After two New Jersey men in mental health crises were killed by police last year, the use of “crisis response teams” to help diffuse those clashes has gained attention. This week, Gov. Phil Murphy and Attorney General Platkin announced $12 million in funding to expand the new response model.

Liza Chowdhury, executive director of Reimagining Justice and the Paterson Healing Collective, praised the initiative. “New Jersey is currently leading the way nationally on how states are reimagining public safety,” she said. “With investments like this, we’re going to continue that trajectory.”

Tracey Syphax, founder and CEO of From the Block to the Boardroom, a community organization, added that more needs to be done.

“It’s imperative that the governor, that the attorney general, that the mayor, that council folks in these cities address these issues that face our community,” she said. “We have to start reimagining what real public safety looks like.”

Syphax said it’s not just in New Jersey: “Here in America, we criminalize everything. We criminalize immigration, we criminalize mental health. When we look at the number one institutions in this country that are housing mental health patients, its prisons.”