HOUSTON — In a county of more than five million people, public safety is never a one-tool job. Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis is making the case that keeping neighborhoods safe requires not only responding to crime, but investing earlier — before a behavioral-health crisis becomes an arrest, before neighborhood tensions become gunfire and before domestic violence turns deadly.

Ellis, alongside Georgetown Law’s Center for Innovations in Community Safety, has released Advancing Safer Communities in Harris County, a report recommending an additional $4.5 million for three community-safety initiatives launched in 2022: the Holistic Assistance Response Team (HART), RISE community violence interruption program, and domestic violence prevention and intervention programs. The additional funding would bring the proposed investment in the programs to $15.3 million.

For Ellis — a longtime civil-rights leader with more than four decades in public service — the philosophy is straightforward: good government should be smart enough to stop some emergencies from becoming emergencies in the first place.

“For too long, our public safety systems have been built to respond only after harm has already happened,” Ellis said, arguing that mental-health and substance-use challenges often require treatment rather than a jail cell. “We have four years of proof that these programs work. Now we have an obligation to make these programs permanent.”

 Harris County community safety leaders gather for the release of Advancing Safer Communities in Harris County, a new report highlighting the results of HART, RISE and domestic-violence prevention initiatives while calling for an additional $4.5 million investment to strengthen and sustain proven community-based safety strategies.
 Ivonne Godinez 

HART: Sending the Right Help

HART may be the clearest example of that approach. The program dispatches unarmed interdisciplinary response teams to nonviolent calls involving behavioral health, homelessness, substance use and other quality-of-life concerns. Harris County Public Health confirms that HART began in March 2022 and expanded throughout all Harris County Sheriff’s Office districts by 2025.

The newly released report says HART has now answered more than 31,000 calls, connected more than 5,000 residents to care, and freed thousands of hours for deputies and emergency medical personnel to concentrate on situations requiring their specialized response.

That is not about replacing law enforcement. It is about letting law enforcement do more law enforcement.

“Community safety cannot rest on law enforcement alone,” said Mariela Ruiz-Angel, Georgetown Law’s Director of Community Safety Initiatives and a report co-author. She emphasized behavioral health, crisis response and prevention as complementary tools that allow police to focus on situations where an armed law-enforcement response is truly necessary.

RISE: Interrupting Violence Before the Trigger Is Pulled

The county’s RISE — Relentless Interrupters Serving Everyone — program takes prevention directly into neighborhoods. Harris County’s strategic plan identifies RISE expansion as part of its objective to reduce violent crime, using trusted “credible messengers” to interrupt conflicts and defuse tensions before they escalate.

According to the new report, Cypress Station — where RISE was piloted alongside other public-safety interventions — experienced a 36% decline in crime, including a 48% decrease in family violence and 34% decrease in aggravated robberies during the first two years of the initiative.

Domestic-violence initiatives provide the third pillar. The report says county programs have assisted more than 5,000 survivors and children in safely leaving abusive situations while delivering more than 20,000 hours of therapeutic care to 1,000 families.

And then comes the taxpayer test.

The report estimates Harris County could save more than $5 million in detention and legal expenses if an expanded HART prevents 500 additional low-level jail bookings and RISE prevents seven gun-related homicides.

With Commissioners Court preparing to make Fiscal Year 2027 budget decisions, Ellis’ proposal presents a distinctly Houston-sized question: If prevention is working, can Harris County afford not to invest in more of it?

For a county accustomed to thinking big, $4.5 million could prove that sometimes the smartest public-safety investment is the crisis that never happens.

Community Health and Violence Prevention Services Website:

HarriPs County Community Safety Programs