
Recently, affordablehousingaction.org posted a story about mobile outreach teams, which pair police officers and health professionals. Together they respond to 911 calls where it seems likely that there could be an issue of mental illness. These teams have shown promising results1. This post is about outreach teams that do the same thing, but without the police.
Akwatu Khenti is calling for outreach teams without the police in Toronto. Khenti teaches at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He specializes in addiction and mental health. He connects public health principles with community-based responses, and discusses examples where police are not part of the intervention team.
Khenti notes the success of CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets), a non-police response service that operates in Eugene, Oregon. CAHOOTS teams are dispatched by 911 and able to call for police support if needed. CAHOOTS has been running for over 30 years. Once dispatched, their teams call for police support in only 1% of responses. You can read more about CAHOOTS in this article from CNN: This town of 170,000 replaced some cops with medics and mental health workers. It’s worked for over 30 years
Khenti’s studies and experience indicate that a non-police response would be a big help for people who are homeless, particularly Indigenous and Black people who are over-represented in this population.
Khenti does not think the CAHOOTS model could or should be directly transferred from Eugene (population 170,000) to Toronto (population 2.7 million). But he has developed a list of considerations for advocates and decision makers who are planning a non-police outreach model. Khenti’s ideas are published at Maytree: Rethinking Community Policing: Civilian Partners In Public Safety
Toronto’s first-ever mental health crisis response teams — without police — to launch in March