Crisis Diverted

One Tuesday afternoon last October, Roy Sapp heard yelling outside Rock Bar, his workplace in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood. It turned out to be a middle-aged man, thin with stained gray sweatpants, flailing his arms and ranting at no one in particular. Sapp didn’t know whether the guy was having a mental health crisis or maybe was just high—a couple of glass pipes lay on the ground nearby. Suddenly, the man threw himself onto an SUV inching down the block. “Get out of here, kids!” he yelled. “I’m not gonna hurt anyone!”

Sapp, then 60, looked on in concern. He’d lived in this neighborhood his entire life and spent decades addicted to drugs himself. Now sober, he felt an urge to help but didn’t want to dial 911. “I don’t want to call the cops on somebody and have them locked up,” he told me