crises, learning together through reading and practice, caring for each other through mutual aid, and equipping ourselves with the tools and skills we need to survive organized abandonment.
Students and community members who are most impacted by policing know that care means more resources, not more cops. It is a deliberate choice by the administration to fund policing over initiatives that actually promote safety. We don’t want Penn’s co-responders. Our communities need housing, just compensation, and accessible, police-free mental healthcare.
If Penn cares about the wellness of this community, it can start by ensuring that we have access to the resources we’ve been demanding for years. For now, we know: we keep us safe.
Penn Disorientation Guide 