City of Columbia’s Office of Violence Prevention considers liaison for public transit
Olivia Hayes
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The City of Columbia’s Office of Violence Prevention is considering adding two “community navigation liaisons” to help defuse problems on the city’s public transit.
“What this program does is it puts individuals on the transit lines with the driver to de-escalate and to actually navigate folks to services so that they’re not, so the drivers can actually drive,” D’Markus Thomas-Brown, head of the Office of Violence Prevention, said during the office’s advisory committee meeting on Thursday.
The office plans to issue a request for qualifications, allowing companies to submit their bids for the contract. The office requires the liaisons to come in having already completed the required training. Those trainings include a peer support certification through the state and/or HEAT Training, which stands for Habilitation, Empowerment, Accountability and Therapy.
“We want agencies that actually have, they have peers in those HEAT-certified trainings and are willing to allow their peers to work directly with us in transit,” Thomas-Brown said.
Violence prevention officials also ask that the candidates have valid de-escalation training if they don’t have HEAT training and be well-versed in adult mental health first aid.
The Office of Violence Prevention wants these liaisons to work with management from Go COMO — the city’s public transit arm — and the task force to decide which bus lines need the most intervention. The City of Columbia runs six bus routes.
Matt Stephens, deputy chief of the Columbia Police Department, said in an interview after the meeting that the incidents officers respond to vary.
“We have occasionally … you have people that are fighting on the bus. You’ll have somebody that’s disruptive. I mean, some of it’s assaults, some of it’s just nuisance activity,” Stephens said.
He said responding officers treat all of the incidents with their standard department protocol.
Following the city’s request for qualification, the Columbia City Council will have to give the final approval at its Sept. 15 meeting. Thomas-Brown tells ABC 17 News the soonest that would be is at their Sept. 15th meeting. They are hoping to implement the liaisons on the bus lines starting in October.
The program’s cost is $99,360.
An ABC 17 News Investigates report in August 2024 detailed some of the issues reported on city buses, fights, threats and drunk passengers.