Camille Theriaque took over as director of Amherst’s Community Responders for Equity, Safety and Service (CRESS) in April 2024 following a period of upheaval in the wake of the resignation of the department’s first director. The 60-year-old retired firefighter, who was the first woman to rise to the rank of lieutenant in Holyoke’s history, sat down recently with The Current’s David Porter to discuss CRESS’ performance over the last year and its challenges going forward.

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Porter: What appealed to you about the job initially?

Theriaque: I believe it’s the perfect combination of the emergency part of firefighting, and for me being a licensed social worker it’s the perfect melding of the two of them. I love that no day is the same, there are always different people, some of whom are in crisis, and I love being able to help them. 

Porter: Last year, you came into a situation that was less than ideal. The original director resigned a few months after being placed on leave and the department had to be overseen by an interim leadership group. What were some of the challenges?

Theriaque: What I inherited was a department in turmoil. The previous director’s leadership was very different from mine. I come from a public safety background, so I’m used to having rules and regulations and being very clear-cut about what our mission should be and should look like. When I came in, the first thing I did was to standardize the uniforms. A lot of people wanted there to be more individuality. However when you are in public safety, people need to be able to see you and know you are CRESS. When you see a firefighter you always know what a firefighter is, you always know what a police officer looks like. I wanted CRESS to be known the same way, that everybody knows who we are and knows they can come up to us at any time.

Porter: What are current staffing levels? The original plan was to have eight responders in four teams of two.

Theriaque: Originally when I came in there were eight responders, the implementation manager, and myself. Currently we have myself, an administrative assistant whom we added, and we have five responders. And, we are hiring for a sixth responder to make three teams of two. 

Porter: Have you seen positive developments in the last year?

Theriaque: I think people are starting to see us as a part of the town and a third branch of public safety. I don’t think the majority of people knew who CRESS was, and I’m working to change that. 

Porter: The town seems to be divided into three groups: people who have supported CRESS from the beginning and will defend it no matter what; people who supported the concept but are now questioning why CRESS hasn’t met some of the early expectations and assumptions; and those who weren’t on board from the beginning and probably still aren’t. What do you say to those people in the middle group? 

Theriaque: You can’t put into practice something if you don’t have a set standard of what the expectations are. There were these very broad expectations with no way to follow through to figure out what was going to be done. When I came in, my first 30 days was to get everyone on board, get uniforms, the timing, teamwork and team building. Then the next step was to work on procedures for dispatch. That’s been slow going; working on those is a priority, and we hope to have them executed by September 1. … Police and fire have been in existence for hundreds of years. CRESS is new.

Porter: Why has it taken so long for the protocols to be put in place so that CRESS can receive calls directly from police dispatch? That’s a question a lot of people have and it’s something that was a focus at recent Finance Committee meetings.

Theriaque: When I came in, officially and on paper, December 2023 it said CRESS was on dispatch. And that was the rollout. They have a different supervisor in dispatch now, and the original supervisor was like, “Well, until I get this I’m not going to do that.” But I will say this: this is something one of the responders said (reads from an account written by one of the responders) … 

“I believe it was a blessing that CRESS was not added to dispatch from the start for many reasons. The time allows us to truly show up for the community in ways we didn’t even know we were needed. It gave us the chance to connect with people who lost trust or never had trust in the town or who had been let down by the system. Many of the folks who need CRESS to function don’t have faith in the town or people working for it. CRESS was able to show up, build connections and gain trust. The fact that we had a late start on dispatch only helped foster more natural connections in the community. That time allowed us to bridge some of the gaps and give people something to hold onto in order for CRESS to truly take root. 

I also believe that assigning calls to dispatch so soon would have harmed our reputation. Why would anyone trust a department that is (part) of the same system that has caused harm to people worldwide. 911 is still connected to the police. Instead CRESS has made meaningful connections to so many people in the community to help establish trust with people we have yet met. For example, now they can call us, come to us directly or refer a friend.” 

This is what I was trying to explain at the meeting. And some people are so stuck on the dispatch part of it. Even afterward, I don’t see that that’s where the majority of our calls are going to come from. 

Porter: So how important is the dispatch piece of it, then?

Theriaque: It’s still important, I think it’s very important. When we listen to some of the calls – because we also see the radio – there are calls where we say, “Ah, that could be a CRESS call.” 

But there are also calls that we go to that happen when we’re out. If there’s somebody having a dispute, we just sit and have a conversation; meeting people where they’re at, which is the most important thing. Finding out what is the root cause. That’s the biggest thing we’re there to do. Whereas police and fire go in, see a situation, take care of the situation at hand and leave, CRESS goes in and we have time to sit and listen to find out what is the root cause. 

For example, at CVS they had students in there that were stealing. So we went in and talked to the students. For some of them it was that they were bored; some of it, who knows, maybe they were hungry. We are able to sit there and say, OK, if someone needs assistance, we can send them to Amherst Survival Center, we can let them know there are other avenues for getting food. 

Porter: The budget recently passed by the town froze two responder positions. How will you meet your goals going forward while understaffed?

Theriaque: Well, the only thing I can say is we work within the confines of what we have. We will do the best we can with what we have. We’re not going to change how we deal with people. 

One of the things I want people to understand is, you cannot set up a brand new department with very wide parameters and ideas of what should be and expect a miracle. It takes three to five years to get something up and running. And then to actually sit here and say it’s running like it’s supposed to be, it takes time. 

And the same thing about the number of people who have been here, who are gone, if you look at any other department in Amherst, it’s not just us. I had to sit there and listen to this, and got really upset about it. Because if you listened at the meeting to the number of people who have left the police department, and nothing was ever said. I think that’s just the difference in the culture of people now. I stay in a job because I need a job; now, people will leave and go here, there and everywhere.

I came out of retirement because I believed in this … I love my job. I absolutely love my job.