By Martha Hanner and Ash Hartwell
We are deeply concerned regarding the potential cutback of funding for the Community Responders for Equity, Safety, and Service (CRESS) in the proposed FY2026 Town operating budget being presented to the Town Council.
In the aftermath of the national reaction to George Floyd’s murder in 2020, the Council passed a Resolution, committing Amherst to ending structural racism and achieving racial equity. The Council established the Community Safety Working Group (CSWG), with the goal to work to advance diversity, equity, inclusion and community safety in Amherst.
Many residents testified to the CSWG that they feared calling the police. After extensive community input and research, the CSWG recommended immediately creating the CRESS to be a civilian unarmed alternative to the Amherst Police Department, as a critical part of the pathway to racial justice in Amherst.
Currently the federal government’s rhetoric and actions, particularly the unlawful actions of ICE, are causing so many of our local residents to feel vulnerable and to fear for their rights and safety. Thus, our community’s need for the services of CRESS’s unarmed responders is far broader and more urgent than initially envisioned!
CRESS requires a threshold of staffing and support to function effectively. This includes: broad public awareness of how it can respond to concerns of safety and support in coordination with the Police Department; clear and widely known channels of communication for dispatch and response; strong, committed leadership and management; staff training, record-keeping, monitoring and reporting; and at its core, an adequate number of responders and hours of service that reflect the demand for its services.
CRESS is currently at the brink, with only five Responders, rather than the eight Responders hired in 2022. (They are dispatched as pairs.) The crucial post of Implementation Manager is funded by a grant which ends this July. Without greater support than what is provided in the current draft Town Budget, CRESS will be pushed below the threshold for even minimal effective functioning.
CRESS currently has a very capable, experienced Director. Under her leadership, the number of direct calls to CRESS, walk-ins, and total interactions is increasing each month (see recent data below and on the CRESS web page). Amherst Police and Fire Departments are beginning to refer cases to CRESS for follow-up. The Responders have shown skill in quickly de-escalating situations, particularly at the Amherst Survival Center and Craig’s Doors, avoiding the need for police intervention. Their interaction with local youth has received praise.
Although originally envisioned by the CSWG as operating 24/7, Dispatch and the Amherst Police Department expressed serious concern that the risk of violent incidents was too great after 10 PM. There seemed to be consensus that CRESS would operate shifts from 8 AM – 8 PM. Yet, the current location of CRESS in the Bangs Center, which closes at 4 PM and is not open on weekends, and the decrease in staffing, have limited the ability of CRESS to respond between 4PM and 8 PM, the very times and hours when their services are most needed (see the LEAP Amherst Community Responders Report).
Amherst received widespread recognition as one of the first communities nationwide to establish alternative safety responders. Other communities look to us for leadership. To pull back support for this enterprise now would represent an unfortunate step backward in the Town’s initial progress towards racial equity and social justice. This would tarnish Amherst’s reputation and represent a betrayal of the Town’s commitment to the community it serves.
In the words of the Amherst Community Safety Working Group’s Report:
“…the work of creating community safety and racial justice has new momentum which must be maintained and accelerated in the coming years…the entire community has a role to play in supporting encouraging and participating in envisaging and building a social fabric of justice, interconnectedness, and care that extends to all aspects of our town.”
Martha Hanner has lived in Amherst for 20 years.
Ash Hartwell lived in Amherst for 23 years, and moved to South Hadley in 2023.
THE AMHERST CURRENT 
Thank You, Ash and Martha, for your
excellent article on the work of CRESS
and the need for its services in Amherst!!!
Love, Scottie Faerber
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This is a well-written article. However, where was CRESS on Thursday, April 30th, 2025, when mayhem broke loose at ARMS? How were armed forces, aka APD, called in to quell a situation amongst children and their parents? Were guns flashed to cause a shelter-in-place? Has anyone addressed why an ambulance was not called to add the injured child(ren)? How will the children who were traumatized ever feel okay about entering a building where this kind of chaos took place? I know I would withdraw my child(ren) immediately and permanently upon learning of such violence and injury to her classmates, their parent(s), and teachers. But where was CRESS?
Mary Lou Conca
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I’m waiting for proof positive that CRESS represents a prudent expenditure of money. I don’t see it here. How about a full-throated, DETAILED defense of the program with both anecdotes and accumulated data from a Town Council member, published in the Amherst Bulletin? I see an enormous gap between intentions and execution here. The notion repeated above that we need to throw MORE money at this albatross is, for now, exactly the wrong one. As always, I’m open to persuasion, I would love to see the program achieve something real, but I’ve been in that posture for years. If there was some angry supreme being that needed to be appeased in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, I think we’ve done that. I do believe that there’s a constituency in Amherst that is satisfied in talking hour after hour about its virtuous intentions, but which never gets around to actually delivering on them. For many, that’s good enough. But the starting, and stopping, and starting again, and setting up task forces, arguing about their composition, and preparing reports that sit on a shelf (and contemplating turning down grants from the state) results in a surcharge on the buying power of the tax dollars going to the Town. OK, the Book and the Plow? Well, not quite, we are the Town of the Seminar.
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