About Us – Alternative Mobile Services Association

About AMSA

The Alternative Mobile Services Association is a national trade organization representing mobile service providers and key stakeholders. Our members – first responders and community innovators – serve dozens of communities, both large and small. The association champions street-level, non-police alternatives, advancing safer and more effective approaches to community support.

Our Mission

The Alternative Mobile Services Association (AMSA) exists to strengthen, support, and expand community-based crisis response across the United States. We believe that people in crisis deserve care, dignity, and compassion, not punishment. Our mission is to connect practitioners, advance policy, and equip communities with the tools and resources they need to deliver person-centered mobile crisis services.

Our Story

AMSA was founded by practitioners, advocates, and policy leaders who recognized the urgent need for alternatives to police-led crisis response. Too often, people experiencing behavioral health challenges, substance use crises, or moments of deep distress are met with enforcement instead of care.

Our network grew from a shared vision: a country where community responders, peers, and care teams are in the field deliver person centered care, and where every response centers healing, safety, and connection.

Our Board

Our Board ensures AMSA remains accountable to communities, grounded in equity, and focused on sustainability. We are proud to be guided by leaders from public health, behavioral health, advocacy, and crisis response fields across the country.

Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative, Atlanta

Moki Macias is co-chair of the Alternative Mobile Services Association.

Moki Macias has served as the Executive Director of Policing Alternatives and Diversion Initiative since its launch in Atlanta in 2017. She has spent the last 20 years engaged in community organizing, program development and advocacy related to criminal justice reform and community development.

In 2008 she co-founded Building Locally to Organize for Community Safety, which won subpoena power for the Atlanta Citizen’s Review Board and contributed to the dismantling of the notorious REDDOG unit.

Chicago Public Health Department

Tiffany Patton-Burnside, LCSW is co-chair of the Alternative Mobile Services Association.

She is Senior Director of Crisis Services for the Chicago Public Health Department and has worked in the field for over 20 years, providing services and attending to those with social/emotional needs. She is the director of the CARE Chicago mobile program.

Patton Burnside received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from UIC, a Master’s degree in Social Work from Dominican University, and in 2009 became an LCSW. She has been in leadership for the last half of her career. Her ultimate goal is and has always been to be a change agent for those who live with social and emotional challenges.

Canopy Roots

Taylor Crouch-Dodson (he/him) is treasurer of the Alternative Mobile Services Association.

Crouch-Dodson is a public policy professional with expertise in strategic planning and civic innovation. At Canopy Roots, he is responsible for developing strategic partnerships with non-profits, social service providers, schools, and government agencies. He also oversees marketing and communications, community engagement, and government relations.

Prior to joining Canopy Roots, Crouch-Dodson worked for the City of Minneapolis in the Civil Rights Department and then in the Performance Management & Innovation Department.

He holds a master of public policy degree from the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs and a bachelor’s degree from Austin College in Sherman, TX.

Center for Innovations in Community Safety, Georgetown Law School

Tahir Duckett is the Executive Director of the Center for Innovations in Community Safety. He was previously an attorney at Relman Colfax, a nationally renowned civil rights law firm specializing in discriminatory policing, housing, lending, employment, education, and public accommodation.

Duckett is a founding executive committee member of Law For Black Lives-DC (L4BLDC), an organization providing legal and policy support to the Movement for Black Lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. As part of L4BLDC, Tahir has facilitated and participated in dozens of formal trainings, teach-ins, and conversations about community safety.

Wayne State University

A research psychologist at Wayne State University, Amy Watson PhD has focused on people with serious mental illnesses that come in contact with the criminal legal system and interventions to prevent and reduce criminal legal involvement. She has conducted extensive research on police encounters with persons with mental illnesses and the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model. She has also examined mental health courts and prison reentry programs. Her current work is looking at models to reduce or eliminate the role of law enforcement in mental health crisis response. Earlier in her research career, she was the project director of a NIMH Center focused on mental illness stigma, and stigma reduction remains an important theme in her work. Other professional activities include serving on the CIT International Board of Directors from 2016-2021, (as President of the Board 2020-2021) and on the compliance team for the Department of Justice Settlement Agreement with the City of Portland, Oregon.

Watson has a BA in Criminal Justice from Aurora University and an AM and PhD from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.

Baltimore Crisis Response, Inc.

Quinita Garrett LCPC, NCC is the Director of Call Center, Mobile Crisis and System Coordination at Baltimore Crisis Response, Inc (BCRI). Quinita has worked for BCRI over nine years in various roles; including as a mental health clinician on their Mobile Response Team.

Garrett is an outspoken community leader in Maryland for funding needed services, including the Maryland 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline network. She also works part time providing individual, family, and group therapy as a licensed clinical professional counselor.

Behavioral Health Response

Dr. Felicia Spratt is Vice President of Justice and Crisis Response at Behavioral Health Response in St. Louis. As a leader and champion for social services for nearly 15 years, she has devoted her career to serving vulnerable populations and communities. Her broad experience ranges from working with youth and families as a Licensed Professional Counselor and Social Worker nationally.

In February 2021, spearheaded the development of St. Louis’ first of its kind, Crisis Response Street & Triage Unit, the 911 Call Diversion, where calls are transferred from the St. Louis City’s 911 Dispatch Communication Center to Behavioral Health Response, an external entity and St. Louis CARES initiative. Her initiatives have significantly reduced incarceration and hospitalization rates due to improved awareness, interactions and proper diagnoses when serving individuals and communities suffering from mental crisis.

City of Durham

Ryan Smith is the Director of the City of Durham, NC’s Community Safety Department which operates Durham’s first responder branch called HEART.

Smith joined the City in 2017 as the Innovation Team Director where much of his work focused on criminal justice reform, including developing a mass relief driver’s license restoration program.

Prior to working in local government, Smith worked for Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, for Congressman David Price, and for a diverse array of non-profits with missions ranging from teaching documentary photography to recently resettled refugee youth to providing free preschool to children living in poverty.

Exodus Recovery, Los Angeles

Ebony Morgan is a Psychiatric Registered Nurse and Program Director of Mobile Crisis Intervention for Exodus Recovery Inc., providing services for the City of Los Angeles.

She is the former CAHOOTS Program Director for White Bird Clinic of Eugene, Oregon.

Victoria Bautista is a lawyer with 7 years of experience in federal policy in the U.S. House of Representatives. She recently served as the Legislative Director for Congressman Adam Smith (WA-09) and led on his policy work in health care and judiciary issues.

Prior to joining Congressman Smith’s office, she served as Legislative Assistant to Congresswoman Kendra Horn (OK-05). Victoria is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma with a Juris Doctor and Bachelor’s in Political Science.

Dade County Street Response

Adejare (Ah-Day-Jah-Ray) McMillan is a South Florida–based speaker, poet, community organizer, and Licensed Mental Health Counselor. He specializes in race and equity, sexuality, addictions, and men’s issues, centering his work on healing and liberation.

Throughout his journey, McMillan has remained deeply engaged in activism, advocacy, and community organizing. Trained in facilitating transformative spaces, he has guided others into these practices and supported countless individuals and communities through Restorative and Transformative Justice interventions. His work reflects a commitment to equity, healing, and the cultivation of liberatory practices.

With an ongoing mission to expand access to mental health services for Black communities and people of color, he devotes his life, crafts, and professional practice to curating spaces where individuals and communities can move toward wellness, balance, and collective healing.

Administrator

Jason Renaud is a nonprofit consultant focusing on program design and leadership. He’s a well-known public speaker and writer on recovery from alcoholism and the experience of people with mental illness, and is an active advocate for people who have fallen through the public safety net.

He is the board secretary of the Mental Health Association of Portland and is the organization’s voluntary managing director. He administers the Alternative Mobile Service Association, the national trade association for mobile crisis programs and stakeholders.

Contact Jason Renaud by email

Senior Engagement Manager

Amanda leads AMSA’s member engagement efforts, building strong connections with practitioners, peers, and advocates nationwide. They are dedicated to growing AMSA’s membership, strengthening relationships across the network, and ensuring members have access to the tools and support they need. Passionate about collaboration, Amanda uplifts member voices and fosters a strong, united community advancing mobile crisis response.

Contact Amanda Mathew by email.

Senior Program Manager

Courtney advances AMSA’s policy agenda, partnering with states and localities to shape legislation that strengthens and sustains mobile crisis response. She also oversees AMSA’s programs and training initiatives, supporting communities nationwide in building effective, person-centered crisis response systems.

Contact Courtney Williams-Goeloe by email.

Care, not punishment, should be the first response in a moment of crisis.

The Alternative Mobile Services Association is a project of the Mental Health Association of Portland, a 501 C 3 nonprofit advocacy organization, tax identification 20-0138570.

Alternative Mobile Service Association
715 NW Hoyt #3641, Portland, Oregon 97208

About AMSA

Moki Macias, Board Co-Chair

Tiffany Patton-Burnside, LCSW, Board Co-Chair

Taylor Crouch-Dodson, Treasurer

Tahir Duckett, JD

Amy C Watson, PhD

Quinita Garrett LCPC, NCC

Felicia Spratt, LPC, Ed.d

Ryan Smith

Ebony Morgan, RN

Victoria Bautista, JD

Adejare A. McMillan, LMHC

Jason Renaud

Amanda Mathew

Courtney Williams-Goeloe

Care, not punishment, should be the first response in a moment of crisis.