This City Stopped Sending Police to Every 911 Call
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1/25/2021 This City Stopped Sending Police to Every 911 Call | The Marshall Project
FEATURE
This City Stopped Sending Police to
Every 911 Call
Riding along with the civilian “crisis responders” of Olympia, Washington.
Crisis responders Aana Sundling and Chris Jones visit an unhoused community member in
Olympia, Wash., to let them know about a potential shelter opportunity, in July.
JOVELLE TAMAYO FOR THE MARSHALL PROJECT
By CHRISTIE THOMPSON
OLYMPIA, Wash. — On a rainy June day, the manager of a Motel 6 outside Olympia decided one
guest had to leave. e woman had been smoking indoors and had an unauthorized visitor. She
appeared to be on drugs and was acting erratically.
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This article was Normally, that manager might call 911, which would bring police o cers to
published in the scene. If the guest refused to leave, the cops might handcu and arrest
partnership with The
her for trespassing. ey could nd an open warrant on her record or drugs
Daily Beast.
in her room. e interaction could easily escalate into violence, especially if
the woman grew angry over facing jail time or another night on the streets. It’s the kind of low-level,
“quality of life” call that takes up much of an o cer’s day.
But over a year ago, Olympia started taking a di erent approach to nonviolent incidents caused by
someone experiencing mental illness, addiction, or homelessness. Instead of sending armed
o cers to respond, the city dispatches “crisis responders” to di use the situation and connect the
individual with services—a model now being considered by a growing number of cities across the
U.S.
at day, instead of a police o cer, the woman had two “crisis responders” knocking on her door,
carrying only a radio and a backpack of clean clothes.
Inside her hotel room with the door ajar, the petite, 30-something blonde woman rocked back and
forth, climbed over the bed, and started scribbling furiously in a notebook. “You’d be fucking mad
too if someone came and said they were kicking you out because you had a visitor for 15 minutes,”
she told them.
One of the crisis responders, Christopher Jones, wearing skinny black jeans and Dr. Marten’s boots,
stayed calm. “ e best case scenario, I call the manager and they say ok, I can get you another
night,” he said. “ e worst case scenario, you can come with us and I can see if we can get you a bed
at the Salvation Army.” He promised a case worker would meet with the woman the next day.
She agreed, and the team planned to return later that morning to drive her downtown.
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Sundling and Jones on their way to the hospital to respond to a call in Olympia,
TAMAYO FOR THE MARSHALL PROJECT
As protestors call for abolishing or vastly reducing police presence in communities, sparked by the
killing of George Floyd, creating an alternative crisis team like Olympia’s seems like a
straightforward place to start. Police respond to a wide range of problems, many of them relatively
minor or involving someone having a psychotic episode or sleeping on the streets. Using civilian
rst responders instead, advocates of this approach say, keeps interactions from escalating into
violence, and diverts people from jail and toward social services. It also frees up police resources to
focus on more serious crime.
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Since protests began in late May, cities including San Francisco, Minneapolis, Minn., Albuquerque,
New Mexico, and Los Angeles have announced they're developing civilian rst-responder
programs. But currently, very few cities have such teams responding to 911 calls. Many police
departments have instead increased mental health training for o cers in recent years, or
established dedicated mental health or homeless outreach units among cops. Some cities have
paired police with social workers for certain calls. But advocates of alternatives say even a well-
trained, armed o cer can escalate a situation or land someone in jail.
ose encounters can also be deadly: An analysis by the Washington Post found roughly 1 in 4 fatal
police shootings involved someone with mental illness. Recent shootings have left many asking
what would have happened had police never been involved. Would Rayshard Brooks—shot by the
Atlanta police o cer who found him sleeping in his car—still be alive if an unarmed social worker
had instead knocked on his window and asked if he had somewhere safe to sleep?
Handling violent crime accounts for as little as 4 percent of an o cer's time at work. And delegating
other crises—such as mental health or addiction issues—to non-law enforcement is an idea gaining
traction. A recent survey found 68 percent of voters supported the creation of a “new agency of rst
responders.” (However, just a quarter of Americans say they support “reducing funding” for police
departments.)
e small city of Eugene, Oregon, has had such a program since 1989, which now handles roughly
20 percent of 911 calls and has saved the city millions in police and emergency room resources,
according to the program’s own estimates. CAHOOTS—which stands for Crisis Assistance Helping
Out On e Streets—dispatches a nurse or EMT alongside an experienced mental health worker for
calls such as welfare checks, mental health episodes, public intoxication, or death notices.
“For 31 years we’ve been demonstrating that you can have something funded by the city
responding to all sorts of situations without any involvement of law enforcement,” said Tim Black,
the director of consulting for the program. Black is now working full-time on setting up CAHOOTS-
like programs in other U.S. cities. “ ink about somebody whose community has experienced
oppression by law enforcement. ere’s so much more potential for that interaction to go in a really
negative direction.”
It’s only in recent years that the program has received national media attention and had other cities
looking to recreate it, as o cials grow more aware of how people with mental illness are funneled
into the justice system. Olympia launched its unit in April 2019; Denver started a pilot program this
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June; hiring for a program in Portland, Oregon, has been delayed due to coronavirus. “We don’t
really know what this looks like when it gets scaled up to a major metropolitan area,” Black said.
e idea took o in Olympia thanks to a former police chief who had worked in Eugene. e crisis
team’s roughly $550,000 budget is funded through a public safety levy, which was passed by voters
in 2017. Now, the Crisis Response Unit is contracted by the police department, on call daily from 7
a.m. to 9 p.m. From April through June of this year, the team made over 500 contacts with
community members.
At the beginning of their shift, Jones and his partner Nate Wilson gather supplies from their
downtown o ce, where tables are strewn with granola bars, chapstick, dog bones, cigarettes,
co ee cups and basic rst aid supplies. A white board in the corner reminds them of people they
need to check in with: David needs an ID, Chad needs an appointment with the Department of
Social and Health Services, Lisa is getting kicked out of the Olympia Inn soon and needs a place to
stay.
Supplies, books and notepads at the Crisis Response Unit office, left, and
Jones offering water to a community member. JOVELLE TAMAYO FOR THE MARSHALL PROJECT
ere’s no strict protocol for when the unit gets called instead of police. Only a fraction of the calls it
receives come directly from 911 operators. Instead, the team is often contacted by social service
providers, or is sent by police who recognize a situation is better suited for the team’s skills. Most
often, they provide services while doing outreach with those sleeping in homeless encampments or
downtown Olympia, or following up from previous calls.
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“What is the nature of the crisis?” said Anne Larsen, the outreach services coordinator for the
Olympia Police Department, who oversees the unit. “If it’s substance use, behavioral health, or
poverty, that’s our wheelhouse.”
In a small city like Olympia, with roughly 52,000 residents, team members say they know half the
people they come into contact with—a helpful familiarity that will be harder for bigger cities to
establish. Most of their job is problem-solving for people with few good options: the elderly woman
with dementia who keeps trying to hitch-hike away from her shelter; the woman with mental
illness convinced a motel manager has stolen her luggage; the kid who keeps getting kicked out of
treatment; the older man who won’t stop calling 911.
After visiting the Motel 6 that day, Jones and Wilson drove downtown to meet a man who said he
was beaten and robbed in his tent the night before. His left eye was purple and swollen, and he
talked about using heroin. When police found him earlier, he had expressed no interest in reporting
the crime, but he accepted Wilson’s o er of clothes and rst-aid supplies.
Sundling, 29, works with Jones, 28, to respond to 911 calls, visit homeless
encampments, and talk to community members in Olympia, Wash. JOVELLE TAMAYO FOR
THE MARSHALL PROJECT
en Jones and Wilson picked up a man experiencing suicidal thoughts and took him to a nearby
hospital. ey drive a white Sprinter van, spacious enough to transport people with dogs,
wheelchairs or shopping carts. As they pulled out of the parking lot, they passed a man walking in
the pouring rain, a towel on his head and rubber gloves over his socks. Wilson hopped out and
handed him a pair of shoes.
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“I’ve been there—I was someone who lived in their car and was an addict,” Wilson said, back at the
unit’s downtown headquarters. “I was someone who was afraid of the cops, who didn't want them
knocking on their windows.”
One of the biggest challenges, team members say, is a lack of long-term services in the Olympia
area, especially for mental health care. ey often get called to assist the same people over and over
again. Olympia runs a “familiar faces” program to help ll this gap, which pairs peer navigators with
people who have frequent run-ins with law enforcement, to connect them with housing, addiction
treatment and other resources. at program served 26 people last year; they recently received
funding to serve up to 100 clients.
Support is especially scarce during the pandemic. e Olympia community day center, which
provided shelter during cold or rainy days, has been closed. Admissions to psychiatric hospitals are
limited. In-city bus routes were stopped for months. e team jokes that they’ve become “CRU-
ber,” shuttling people to doctors appointments, methadone clinics, or city shelters.
Because they work closely with the Olympia Police Department and are dispatched through 911,
Larsen said the program had to build community trust to prove they were “collaborative but
separate” from law enforcement. “One of the biggest things we had to overcome is the idea that we
would be snitches,” she said. “It’s about reassuring folks that we don’t run [their names] for
warrants or anything like that.” Larsen noted that working with police makes it easier to access
some services, like getting people identi cation.
Other initiatives are examining their relationship with law enforcement, given its history of racial
violence. In Denver, organizer Vinnie Cervantes with the Denver Alliance for Street Health
Response said he hopes the city’s program will ultimately be sta ed by community-based
organizations. Currently, it’s contracted with a mental health provider that works within the justice
system. In Eugene, CAHOOTS is considering creating a separate emergency number for people to
use if they’re uncomfortable calling 911.
Program coordinators say responders need to re ect the community they serve, especially as the
model spreads to bigger, more diverse cities (both Eugene and Olympia are roughly 80 percent
White). at also means hiring people with rst-hand experience of mental illness, poverty, and the
justice system. Federal policy, however, bans most people with felony records from accessing
criminal justice information databases, which excludes most formerly incarcerated people from
joining teams like Olympia’s Crisis Response Unit.
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At a homeless encampment in the shadow of the Washington State Capitol Building in Olympia,
residents said they wished there were more ways to contact the crisis unit that didn’t involve law
enforcement.
“I called 911 to get a hold of you guys, but it got intercepted by the football team,” said Michael
Stone, referring to Olympia police o cers. He had recently called to try and get medical care for a
friend in a nearby tent. “ ey were talking down to us. I don’t like that cops can intercept if they
want. We need people that aren’t so combat-oriented to deal with the homeless.”
Allowing crisis responders to take the lead will take time. In the past year, the Olympia team says
police o cers are already deferring more calls to them and trusting them in a wider range of
circumstances. But police still respond to most suicide calls, for example, out of fear that there
might be a weapon.
“I think they’re hesitant to let us just show up,” said Aana Sundling, a crisis team member, walking
into the encampment, where most of the residents seem to know her. “ ey’re worried about our
safety. But the cops are becoming more aware. We’ve been out here for over a year and none of us
have been assaulted.”
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