BU TO WORK WITH LYNN TO CREATE EMERGENCY-RESPONSE TEAM

BY ALLYSHA DUNNIGAN| Lynn Item, February 16, 2022

 LYNN — Mayor Jared Nicholson’s office is partnering with Boston University’s MetroBridge Program to support the efforts on the All Lynn Emergency Response Team (ALERT). 

The MetroBridge Program helps communities address urban challenges and will be providing the city with a community-outreach strategy to educate and engage the community on its thoughts, perspectives and insights on unarmed crisis response. 

This next phase will add to the outreach work already done by the Lynn Racial Justice Coalition throughout the last year. 

“The goal of this project is to help meet needs in the community and it is therefore critical that we gain insight into the perspectives in the community on those needs,” said Nicholson. “We’re grateful for the support from MetroBridge in helping us do that.”

Nicholson’s administration said it realizes that without the perspective of the community, an unarmed crisis-response initiative will not be successful. 

With that being said, this partnership is a “critical step in this process” and they are thankful for MetroBridge’s leadership and expertise on this project.

Paige Dolci, program manager for the Initiative on Cities’ MetroBridge Program at Boston University (BU), said the program is very excited to be collaborating with Lynn on “such an important and timely community-engagement effort.”

“It’s rewarding to see Boston University students applying what they learn in the classroom to help ensure that a real-world initiative like ALERT successfully serves the community both now and into the future,” Dolci said. 

MetroBridge’s outreach is intended to be a multifaceted- and multilingual-outreach effort.

One of the leaders of the project, associate professor of political science Spencer Piston, said this partnership between Lynn and BU is exciting and important. 

“The BU team will use rigorous academic methods to gather input from the Lynn community,” Piston said. “This will help the City of Lynn devise alternatives to policing in service of the cause of racial justice.”

The Lynn Police Department has committed to being involved and having conversations about an unarmed crisis-response team. 

Police Chief Christopher Reddy said the department looks forward to meeting with the team from BU to learn about the MetroBridge Program and how it can help increase opportunities for all members of the community to be heard. 

“That is an important step in our efforts to develop new resources for those struggling with mental-health issues, substance-use disorder and homelessness,” Reddy said. “A struggle that affects so many in Lynn.”

The Rev. Bernadette Hickman-Maynard, from the Essex County Community Organization (ECCO), said the Lynn Racial Justice Coalition looks forward to working with MetroBridge to “continue the important work of surfacing the needs and perspectives of community members, which are crucial to creating the safe and effective unarmed crisis-response team all Lynners deserve.”

The Request for Proposals (RFP) for an ALERT consultant, who will be guiding the implementation strategy, will be going live this week.