Letter: Underfunding CRESS Undermines Public Safety

The following letter was sent to the Amherst Finance Committee on May 20, 2025.

I attended the Finance Committee meeting on Thursday 5/15 where it became abundantly clear, from the dispatch supervisor’s statements, that calls that come into the Amherst Police Department (APD) have not been dispatched to the town’s civilian responder department CRESS. He stated that the procedures that CRESS created in order for the calls to be dispatched to them have never been approved by the town which meant dispatch could not dispatch calls to CRESS. This was supposed to happen years ago when CRESS was first established. 

Why has this not happened? 

CRESS is being severely underutilized and being penalized for not being able to carry out it full responsibilities and be an alternative to policing. Why is APD, with 45 officers, only having one position frozen while CRESS with five responders is having two positions frozen and the implementation manager position (which is a de facto assistant director) being eliminated due to the grant funding ending? CRESS will be severely understaffed if it does not have an assistant director and have the ability to hire the three other vacant responder positions. The town made a commitment to our residents when CRESS was created to have an independent department in our town with unarmed responders to respond to all non-violent calls/incidents as recommended by the Community Safety Working Group (CSWG).

This is a disservice to our town. I am pleading with you to not accept the Town Manager’s recommendation as it pertains to CRESS. This is my second appeal, since I had sent an email to the town council previously.

Debora Ferreira

Debora Ferreira is Co-Chair ot the town’s Community Safety and Social Justice Committee (CSSJC) and a former member of CSWG.