Lawyer claims Worcester knew its 911 system discriminated those with disabilities
A lawyer accusing Worcester of endangering citizens by sending armed police officers to handle 911 calls related to mental health crises says the city's history of discriminating against people with disabilities led to the city being sued on Monday.
Steven Schwartz is one of several lawyers representing three mental health organizations who argue the city is discriminating against those suffering from mental health emergencies.
The lawsuit from the organization claims that during an emergency involving suicidal thoughts, panic, psychosis or trauma, Worcester's "default" is to send armed police officers. The organizations, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of Central Massachusetts, NAMI-Massachusetts and the Parent-Professional Advocacy League, all argue that officers are not trained to manage these types of situations and their presence alone can make the situation worse.
In comparison, those with physical emergencies, such as a heart attack or other medical crisis, are met by EMTs and paramedics trained to handle the situation, according to the lawsuit.
The organizations view this treatment as unfair and a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In an interview with MassLive on Wednesday, Schwartz claimed Worcester was aware of how its 911 system discriminated against people and set up a task force to address mental health emergencies. The formation of the task force eventually led to the creation of the Mental Health Crisis Response Team pilot program in 2023, which only lasted for 18 months, according to Schwartz.
"Worcester knew about this," Schwartz said. "Worcester acknowledged it. It set up a task force to fix it, created a pilot and then it abandoned it."
UMass Memorial Health-Community Healthlink, a community behavioral health center, partnered with the city on the pilot program until it was completed in Fall 2024, according to a statement from UMass Memorial Health. Following the pilot program's end, Community Healthlink provided a summary of the program to the city.
A spokesperson for the City of Worcester declined to comment on the lawsuit, adding that the city has not been served the complaint as of Wednesday.
When asked about how the city is discriminating against those with disabilities, Schwartz pointed to two instances laid out in the lawsuit.
Both instances involved two different autistic boys, one aged 10 and the other 14.
In the first instance, officers kicked down the 14-year-old's bedroom door and physically restrained him. In the other incident, they fractured the 10-year-old's arm, according to the lawsuit.
"They're not trained to deal with a mental health emergency," Schwartz said about police officers.
Instances of armed police officers confronting people suffering mental health crises are not unique to Worcester.
In 2025, Fall River officers responded to a 911 call of a man suffering a mental health crisis. The man, 38-year-old Domonick Knight, entered a gunfight with police before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to an autopsy.
Schwartz, however, said that instead of suing individual communities, the organizations chose to sue the second biggest city in the state, Worcester.
"There's a responsibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act to treat people equally," Schwartz said. "Once a city decides to offer that program, as it does in Worcester, then it has to do so equally without discriminating against people with disabilities."
Worcester does have a crisis intervention program, which is run by UMass Memorial Health Community HealthLink. Workers are not dispatched through the 911 system, but local police departments can request support at any time, according to a statement UMass Memorial Health gave to MassLive on Thursday.
"When contacted, our crisis clinicians prioritize these calls and respond alongside officers to provide on‑site crisis assessment, intervention, and stabilization," the statement reads.
This is different from the pilot program, where 911 dispatchers were able to directly contact Community HealthLink's crisis response team to respond to mental health emergencies at the same time as police, according to UMass Memorial Health.
The crisis intervention program's website has the instructions to call 911 in the event of a mental health crisis. UMass Memorial Health says the information provided on the website pertains to the pilot program and intends to take the site down.
The plaintiffs are asking a federal judge to order Worcester to overhaul its 911 system so that mental health emergencies receive a clinical, unarmed response comparable to the care provided during physical health crises. They argue the city must redesign its dispatch policies, train staff and create or reinstate a dedicated mental health crisis team to comply with federal disability law.
Schwartz stressed, however, that the lawsuit is solely focused on Worcester's 911 program and not the city's police department. The Worcester Police Department has been the subject of scrutiny for its use of excessive and unjustified force in a 2024 Justice Department report . The report was part of a two-year investigation that found instances of officers unnecessarily and rapidly escalating minor encounters with the public, including with people who had behavioral disabilities or were in the midst of mental health crises, according to the report.
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