Everyone wants to live in a safe and vibrant community. Many are aware of how Burien excels at the “vibrant” part of the equation – from breathtaking green spaces like Seahurst Park and unique events like Arts-a-Glow to the seemingly endless culinary options throughout our diverse foodie paradise, Burien is a place many are proud to call home.
There are also many wins to celebrate as we work together to create a community where all feel safe. We’ve heard from community members that feeling safe in their neighborhoods and throughout their city is a priority. That feedback has helped guide the City of Burien to create a truly multifaceted approach to cultivating community health and safety. We’ll highlight just a few of those efforts here.
Changing the Game for Crisis Response
Co-response is a crisis response model that pairs a public safety responder, such as a police officer or firefighter, with a mental health professional to respond to certain types of calls for emergency service. This model provides appropriate alternatives to arrest and additional options for responding to non-criminal calls, resulting in the reduction of harm, arrests, and use of jails and emergency departments, in addition to promoting the development of and access to quality services.
Burien currently has two of these multidisciplinary care teams within the Burien Police Department (BPD) and one with King County Fire District #2 (KCFD #2). Thanks to a collaborative and visionary effort between the City’s Human Services Division, BPD, KCFD #2, and Sound (formerly Sound Mental Health), co-response teams have now been successfully operating in Burien for more than two years.
“This program is an absolute game changer,” said BPD Chief Tom Calabrese. “I wish when I was a young deputy that we had these [teams] because it’s an amazing tool that we were in desperate need of. It’s the best thing we got going. There are other programs out there trying to find the right thing – we got it.”
Firefighters and police officers frequently respond to incidents where additional needs are identified that are outside their general scope of responsibilities. This might include individuals threatening to harm themselves, an unhoused person needing a gateway to housing, folks needing mental health or substance use disorder services, or someone who frequently falls in their home and would benefit from the installation of grab bars. Having a specialized team that can spend time addressing each individual’s complex needs allows on-duty firefighters and patrol units to refocus their time and energy on responding to other incidents throughout the city that they are better equipped to handle.
“Our emergency response model is kind of like a puzzle, and it was missing some pieces,” explains KCFD #2 Chief Jason Gay. “Co-response kind of plugs in really well there. There’s a lot of calls that we go on. If you’re shot or stabbed, or your house is burning, or you’re in a car wreck, we’re the right guys for the job. But if you need somebody to listen to you and break that cycle of ‘we don’t really know what to do for you, so we’re going to send you to the hospital,’ and then the hospital is going to say, ‘well, we don’t have those services,’ and they’re going to kick you back out, and you got this revolving door. This is the piece that is trying to solve that, and it’s doing really well.”
Between October 2022 and September 2024, our co-response teams have served more than 2,100 individuals. They have made more than 2,300 referrals for services ranging from mental health and shelter services to primary care, substance use treatment, domestic violence resources, and connecting folks to benefits.
“The things that our first responders are going out trying to problem solve in a matter of minutes are extremely complex, very challenging, and I am just grateful that I have the opportunity to lend my knowledge and my skills in order to support that work,” said Lindsey Mueller, mental health professional with KCFD #2’s co-response team. “Some of these things are just so complex, and the underlying issues are not something that are going to be solvable on scene within just a matter of minutes. Thankfully, we are allowed the time to get to know individuals, see what’s going on, and be a little bit more proactive to address some of the concerns.”
Relationships are central to the co-response program. Co-response teams have built connections with the local hospital, school district, outreach providers, community partners, and many others. The trust they’ve built within the community is reflected in the fact that some individuals actively seek them out when in need. Other first responders have stated that they feel having mental health professionals available helps them do their job better.
“Every day is something different,” said Daisy Espinoza, mental health professional with the BPD co-response team. “Sometimes, we’re just out there building relationships with the community, especially the Latino community. Having them not being able to speak English and feeling comfortable calling me and saying, ‘Hey, Daisy, this is what we need help with,’ and then trying to connect them with resources [is rewarding].”
Espinoza’s partner, BPD Detective Jordan Souriall, says he also enjoys having the ability to build relationships. “We’ve spent five, six hours in a day with some people, and we’re able to just sit and figure out what they actually need, and then come back and build on that or randomly check in,” he shared. “We can stop twice a week if we need to, three times, whatever it takes. I always offer to people, ‘If you’re ever ready to go to treatment or detox, let me know. ’ We have had several people come to us, and we’ve been able to successfully get them into treatment.”
Making a difference in people’s lives is also part of the job that appeals to Mueller: “Oftentimes when folks are interacting with our agencies, it is not their best day. In fact, it might be their worst day. And just to be able to be the person that can sit with them in that situation and help guide them to maybe a little bit better of a place is a great privilege.”
Empowering Youth Through Art
As a partner in the City’s gang and youth violence prevention and intervention work, Urban ArtWorks’ Mural Apprentice Program has supported dozens of Burien’s creative youth, providing them with art skills, a place for collaboration and connectivity, as well as leadership training. This program aims to transform young lives by disrupting pathways to negative behavior, building leadership skills with deepened connections to the community, and providing empowering opportunities for self-expression. Using strong collaborative partnerships, including Southwest Youth and Family Services and Highline School District, Urban ArtWorks program participants installed three mural projects in Burien in 2024: two beautifying Highline High School’s campus and one for a local Little League field.
Building Trust and Opening Doors
Sound’s Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PATH) program, a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA) evidence-based program, provides outreach services to people with serious mental illness experiencing homelessness in South King County.
PATH provides outreach to homeless adults in Burien with the goal of improving their quality of life. Unhoused people, especially those experiencing serious disabling conditions, often have difficulty finding or accepting the services that address their specific needs. They are often wary of strangers and have a distrust of systems and their representatives. The strength of the PATH program comes from investing time in relationship-building first. Staff work to connect with homeless individuals “in their environment” – meeting folks where they are more comfortable and willing to engage. Enrolling individuals into their program opens the doors to housing opportunities, treatment, and other services, reducing barriers and increasing self-sufficiency.
The PATH program, a grantee recipient of City of Burien Human Services funds for more than 10 years, continues to provide invaluable services to our community. In 2024, PATH staff made 370 case management contacts with individuals in Burien, serving 34 Burien residents, and successfully enrolled 94% of contacted individuals across South King County into PATH program services.
Planning Safer Ways to Get Around
The City of Burien is developing a Comprehensive Safety Action Plan (CSAP) to address transportation safety, aiming to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries resulting from crashes.
Burien has recently completed an update to its Transportation Master Plan in 2024, which outlines transportation performance goals for the next 20 years. The CSAP takes those goals and provides safety-specific recommendations.
The City wants to address transportation safety concerns by reviewing locations where crashes have occurred and where you feel unsafe walking, rolling, biking, accessing transit, or driving. We invite you to get involved by sharing your valuable perspectives about the safety of getting around in Burien and following the plan’s progress at burienwa.gov/csap.
Deploying Emergency Shelter During Severe Weather
Since 2019, the Severe Weather Shelter at Highline United Methodist Church (HUMC) has been a safe and warm place, bringing people indoors and out of dangerous, potentially fatal overnight conditions. During a period of severe cold weather and snow, a group of Burien community members decided that the absence of shelter and resources for individuals who are unhoused could not continue. As the snow fell, this community-led volunteer effort quickly mobilized to help protect some of Burien’s most vulnerable residents, driving action for a more permanent and sustainable solution. That December, the City of Burien was awarded one-time funding by then-King County Councilmember Joe McDermott to “set up, open, and operate a low-barrier, nighttime indoor shelter for up to 50 vulnerable adults sleeping outside, including those in tents and automobiles in the Burien area,” during severe weather. Following this, the City determined that a more permanent solution was necessary to meet the needs of Burien and created a line item in the Human Services Division budget to support emergency sheltering. This line item continues to allocate funds annually to HUMC.
The Severe Weather Shelter provides a warm, safe place for folks and their pets to sleep, share a hot meal, and be in community with each other. The shelter invites nonprofit and service-providing partners to come share opportunities for additional supports available in our community. On nights that the Severe Weather Shelter is open, outreach staff connect with the shelter guests in the mornings during check-out time, ensuring they are connected to daytime services and case management support.
The utilization of the shelter has increased every year since its opening. In the winter of 2019, the shelter was open for five nights and served 42 different individuals. From January to February 2025, the shelter was open for 23 nights and served 238 people.
Cultivating Partnerships to Address Gang and Youth Violence
Community leaders, government agencies, and officials cannot solve the gang and youth violence problem alone. To succeed, all must work together and take an inclusive and collaborative local, regional, and statewide approach to addressing gun violence as a public health issue. Doing this work requires a comprehensive, long-term approach that can help interrupt violence, dismantle systems of inequity, and invest in communities.
In August 2024, the City of Burien and the King County Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention began hosting convenings of many funded and partnered youth-focused service providers working within the Burien and White Center areas. This creative partnership is fueled by a collective vision of giving our community and young people an opportunity to be great – to discover and thrive as their authentic selves by providing opportunities for personal, professional, and financial growth through safe programs and services. The goal is to build a movement across city departments, community-based organizations, public safety advocates, and young leaders to create safe, healthy, and hopeful communities: safe communities that are free of fear, healthy communities where family and social ties are strong, and hopeful communities where opportunity is the norm. This ongoing process highlights the City’s collaborative investment approach.
Breaking the Cycle of Recidivism with Promising Alternatives
The City’s Legal Department has partnered with Purpose. Dignity. Action. (PDA) to create a new program that will allow PDA to review arraignment and pre-trial calendars to identify individuals who are current clients or appear to be suitable for Burien’s Let Everyone Advance with Dignity (formerly Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion), or “LEAD” program. According to PDA, the LEAD program creates “sustainable alternatives to punitive systems for individuals who engage in illegal activity related to behavioral health needs or poverty.” PDA will also check for individuals on the defense attorneys’ caseloads who appear to need support and share the outcome of their referral process.
The goal of the program is to refer more individuals to services or case managers who may not typically be LEAD candidates or were not previously identified, ultimately leading to reduced caseloads for Burien’s public defenders and, hopefully, reduced recidivism.
Managing Trees to Create a Safe, Sustainable, Accessible Environment
Trees improve our quality of life by allowing us to breathe cleaner air and keeping us cooler in the summer. By caring for our trees, we can continue to enjoy the benefits of our city’s urban forest while avoiding potential hazards.
There are several strategies for ensuring tree safety. Pruning helps keep our streets and sidewalks safe and accessible for all. In collaboration with partners, the City had 116 public trees pruned across Burien last year. Risk assessment helps mitigate the likelihood of injury from a falling tree. In 2024 alone, our urban forest planner assessed more than 200 trees throughout the city. Innovative infrastructure, such as pervious pavement, reduces trip hazards and allows water to reach the roots of trees, keeping them strong and healthy.
Tree protection measures such as fences prevent damage to the trees during construction. Tree roots need to be protected to ensure the tree remains healthy and its structural roots are not damaged, which can increase the likelihood of the tree falling over in a storm and causing injury to a person or property. More than 600 trees in Burien were retained during development in 2024.
Maintaining Safe and Effective Infrastructure
A City’s infrastructure is a critical component of a safe and healthy community. The City’s Public Works and Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services staff work every day to ensure Burien’s built environment and natural systems are maintained.
While other agencies maintain highways, power, water, and sewer systems, the City is responsible for just about everything else. That includes many rights-of-way, all of our streets, sidewalks, and stormwater systems, as well as traffic and pedestrian safety features such as crosswalks, stop signs, and speed bumps. Additionally, it encompasses our parks, trails, and recreation buildings. If you connected all of Burien’s roads into a straight line, you would nearly reach the Canadian border.
Major infrastructure projects can improve accessibility and public safety, enhance beautification, increase walkability, and enable us to be more efficient with our maintenance resources.
