WS Chronicle

By Hate Out of Winston 

 Winston Salem’s BEAR Team has been responding to mental health and substance use emergency calls since 2023. As the Team has taken off, Hate Out of Winston has been keeping an ear to the ground about their service quality, as we advocated for the Team’s creation back in 2021. In 2024, we canvassed neighborhoods in the 27105 zip code, where the highest concentration of overdoses and policing occur. Hearing that the public didn’t even know BEAR exists, that police are still responding to mental health-related calls, and that those who do call BEAR receive inconsistent service, we realized that BEAR will fail if it does not build mutual understanding with the community. To close this gap, we need a Community Oversight Committee for BEAR.  

On Feb. 12, Hate Out of Winston met with City Councilmembers Scippio and Joiner, as well as Assistant City Manager Wojda and Community Assistance Liaison Stowe, to propose the Community Oversight Committee on BEAR, which we’ve demanded since September. Council members requested that we propose the committee first in this closed meeting, before receiving approval to present it to the Public Safety Committee.  

This closed meeting turned out not to be an opportunity to propose the committee, but an attempt to shut it down. 

In the meeting, Hate Out proposed a majority Black Community Oversight Committee of impacted residents and emergency mental healthcare professionals who are not employed by the City. These members should meet monthly to track City-County spending on BEAR, prevent unnecessary police responses, ensure smooth transitions from BEAR to case management services, and further integrate City-County mental healthcare. The full presentation can be viewed at https://www.canva.com/design/DAGeD4TzEWo/7Z19CH2_d5Px_hmaem5vTg/edit.   

Our main point? Taxpayers deserve transparency from our public safety services. 

The City’s response? BEAR is a new service making excusable mistakes; the City staff already oversee BEAR; the City doesn’t want to raise property taxes to fund BEAR; the word “oversight” implies an attack on the cops; and the public should trust the WSPD when they respond to mental health and substance use emergencies because our police department is moral, ethical, and in solidarity with Black lives. 

The council members and assistant city manager showed us Chief Penn’s slideshow about lower crime statistics in Winston Salem. They stated that lower crime rates prove policing works to imply that there is no need for more non-police funding. But are we actually experiencing fewer crimes due to policing? Could that reduction be the result of BEAR interventions? 

The city is unwilling to free us from dependence on the cops and invest our taxpayer dollars in public safety alternatives. Are our city council members more concerned about protecting their positions among pro-cop constituents than being reliable stewards of our tax dollars, or more importantly, stewards of Black lives? 

This City isn’t addressing the issue at hand: police do escalate mental health and substance use emergencies; the WSPD has abused Black constituents; and the BEAR Team is undermarketed and precariously funded. If the people don’t know that BEAR is an option, we are less likely to access and advocate for it. If the people receive a police response instead of BEAR, we will be underserved at best and endangered at worst. If we center cops in every conversation about public safety, BEAR will never get the resources it needs to prove the value of their services.  

BEAR lacks community oversight, even community trust, under a presidency eager to grant police immunity, revoke civil rights protections, and divest from public services and public well-being – from HUD grants suddenly frozen for HBCU Research Centers of Excellence, to Department of Education funding being pulled from Winston Salem Teach. Meagre grants without community accountability cannot sustain the BEAR Team, as Councilmember Scippio alleges. We need a Community Oversight Committee NOW.