The Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland (MACRO) program, which launched earlier this year and is housed within the city’s fire department, has dispatched medics to over 3,500 calls for service related to mental illness, substance use, and homelessness. These are calls that armed police officers used to handle, and Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong told The San Francisco Chronicle that he is grateful for the help—“OPD has more than enough to deal with,” he said. The program could handle more calls, but getting calls routed to the team from the 911 call center has been an obstacle to scaling the program. Starting this month, though, 911 dispatchers are now equipped to dispatch a mobile crisis team through the fire department instead of sending a police officer.
Related: Safer Cities recently conducted a national survey that gave likely voters various additional facts that could shift baseline support or opposition to mobile crisis response. In general, baseline support is so high that additional facts didn’t shift it much. But the one exception is the kind of 911 integration that Oakland just did— “Traditionally, a 911 operator can dispatch a police officer, a firefighter, or an ambulance. However, in places where a mobile crisis response unit exists, the 911 operator has another tool to solve the caller’s problem—they can now dispatch a police officer, a firefighter, an ambulance, or a mobile crisis responder.” Knowing this fact increases support for creating a mobile crisis response program, especially among Republicans.