CONNECTING CRISIS CALLS TO COMMUNITY CARE
Introduction
Historically, police departments are tasked with responding to a diverse range of calls for service spanning relatively mundane non-emergency calls, such as noisy neighbors or minor
traffic accidents, to critical emergency calls and reports of violent crime. In recent years, there has been a growing focus on understanding the multitude of call types police departments receive, including those involving individuals in mental health crises, and how to best support these community members in acquiring needed services.
Law enforcement and other first responders have a valuable opportunity to act as liaisons between individuals in crisis and social service agencies that can provide lasting care for social and medical needs. If officers are aware of social service agencies in proximity to the call for service, they can quickly direct individuals to acute care. With that in mind, our team set out to understand how the availability of social service agencies overlaps with calls for service data to explore an avenue for collaboration between law enforcement and community assets.
Within this report you will find:
A description and assessment of current policing reforms that relate to calls for service and burgeoning first responder models,
Details on our exploratory dashboard that maps social service agencies against calls for service relating to these crisis calls from two distinct jurisdictions,
An analysis of our findings from the dashboard and its possible uses, and
A discussion of ways to improve how law enforcement and other community assets respond to community emergencies.
¹ Collins, S (2021, May 25) These 3 cities began boldly reimagining policing after George Floyd’s murder Vox https://www.vox.com/22446715/george-floyd-one-year-anniversary-police-reform-austin-portland-minneapolis
Background
There has been research done on the efficacy of alternative policing models, such as community policing², for decades. The protests surrounding George Floyd’s death in 2020 led to heightened urgency for police reform and since then ideas for alternative policing have been circulating city governments throughout the United States. A consistently suggested reform is dispatching alternative first responders to low priority calls where law enforcement may not be required.
Ananalysisof911callsacross8citiesconductedbytheCenterfor AmericanProgress(CAP)andtheLawEnforcementAction Partnership(LEAP)foundthat23-39%ofcallswerelowpriorityand lowenoughriskthattheycouldbehandledbycivilianresponders.³
Diverting these calls to non-law enforcement agencies has a number of benefits to communities and to law enforcement. For example, rather than becoming entangled in the criminal justice system, individuals experiencing personal crises can be given proper resources specifically created to address their mental/behavioral health needs. This would also have resource benefits for law enforcement, freeing up time to respond to more urgent crime calls and may avoid potential escalations during police interactions.
Some communities have taken action to address this critical disconnect by forming Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs) that are designed to “reduce the risk of serious injury or death during emergency interactions between persons with mental illness and police officers.”⁴ The CIT program model was developed in Memphis after 27-year-old Joseph Dewayne Robinson was fatally shot by the police while experiencing an episode of mental illness and the effects of drug use. The model suggests a three-pronged approach to community policing: train officers on how to interact with people with mental illness (PMI), train dispatchers on how to identify calls that involve PMI so they can send the correct personnel, and have designated independent mental health systems to direct PMI to. The research on the lasting impact of CIT programs in the field is generally inconclusive, but individual communities have had a degree of success.⁵
² Rosenbaum, D P , & Goldstein, H (1994) The challenge of Community Policing: Testing the promises Sage Publications
³ Amos Irwin and Betsy Pearl, “The Community Responder Model,” Center for American Progress, October 28, 2020, https://www americanprogress org/article/community-responder-model/
⁴ Michael S Rogers, Dale E McNiel, and Renée L Binder, “Effectiveness of Police Crisis Intervention Training Programs,” Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online 49, no 1 (September 24, 2019), http://jaapl org/content/early/2019/09/24/JAAPL 003863-19
⁵ Taheri, S. (2016). Do crisis intervention teams reduce arrests and Improve officer Safety? A Systematic Review and MetaAnalysis Criminal Justice Policy Review, 27(1), 76–96 https://doi org/10 1177/0887403414556289
Another traditional policing alternative similar to a CIT program is the Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets (CAHOOTS) program in Eugene, Oregon. Mental health crisis calls are diverted to paired medics and social workers that “provide crisis intervention, counseling, basic emergency medical care, transportation, and referrals to services.”⁶ The program handles 20% of all calls that are dispatched in the city, and only 311 calls in 2019 required additional police backup. The willing collaboration between CAHOOTS members and the police has led to community members receiving better service in requests for assistance and a general increase in trust among community and law enforcement.⁷ The CAHOOTS program has also served as a model for co-responder programs in other cities.
For example, the City of Rochester’s Crisis Intervention Services unit launched its Person in Crisis (PIC) team inspired by the CAHOOTS program in 2021. The team employs social workers and emergency responders who are dispatched alone or alongside police officers in mental/behavioral crisis situations. In 2022, PIC responded to 10,000 calls for service, and a third of those were handled without the involvement of the police.⁸
These teams are critically important in providing help in the moment, but so often these calls are related to long-standing issues for which there is no immediate resolution. However, many communities have a wealth of resources that specialize in addressing individual needs that offer more consistent and lasting assistance.
⁶ Nazish Dholakia, “What Happens When We Send Mental Health Providers instead of Police,” Vera Institute of Justice, May 27, 2021, https://www vera org/news/what-happens-when-we-send-mental-health-providers-instead-of-police
⁷ Jackson Beck, Melissa Reuland, and Leah Pope, “CASE STUDY: CAHOOTS,” Vera Institute of Justice, November 2020, https://www.vera.org/behavioral-health-crisis-alternatives/cahoots.
⁸ Gino Fanelli, “Person in Crisis Team to Go under the Microscope,” WXXI News, October 31, 2023, https://www wxxinews org/localnews/2023-10-31/rochester-person-in-crisis-team-to-go-under-the-microscope.
Data & Methodology
As an alternative to large-scale reform methods, we wanted to examine how resources that already existed in communities could support public safety. On the next page, we define our terms and outline how we mapped the agencies and calls meeting those definitions.
Community Assets
A community asset is an entity that provides assistance and support to community members. Community assets are valuable institutions that help fulfill needs and improve the quality of life within communities. Examples are wide-ranging and include churches, schools, organizations like YMCA or YWCA, volunteer organizations, shelters and food pantries.⁹
Community assets are diverse, as not all neighborhoods within a city have the same needs, nor do they have the same community assets. Furthermore, whereas some community assets are widely recognized, such as police departments or public transportation, other assets have less visibility and are potentially less known in the communities they serve. An ongoing challenge is finding ways to raise awareness around these resources and refer them to individuals in crisis.
For this analysis, we primarily focused our attention on programs and services that support an individual’s or family’s basic human needs, including physical and mental health, addiction, houselessness, domestic or partner relationships, safety, and financial needs.
We began by building a list of community assets that provide services in West Sacramento and in Rochester.¹⁰ Our goal was to collect basic information from community assets with mission statements and programs primarily focused on providing support to individuals in crisis. Such information included the location of an agency, the services it provides, and the populations it serves. The search for the community assets was conducted using Google and online repositories, such as the Monroe County Addiction Services Overview and Yolo Food Bank’s list of partner agencies.
We also wanted to allow users of the dashboard to focus on specific types of community assets (e.g., shelters for the unhoused). After multiple rounds of critique and refinement as a team, we arrived at the following eight categories: crisis nurseries, domestic violence centers, drug & alcohol rehab facilities, agencies that provide food assistance, agencies that provide housing assistance, medical care facilities, mental wellness facilities, and shelters for the unhoused. These categories are not mutually exclusive, and often a single agency met our definition for more than one category.
⁹ Community assets can also be individual people, such as pastors, or events such as a food drive For more information on community assets see Kretzmann, J P (1993) Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets
¹⁰
Additionally, in both cities, we obtained emergency calls for service data from law enforcement, including information on both the location and nature of those calls. We then overlaid both data sets on the same dashboard for each community (Rochester, West Sacramento) to better understand general patterns between community needs, as proxied by emergency calls for service, and community assets.
Calls for Service
To understand how the locations of community assets overlap with need in these communities, we used calls for service data from the Rochester and West Sacramento police departments (RPD, WSPD). The data comes from the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems¹¹ and were extracted by each department and shared with us.
For each agency, we collected a list of unique call descriptions. We then identified personal crisis call¹² types that were relevant to the community assets that our study focused on. We considered both the individual that the call was made for and any potential victims in the situation. This analysis led to eight broad categories of personal crisis call types: mental and behavioral, medical, welfare check, vagrancy, family, rape, drug activity, and vice (nondrug)/vice (unspecified).
There are two important differences in the RPD and WSPD calls for service data. First, the data from these two locations cover different time periods. The RPD data contain emergency calls placed between 2019 and 2020; the WSPD data contain calls between 2021 and 2022. Second, due to differences in call descriptions across the two sites, our categories for personal crisis calls differ slightly. The WSPD data included calls related to the unhoused population (e.g., “370H Homeless complaint”), whereas the RPD data did not. This allowed us to create a separate call type for “vagrancy” in West Sacramento but not in Rochester.¹³ Also, the call descriptions in the WSPD data provided details that allowed for the separation of calls related to drug activity and other vice related calls (e.g., gambling, prostitution). For this reason, we were able to include a category for “Vice (non-drug)” in West Sacramento. In contrast, the RPD call descriptions did not always provide the detail on the nature of vice related calls, and the corresponding category in Rochester is “Vice (unspecified).”¹⁴
¹¹ When 911 calls are made they are handled by CAD operators and recorded within the CAD system
¹² We refer to calls for service related to personal crises such as shelter instability, mental health episodes, drug activity, family trouble, etc. as personal crisis calls.
¹³ While we strongly suspect that these calls are also made in Rochester, the call descriptions themselves do not provide enough detail to create this category. For example, the description “URGENT WELFARE CHECK” might include calls related to the unhoused population, but there is insufficient detail in the description to make that determination
¹⁴ Examples of call descriptions that fall under “Vice (unspecified)” include “VICE ACTIVITY IN PROG” and “VICE REPORT”
Findings
In this section we present our main findings. First, we examine the types of calls received by each jurisdiction, highlighting the differences across sites. Then, we focus on the uneven geographic distribution of community assets within the cities of Rochester and West Sacramento. We then illustrate how personal crisis calls, when mapped alongside community assets, can allow for an investigation into under-resourced areas in each city.
Call Types by City
The total population served by the WSPD is estimated at just under 55,000 people¹⁵. In 2021, there were 58,990 total calls for service made, or about two calls for every resident. Around 18% of these calls fell into our classification of personal crisis calls. In 2022, there were 60,067 total calls for services, with personal crisis calls accounting for 20% of these calls (Table 1). This was a slight increase from the previous year.
¹⁵ Estimate comes from the 2022 American Community Survey 5-year detailed tables Find more information here: https://www census gov/data/developers/data-sets/acs-5year/2022 html
Table 1: Calls for service rates in West Sacramento, 2021-2022
Combining both years of data, the breakdown of personal crisis calls across the eight categories leaned more heavily towards medical, mental and behavioral, and welfare calls with a very small percent related to drug activity, rape and non-drug related vice (Figure 1).
RPD serves a total population of approximately 210,500 residents In 2019, there were 297,817 total calls for service made, with personal crisis calls accounting for 20% of all calls. In 2020, there were 275,061 total calls made. The percent of personal crisis calls remained consistent at 20% of total calls (Table 2).
Table 2: Calls for service rates in Rochester, 2019-2020
Figure 1: Personal crisis call types in West Sacramento, 2021-2022
In Rochester, a majority of the personal crisis calls fell into the family trouble category with a small percent categorized as rape or medical concern (Figure 2).
2: Personal crisis call types in Rochester, 2019-2020
Community Asset Clusters
In both locations, we found that community assets tend to be concentrated in the center of the city. In Rochester, this is especially true of agencies that support victims of domestic violence as well as agencies that provide food assistance and shelter. However, community assets of all types are sparse in the western, northwestern, and eastern parts of the city, such as the LyellOtis, Maplewood, and Browncroft neighborhoods. In West Sacramento, community assets are concentrated along the eastern border of the city, near Sacramento
There are strategic reasons for why community assets might cluster around city centers. These locations are more likely to be near public transportation, offering easier access to residents across the city. Urban centers might also provide more opportunity given the higher prevalence of mixed use and commercial zoning areas.
Figure
Socioeconomic factors may also contribute to this pattern (Table 3). Census data points to substantial disparities in socioeconomic conditions between census tracts in the urban centers and those in the periphery. For example, in Rochester, the six centrally located census tracts have an average median household income of about $41,000 compared to $64,000 for all other tracts. In West Sacramento, the difference is even more stark, with centrally located census tracts having an average median income of $51,000 compared to $102,000 for other tracts. 16
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Table 3: Comparing socioeconomic indicators in the urban centers and the periphery
CA (center)
Sacramento, CA (periphery)
Given these disparities, it is only natural to find community assets clustered near city centers. Even so, some neighborhoods in the aforementioned west and northwest sections of Rochester are similarly disadvantaged while having less community support.¹9
Gaps in Resources Relative to Need
In addition to census data, the geographic distribution of personal crisis calls can also provide an opportunity to locate specific needs in each city. For example, areas where there is a higher volume of calls related to vagrancy or housing insecurity indicate a greater need for targeted resources, including food assistance and shelters. By overlaying personal crisis calls against community assets on the same map, we can further identify under-resourced areas in each city.
6
¹ Estimate comes from the 2022 American Community Survey 5-year detailed tables. Find more information here: https://www census gov/data/developers/data-sets/acs-5year/2022 html
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¹ Census tracts: 9401, 9402, 9404, 9500, 3200, 9302, 9200, 0200
¹ Census tracts: 10203, 10201, 10204, 10105, 10104, and 10103 Note that census tracts 10102 and 10404 have boundaries that
8 extend beyond the city limits West Sacramento All remaining census tracts fall entirely within the city For example, the median income in census tracts that lie near the Western border of Rochester is $36,731. These neighborhoods 19 include the 19th Ward, Lyell-Otis, and the Maplewood Historic District
Both cities in our study point to gaps between community assets and basic needs, such as food, shelter, and safety. Figure 3a provides one example in Rochester, NY. There are three crisis nurseries in Rochester, illustrated by the three orange dots in the east, southeast and southwest regions of the city. Dark blue areas in this chart indicate census tracts that have a greater volume of calls related to family crises. This map suggests that the locations of the three crisis nurseries might not be optimal, and future community assets serving families and children might be better positioned in the north and northwest regions.
Figure 3a: Location of crisis nurseries relative to family crisis calls
Figure 3b: Location of rehabilitation facilities relative to calls related to drug activity
Figure 3b provides a similar example in West Sacramento. Here, the orange dots represent drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities, and dark blue areas are census tracts that have a greater volume of calls related to drug activity. This chart suggests that there is substantially more substance abuse in the center west region of West Sacramento relative to other regions. However, the closest rehabilitation facility identified is near the eastern border of West Sacramento, with all other facilities falling outside of city limits.
Discussion
We created these dashboards to help us analyze where community assets could be better utilized in support of communities’ needs represented by police calls for service. Upon doing so, we discovered that visualizing calls for service and community asset data in this manner could be valuable for multiple uses. Not only can the dashboard be used as a tool for police officers, but it can also serve as a helpful resource for community advocates in understanding where there is a misalignment of need and relevant agencies. This further highlights the importance of having access to high-quality data to help serve the needs of communities. We propose using such a platform more directly, in addition to analytics.
Benefits to Law Enforcement
One benefit of this type of dashboard is that it would be a helpful resource for law enforcement officers to have available when they are dispatched to answer crisis calls. These crisis calls are not uncommon. In agreement with the research done by CAP and LEAP, we found that personal crisis calls account for roughly 20% of annual calls for service in West Sacramento and Rochester. Providing officers a dashboard of community assets and other useful information can help guide those in crisis toward long-term care and away from the criminal justice system.
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Accordingtothe2011-2012NationalInmateSurvey,44%ofjailinmateswere oncediagnosedwithamentaldisorder. There is a long-standing issue of people with mental health disorders and people who struggle with substance use being disproportionately represented in jail populations.
This emphasizes the importance of easy access to mental health care and rehabilitation programs in the community. If police officers had better information as to where resources are located for these people in crises, then maybe fewer of those people could be sent to jail.
Amos Irwin and Betsy Pearl, “The Community Responder Model,” Center for American Progress, October 28, 2020, https://www americanprogress org/article/community-responder-model/
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20 Bronson, Jennifer, and Marcus Berzofsky Indicators of Mental Health Problems Reported by Prisoners and Jail Inmates, 2011-12 U.S. Department of Justice, June 2017. https://www.google.com/url? q=https://bjs ojp gov/content/pub/pdf/imhprpji1112 pdf&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1735839962077363&usg=AOvVaw3x6HRcWmH N2I2IO7L4-csV
Improving Collaboration
These dashboards may also encourage active engagement between police officers and community agencies Law enforcement, by virtue of being a frequent first responder to people in crisis, is an essential community asset in its own right. Yet, there is a long history of mistrust between the community and law enforcement elevated by the use of force by police officers. In particular, people with mental illness are 11.6 times more likely to experience police use of force than those without mental illness.22
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The collaboration between law enforcement and social service agencies is especially important in the wake of societal changes. The Supreme Court ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson allows cities to penalize the unhoused population by banning people from sleeping outdoors. This ruling effectively allows cities to shut down encampments with no solutions in place for the growing homelessness crisis. In these situations, having a dashboard of local shelters and housing resources along with their contact information and capacity would allow law enforcement to more easily connect people to alternative housing options that are generally safer than the encampments. This offers a different approach to imposing additional fines and criminal records on unhoused individuals, which can make it harder to secure stable housing in the future.
Laniyonu, A , Goff, P A Measuring disparities in police use of force and injury among persons with serious mental illness BMC Psychiatry 21, 500 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03510-w
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22 Kriston Capps and Ella Ceron, “What the SCOTUS Camping Decision Means for Local Homelessness Policy,” Bloomberg com, June 28, 2024, https://www bloomberg com/news/articles/2024-06-28/what-the-supreme-court-encampments-decision-meansfor-homeless-people
City Planning
In addition to being a useful tool for law enforcement, this type of data dashboard can be used by community members to advocate for additional services in underserved areas. As was shown in Rochester and West Sacramento, we found several examples of a disconnect between resources and need.
In situations where it is not feasible to build more brick-and-mortar institutions, the data can be used to demonstrate the need for better public transportation, another vital community asset.
Governments can use the dashboard of existing social service agency locations with calls for service data to add bus routes and other forms of accessible transit options that connect people in need to existing agencies.
It is also important to note that population and environmental changes lead to varying needs for a community over time. By consistently tracking rates of calls for service types, city governments can better understand the needs of their communities at different points in time and ensure the community’s needs are being met. For example, there may be greater rates of call types related to vagrancy or mental health crises during periods of increased job insecurity. If community advocates, social service agencies, and governments are aware of this, they can be proactive in addressing these needs.
Need for Quality Data
While these dashboards may provide important insights, their value ultimately depends on the quality of the underlying data Calls for service data, like other criminal justice data, are not standardized across agencies and are often lacking in detail necessary for in-depth analysis. As noted earlier, calls related to vagrancy appear quite commonly in calls for service data from West Sacramento, and while we suspect there are similar calls in Rochester, the data provided was not descriptive enough to separate these out from other welfare related calls. In both locations, there were several examples of call descriptions that were challenging to classify due to the ambiguity of the description
These challenges are not unique to the jurisdictions MFJ partners with. Recent research suggests data recorded by dispatchers are frequently marked by challenges resulting from data entry, with dispatchers often creating their own codes or defaulting to categorizing calls as “other”.
In particular, many call descriptions include shorthand or abbreviations that can create complications for first responders, who may be unsure of the actual incident or crime being described. Refiningandstandardizingthe classificationofincidenttypesformaximizedclarity,andimplementing qualityassuranceprotocolsisanimportantstepforimprovedtransparency andequitableoutcomesincallsforservice. 24,25
Finally, a complement to improved calls for service data would be better data on community assets. During our research, we found that obtaining up-to-date and accurate information about non-governmental community assets was at times very difficult, resulting in limitations in our research and analysis Multiple different community organization repositories exist, and the accuracy and reliability of those repositories remain to be investigated.
Centralizing data on community assets would not only benefit researchers and law enforcement, but also the communities they serve. The dashboard we have designed speaks to the need for improved visibility of community resources that provide care locally, what organizations already exist, and how they can help make our communities safer
Neusteter, S R , O’Toole, M , Khogali, M , Rad, A , Wunschel, F , Scaffidi, S , Sinkewicz, M , Mapolski, M , DeGrandis, P , Bodah, D , & Pineda, H (2020) Understanding police Enforcement: A Multicity 911 analysis In Arnold Ventures, Arnold Ventures https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/understanding-police-enforcement-911-analysis.pdf
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24 Simpson R, Orosco C Re-assessing measurement error in police calls for service: Classifications of events by dispatchers and officers. PLoS One. 2021 Dec 8;16(12):e0260365. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260365. PMID: 34879080; PMCID: PMC8654180.
Conclusion
There are many social service agencies, or community assets, that aim to improve the lives of individuals struggling with mental and behavioral health issues. Often, the challenge is finding opportunities to connect people in need to those resources In this study, we collected calls for service data in two cities alongside locational data on community assets. We then integrated these data sets into interactive dashboards to better understand patterns between communities in need and the resources that serve them.
In both Rochester and West Sacramento, our dashboards suggest that community assets are concentrated near the urban centers and are more sparse in the suburbs and surrounding areas. This suggests an ongoing need for governments to evaluate existing support structures and reallocate resources to underinvested areas. Furthermore, we believe that dashboards like these can help law enforcement and other first responders connect people in crisis to community assets that can offer food assistance, shelter, medical support, and other basic needs either in lieu of or in conjunction with arrest.
Our long-term hope is that law enforcement can work together with community assets to care for the most vulnerable in our cities and ultimately improve relations between law enforcement and the communities they serve.
Contributors to this report:
Mason DeLang
Reema Kumar
Izaiah Jefferson
Sema Taheri
Allyssa Birth
Director of Data Science & Assessment
Data Scientist II
Senior Research Associate I
Vice President of Research
Senior Marketing and Communications Manager
Special thanks to MFJ’s interns who helped with initial research:
Sarah Kipruto
Victoria Fix
With gratitude to the West Sacramento Police Department and the Rochester Police Department.
