How cities are rethinking who responds to 911 calls
Shamso Iman, left, and Dane Haverly, with the Behavioral Crisis Response team, leave the scene after responding to a distress call in Minneapolis on Tuesday, July 11, 2023. Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune via Getty Images
Big cities have largely embraced so-called alternative response teams that send trained health care professionals in the place of law enforcement to handle low-risk situations. Now, the approach is moving to smaller jurisdictions.
In a growing number of U.S. communities, 911 is changing. To free up police officers to prioritize more urgent calls for services, cities are launching alternative response units that take police out of the equation and instead send social workers, mental health care providers and peer support specialists to help in nonviolent, nonurgent crises.
These crisis intervention groups are gaining traction, with 62% of the nation’s largest 50 cities creating an alternative response program between 2020 and 2022. Today, an estimated 100 crisis response units are in operation.
One of the latest cities to join the ranks is Evanston, Illinois. The city’s Crisis Alternative Response Evanston, or CARE, team started operating last month to answer 911 calls for low-risk situations like well-being checks, nuisance complaints, reported lost or confused individuals and mental health-related requests. The city council allocated $400,000 to support its first year of operations.
Alternative response teams “can divert what could be a criminal justice-type response into more of a health care-, trauma-informed [one that directs] more people into the appropriate care they need,” said Robert Blaine, senior executive and director of the Center for Leadership, Education, Advancement and Development at the National League of Cities.
Blaine pointed to Eugene, Oregon, which has operated a mobile crisis intervention program since 1989. The Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets, or CAHOOTS, program helps relieve pressure on the city’s police department, who grapple with an abundance of calls for service, many of which are outside of their scope, Blaine said. The service instead dispatches health care professionals. A 2022 analysis of the service found that between 3% to 8% of calls to the Eugene Police Department in 2021 were diverted to the crisis intervention team.
For Eugene, it seems the alternative response model is paying off. According to the Eugene Police Department, CAHOOTS costs the city about $800,000 annually, while saving $2.2 million in police officer wages because, Blaine said, there is less demand for law enforcement personnel to be dispatched.
The team, which is available 24/7, handles calls related to social services, such as deescalating interpersonal conflicts, linking individuals with crisis counseling, transporting people to addiction treatment centers or housing shelters, and other services.
Alternative response teams like CAHOOTS give cities “a diverse set of tools … to respond to incidents in communities,” Blaine said, because addressing trauma-related incidents “requires a different skill set than a traditional public safety skill set.”
Crisis intervention teams often employ social workers or similar professionals, which requires extensive education and certification requirements to be qualified for this line of work. Reskilling public safety officers to be more informed on trauma response is not impossible, but Blaine remained skeptical that “they would have a skill set … equivalent to someone who has actually studied in the field.”
Plus, mobile crisis intervention workers could make individuals feel more at ease when interacting with personnel, said Matt St. Pierre, director of practice improvement and consulting at the National Council for Mental Wellbeing. A police officer responding to a crisis is likely to arrive at the scene armed and dressed in their formal uniform with their vehicle’s lights flashing, which attracts negative attention from outsiders and can be intimidating for the person in need.
Mobile crisis units and alternative response teams can offer callers more privacy, St. Pierre said, by dressing in casual clothing and arriving in an unmarked car to foster a more welcoming interaction. That can help reduce stigma toward seeking help and prevent trauma or fear of police interactions.
Indeed, alternative response teams can help lift up residents in need by connecting them with social and health services better than a punitive approach, Blaine said. “This idea of bringing a well-being frame to communities really means … investing in people so they can actually be productive members of society.”
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