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BY THE RECORDASHEVILLE

Public safety

Does Asheville have enough police officers and crisis responders?

In July 2026 Asheville had 191 of its 232 authorized sworn police positions filled, so 41 were vacant. Its main non-police crisis team, the Fire Department's REST, was set up with 8 positions (5 firefighters and 3 civilians), and in July 2026 police and REST began a 60-day pilot that sends an RHA Health Services mental health professional on some crisis calls.

Period
REST: 8 positions in the FY2025 budget, still funded in FY2027; police: July 2026
Area
City of Asheville
The Asheville Municipal Building, with marked City police vehicles parked beside it.
The Asheville Municipal Building at 100 Court Plaza, home of the City's police and fire departments, January 2019.Photo: Warren LeMay. Source, CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication).

For every 29 authorized police positions, the City has budgeted about 1 Fire Department community responder.

8

Fire Department REST community responder positions, compared with 232 authorized sworn police positions

REST: 8 positions in the FY2025 budget, still funded in FY2027; police: July 2026City of Asheville41 of the 232 sworn police positions were vacant in July 2026. REST staffing is the budgeted number; current headcount was not published.

How often public safety came up for a voteEach bar is one year of votes on public safety in the City Council minutes.
Voted on separatelyRoutine items, passed together

2018 starts in October. 2026 is so far. Only votes this site has read in the minutes are counted.

Why it matters: Each vote is a decision about this issue. Routine items pass together in one vote, so a tall bar does not always mean more debate.

Why it matters: This compares two ways the City answers calls for help: police officers, and a team trained for mental health crises.

What we don't know yet

  • Current REST headcount is not published. The 8 position figure is from the FY2025 plan (July 2024); the May 14, 2024 minutes mention 7 new employees, so 1 position may have pre-existed or been counted differently.
  • Peer support specialist hiring date is unverified: planned for fall 2024, but a City posting for the job opened July 10, 2025.
  • Opioid settlement spending actuals for Asheville (CORE-NC annual financial reports) were not found in searchable form. A search summary cited a cld.bz ACFR page claiming no funds spent, but that page is Greensboro's report, so it was dropped.
  • The APD co-responder pilot (launched July 21, 2026 per news) has no City press release or Council action found; funding amount, number of clinicians, call counts and post-pilot status are unverified. The Citizen-Times original is paywalled (HTTP 402); the text was read via a repost on a mayoral campaign site.
  • The REST dataset is a field survey; records may not equal unique people or unique calls, and dates are stored in UTC so a few records near January 1 may fall in a different local year.
  • The 2025 APD CAD dataset includes officer-initiated activity; MENTAL SUBJECT counts do not capture all behavioral health calls, and no official City report breaks out mental health calls.
  • Councilman Hess's statement that over 95% of APD officers are CIT trained is a councilmember claim in minutes, not an APD report.
  • Buncombe County pages on buncombenc.gov returned Cloudflare 403 even with a browser user agent, so Community Paramedic staffing and Mobile Crisis Outreach Team details could not be verified.
  • No Council vote creating a City violence interruption program was found in 2023-2026 minutes.

Words on this page

REST (Resource and Engagement Support Team)
The Asheville Fire Department team, formerly called Community Responders, that responds to encampment concerns and connects people in crisis to services.
Community responder
A trained responder, often not a police officer, sent to non-criminal crises such as homelessness or behavioral health needs.
Co-responder
A model that pairs a police officer or firefighter with a mental health professional on the same call.
Crisis Intervention Team (CIT)
Training that teaches officers to recognize mental health crises and de-escalate them; officers who complete it can be requested on crisis calls.
Peer support specialist
A certified worker with lived experience of mental illness or substance use who helps others get treatment and services.
Mobile crisis team
A state-funded behavioral health team that comes to a person in crisis; in Buncombe County it is run by RHA Health Services West.
PORT (Post-Overdose Response Team)
Buncombe County's team that follows up with people after an overdose to offer treatment and support.
Opioid settlement funds
Money from national lawsuits against opioid companies that local governments must spend on approved strategies, such as recovery support services.
HEART
Durham's Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Teams, a non-police crisis response program cited in Asheville Council debates.
CAD (computer-aided dispatch)
The 911 dispatch system; each record is a call or officer-initiated event with a call type code.
Authorized vs. filled positions
Authorized positions are the jobs in the budget; filled positions are those with someone working in them.