Denver seeks $2.46 million to continue citywide crisis-response program

Denver is seeking a proposed $2.46 million grant to continue its Crisis Intervention Response Unit, which pairs behavioral-health clinicians with police, firefighters, sheriff’s deputies and criminal-justice personnel.

The proposed Caring for Denver Foundation grant would total $2,463,443 for a term from Sept. 1, 2026, through Nov. 30, 2027. The Denver Police Department’s grant request says the money would support the existing program without expanding its stated staffing or geographic footprint.

CIRU has 19 licensed behavioral-health clinicians: 15 assigned with police, three with the Denver Fire Department and one with the Denver Sheriff Department. The unit responds to people experiencing mental-health or co-occurring substance-use crises, with the goals of de-escalating encounters, connecting people with longer-term services and reducing unnecessary arrests and emergency-system use. Clinicians also work in Denver’s jail and court systems.

The request says the program has handled more than 54,000 calls over roughly a decade, with fewer than 1.5% resulting in an arrest or citation. It provides no newer annual call total, separate arrest and citation counts, referral totals, emergency-department or jail-diversion figures, or methodology for the cumulative numbers.

The request also does not identify changes to staffing levels, vacancies, clinician schedules or neighborhood-by-neighborhood coverage. Its only geographic description is “citywide,” so it does not establish whether coverage would change in particular neighborhoods under the proposed agreement.

The grant had not been shown as finally approved as of Sept. 4. The Health and Safety Committee agenda listed the item for a Sept. 9 consent action but also said the committee meeting was canceled. Although the agenda’s action description uses the word “approves,” the materials reviewed do not include a completed City Council vote, signed agreement or other evidence that the grant was executed.

The request says CIRU began in 2016 and expanded over time, but does not say whether the proposed funding would change the current deployment of 15 police, three fire and one sheriff clinician.