Do People Support This?

A national survey of 2,503 registered voters, conducted in 2024, found that 80% say mobile crisis response units are “effective” at making communities safer, including 72% of Republicans.¹ When forced to choose, 58% of voters prefer investing in mobile crisis units over hiring more police officers (34% prefer more police).²

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The Finding That Matters Most

The bipartisan pattern holds at the local level.

84% / 83%

Harris County, Texas. Democrats and Republicans who say the mobile crisis program is effective.³

Nationally, 89% of Democrats and 72% of Republicans view mobile crisis response as effective.¹ Former Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-Virginia) named his plan to create over 30 new mobile crisis teams “Right Help, Right Now.”⁴ When Virginia voters learned the plan included mobile crisis response, their support increased. When told it was “designed to relieve the law enforcement community’s burden of responding to behavioral health care crises and reducing the criminalization of mental health,” support climbed further.⁵ A 2022 national survey found that even after hearing the opposition message “just another way to defund the police,” 81% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans still supported sending healthcare experts over armed officers.⁶

The National Numbers

A national survey of 2,503 registered voters, conducted in 2024, found 80% say mobile crisis response units are “effective” at making communities safer.¹ A 2025 NAMI/Ipsos national poll found that 85% of Americans believe people in a mental health crisis should receive a mental health response rather than a police response.⁷

58% vs 34%

Forced choice. Voters prefer investing in mobile crisis teams over hiring more police officers by a 24-point margin.²

NAMI tested nine policy options with voters. The most-supported: creating “24/7 mental health, alcohol/drug, and suicide crisis call centers that can respond effectively to callers and follow up later.” By a 73-point margin, voters said that when someone is in a mental health or suicide crisis, they “should receive a mental health response” rather than a “police response.”⁷

Local Polling Tells The Same Story

Harris County, Texas: Gydence Research found 78% of residents say the mobile crisis program is effective at making the county safer.⁸ After learning more about the program, support jumps to 88%.⁹ Support holds across age, race, and geography within the county.³

Chicago: 74% of likely voters support reassigning “certain duties currently handled by the police department — traffic enforcement and certain 911 calls related to homelessness, mental health, minor crime, and substance abuse — to unarmed civil officers, social workers, and EMTs.”¹⁰

Virginia: Voters became more supportive of Youngkin’s plan when they learned it included mobile crisis response teams, and more supportive still when told it would “relieve the law enforcement community’s burden.”⁵

Law Enforcement Supports It Too

A Michigan survey found that 80% of county sheriffs and local police chiefs support specialized emergency response teams that include mental health and social work professionals, according to Michigan Public Radio.¹¹

Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper told the Sacramento Bee: “Being mentally ill is not a crime and we can’t be the answer.”¹² Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina called his city’s program a “third branch of public safety.”¹³ Helena, Montana Police Chief Brett Petty: “Everybody wins.”¹⁴ Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock testified before city council:

It’s time that we work towards getting law enforcement out of mental health. We have never claimed to be the experts, but yet we have been charged with the responsibility of responding to mental health crisis.

Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock, testifying before city council¹⁵

What Messages Move People

Randomized controlled testing and max-diff studies, reported in the newsletter Notes on Persuasion, identified which messages perform best across subgroups.¹⁶

The top-performing message across every subgroup — age, gender, race, ideology, 2020 presidential vote — is: “Police can’t do it alone.” In the RCT study, this message increased support for a hypothetical ballot measure by 4 percentage points relative to control.¹⁶

The second and third best-performing messages: “Fully fund public safety” and “Treatment, not trauma.”¹⁶

The most persuasive substantive argument (86% agreement): “Medical professionals know how to recognize signs of acute mental illness, de-escalate fraught situations, and get people the help they need. Police officers, no matter how compassionate and skilled, simply don’t have this level of medical expertise and training.” That gets 88% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans.¹⁷

The second most persuasive argument (82% agreement): “Letting medical professionals handle mental health calls lets police officers focus on more serious public safety threats like solving robbery, rape, and murder.” That gets 87% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans.¹⁸

The escalation argument — that “police officers often show up with sirens blaring, bright lights, and firearms” which “can backfire when dealing with people in acute mental crises” — gets 78% overall, including 75% of Republicans.¹⁹

The Risk of Inaction

The DOJ’s civil rights investigation of the Phoenix Police Department documented officers firing “Tasers at people with little or no warning” during behavioral health encounters and failing “to recognize that a person’s disability may impact whether they can understand commands.”²⁰ The DOJ noted that “when we did see PhxPD request a mobile crisis team, the incidents were resolved without arrest or use of force.”²¹

A Wall Street Journal analysis of court records (2015–2024) found that “local governments representing 25 of the nation’s largest police and sheriff’s departments paid out over three billion dollars over a ten year period to settle civil lawsuit claims.”²²

The Bottom Line

National polling shows 80% support, 72% Republican support. In Harris County, bipartisan support reaches 84% of Democrats and 83% of Republicans. Support increases after exposure to program details. Law enforcement leadership supports at the same 80% rate as the general public. “Police can’t do it alone” is the top-performing message across every demographic and ideological subgroup.