Deflection and Jac Charlier, executive director of PTACC and TASC's Center for Health and Justice, were featured in a June 9, 2020, commentary by the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board. 

Excerpts are included, below:

Sun-Times Editorial: Don’t defund the police, rethink policing

"Let’s imagine how our police and city can work together a whole lot better....[Policing] can improve by taking to heart, and acting on, the most compelling arguments made by those in the defund-the-police movement. At bottom, they are arguing that Chicago and the country finally get their priorities straight, addressing first and overwhelmingly the root causes of the social problems that lead to the hiring of more cops....

"A concept that runs through some of the best police reforms is called deflection. The idea, as explained by Jac Charlier, executive director of the Police Treatment and Community Collaborative, is that the police are reimagined as a huge conduit for referring people in crisis to behavior treatment experts. Over the past several years, 850 of the nation’s 18,000 police departments have signed on to the concept."