SAN FRANCISCO—To celebrate the fifth anniversary of San Francisco Fire Department’s (SFFD) Street Crisis Response Team (SCRT), which reached its milestone on Sunday, November 30, 2025, the SFFD had an open ceremony on Monday, December 1, 2025 at ten to 11:30 a.m. The celebration was hosted at the SFFD Headquarters on 698 Second Street in San Francisco in California 94107.
For more information, media may reach the SFFD by email at: firepio@sfgov.org. Now SCRT is one of the leading alternate response teams in the United States.
By summer of 2025, the SCRT teams had responded to over 63,963 calls, diverting an important number of calls from ‘mentally disturbed persons’’ from law enforcement, proving the success of the program as an alternative response.
SCRT is a first-of-its-kind in the United States, created by an Emergency Medical Services (EMS) agency and founded on Monday, November 30, 2020.The main goal of SCRT is to give resources to people who are experiencing behavioral health crises in San Francisco by reducing police escalation tactics through unnecessary police encounters and emergency department visits. By using multi-disciplinary teams including a community paramedic from the SFFD, a behavioral health clinician and a peer counselor from a community-based organization like Richmond Area Multi-Services (RAMS), who are trained in therapeutic de-escalation crises and care navigation tactics such as using rapid, trauma-informed care and connecting individuals to appropriate services such as urgent care, shelter and treatment.
SCRT started as single team operated in the Tenderloin District and have expanded to provide access across all districts in San Francisco around the clock services.
