D.A.’s Office: Under new program, crisis responders will immediately help homicide victims’ families
The grant will allow the the D.A.’s Office to recruit, train, and deploy 12 peer crisis responders who have lost loved ones to homicide and who come from different ethnic backgrounds and neighborhoods, Krasner said.
CARES stands for Crisis Assistance, Response, and Engagement for Survivors. After its program manager learns about a homicide from the Police Department, two peer crisis responders will be dispatched to speak to the victim’s family members wherever they are — at the crime scene, a hospital, the Medical Examiner’s Office, the Police Department, or the family’s home, Johnson-Harrell said.
Those responders, she said, will try to notify family members that a loved one was killed, so that a homicide detective is not the one to relay the news.
