In Portland, Oregon, an alarming encounter with a distressed man highlighted the inadequacies of the typical emergency response system. Many fear police involvement could escalate situations, especially for those with mental health issues. This led to an innovative alternative inspired by Eugene's CAHOOTS program, which dispatches unarmed teams to handle crises. Emphasizing community-driven initiatives, Portland developed the Street Response, which diverts significant numbers of emergency calls from police to trained medics and crisis workers, providing a safer, more effective response to vulnerable populations in distress.
The first-responder system that should be there to help him was putting him in danger. There had to be a better option—and there was.
Emergency operators send unarmed teams of medics and crisis workers to handle calls that would otherwise have gone to the police, such as welfare checks and suicide intervention.
In 2019, Street Roots published a special issue laying out a plan for a similar street-level response team in Portland based partly on CAHOOTS.
This past year, 17 percent of police calls were diverted from the police, University of Oregon researchers estimated.
Collection
[
|
...
]