Unarmed emergency responders Nevada Sanchez and Sean Martin take a police dispatch call in southeast Albuquerque, New Mexico, a city with high rates of violent crime and police shootings.

They have no enforcement powers or protective equipment and say they use their voices and brains to deescalate encounters with people in mental health and substance abuse crises.

On some occasions they may have saved lives.

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Albuquerque, with the second highest rate of police killings among U.S. cities over 250,000 people, according to Mapping Police Violence, has set up one of the country’s most ambitious civilian responder programs to offer help rather than law enforcement to people in crisis.

Such initiatives have spread like “wildfire” across the United States since the 2020 murder of George Floyd highlighted police killings of people of color and those suffering from mental illness or substance abuse, said Alex Vitale, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College.