Civil rights advocates are turning up the pressure on San Jose, accusing the city of routinely routing mental health 911 calls to police instead of to non-police crisis teams and warning that the practice may violate federal disability law. In a letter sent earlier this month, the ACLU and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law fault the city for how it runs the local 911 dispatch center and say a pause in talks with Santa Clara County has stalled efforts to grow civilian crisis response. The groups caution that if cooperation does not resume, their dispute could move into court. Susan Mizner, director emeritus of the ACLU’s disability rights program, told San José Spotlight, “We are hoping that the letter will prompt the city to send the experts within the city on its emergency response system to join our conversation and our negotiations with the county.” The outlet notes this latest warning follows earlier demands and that the city pulled out of interagency talks in December. According to Santa Clara County Behavioral Health Services, TRUST is designed to de-escalate psychiatric and substance use crises without sending armed officers and to connect people to follow-up care. TRUST and similar responders were sent to roughly 2 percent of about 60,000 San Jose 911 incidents that year. The letter argues that these trends may conflict with federal disability protections, including the Americans With Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, legal theories the ACLU and allied groups have raised in similar challenges. Advocates say they want the letter to spur San Jose back to the bargaining table with Santa Clara County and to expand non-police crisis teams so that more people in mental health emergencies receive medical and peer support instead of an armed response. If the city declines to reengage, the civil rights coalition has left the door open to a lawsuit, while stressing that both sides still say they would rather hammer out a negotiated fix than battle it out in court.
This article is an AI-assisted summary. All facts and figures are drawn from the original report: https://hoodline.com/2026/04/aclu-puts-san-jose-on-notice-over-mental-health-911-calls/