Posted on 08/31/25
| News Source: FOX45
Baltimore, MD - Aug. 31, 2025 - Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen is calling for major reforms in the city’s handling of behavioral health crises, saying failures in the system are leaving vulnerable residents without proper care and putting lives at risk.
Cohen spoke with WBAL NewsRadio’s C4 and Bryan Nehman on Friday, following a City Council hearing which was prompted by the fatal police shooting of a 70-year-old woman experiencing a mental health episode in her home.
“Mental health should not be a death sentence,” Cohen said.
According to Cohen, Baltimore’s computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, which connects police, fire and EMS, has failed at least six times in recent months.
He called the breakdowns “unacceptable” and said the problems can delay emergency response when residents dial 911 or the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline.
He also pointed to problems with the city’s mobile crisis response system, which was established in 2017 to send clinicians instead of police when appropriate.
According to Cohen, less than 1% of calls coded as behavioral health crises are actually diverted to those clinical teams, which he noted as “unacceptable.”
The council president also said that not enough Baltimore police officers have received crisis intervention training, which teaches de-escalation strategies for mental health emergencies.
Despite that, Cohen is feeling more optimistic as he shared that Police Commissioner Richard Worley has pledged that all new academy classes will now undergo the full 40-hour training required for de-escalation techniques.
And while police involvement is inevitable, he also stressed that officers themselves do not want to spend so much of their time on behavioral health calls.
“A lot of people sign up to be police officers because they want to go after criminals,” he said. “They don’t want to be spending 40% of their day just responding” to mental health cases.
The council president criticized what he described as a fragmented system of nonprofits and agencies with no single point of accountability.
“Someone needs to say, ‘I own it,’ and de-silo and declutter all these nonprofits and other governmental agencies so that when people are out on the streets, they are able to get the care they need,” he said.
He argued that Baltimore’s health department should take the lead, but said the agency has weakened in recent years.
Cohen also weighed in on how the city should use settlement money from opioid cases and a $62 million jury verdict against ghost gun manufacturers.
“When we have a health department that has atrophied, when the state’s attorney needs body cam money, when the police department needs a new CAD system — let’s do an internal assessment of what our needs are and go from there,” Cohen said.
“This is a rare moment where Baltimore does have external money. Let’s make sure we’re putting it to the best and highest use.”
“As we’re seeing homicide numbers come down, let’s make sure we’re also responding when it’s a mental health crisis,” Cohen said while sharing his belief that the funds would be well spent on strengthening the systems that are currently in place such as CAD and the health department.