Who Are the Key Stakeholders?

Mobile crisis response sits at the intersection of law enforcement, emergency dispatch, mental health, and city budgets. Every constituency experiences it differently.

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How Police Experience It

The law enforcement response to mobile crisis teams is not one thing – the line officer, the police chief, and the union chief all have different perspectives and interests.

The Line Officer

In Minneapolis, officers thanked mobile crisis responders for taking calls off their plates. Deputy Chief Eric Fors confirmed: “Feedback from the rank-and-file officers has been very positive.”¹ Program manager Candace Hanson: “Immediately, we would get officers just thanking us for the work, thanking us for taking over in a situation where they’re like, ‘I’ve got to get to the next call.'”¹

In St. Petersburg, when the CALL program launched, “No one came to me and fought the program,” said Megan McGee, the police department’s special projects manager. “This was a big win for the officers.”² Officers acknowledged “that they were limited in what they could do”² on mental health calls, especially the repeat calls.

I know I’m going to come back to that house in a month and it could be worse.

St. Petersburg police officer²

Across documented programs, line officers describe the same logic: they want to focus on what they’re trained for and hand off what they’re not.

Police Chiefs

Being mentally ill is not a crime and we can’t be the answer. Law enforcement officers are not trained mental health professionals. We’re not psychiatrists and psychologists. We wear the badge, we carry the gun, we deal with crime, not mental health crises.

Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper³

Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina: “This innovative new department is already helping to free up our officers so they can respond to high-priority calls.”⁴

Helena, Montana Police Chief Brett Petty: “Expanding mobile crisis response services means increased safety for individuals, for law enforcement officers, and for our community at large, everybody wins.”⁵

The Union Conversation

Union leaders evaluate mobile crisis through a different lens than patrol officers or chiefs. Was the union consulted, or were they handed a done deal?

Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock, a union leader, and a chief — testified: “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.”⁶

Cities that included the union in the design process before the public announcement documented smoother launches. Austin’s Police Association President Bullock testified in support of mobile crisis at city council, an endorsement that came from being included in the design.⁶

Cities where the union felt excluded faced public opposition framing the program as a threat to officer roles, regardless of the program’s operational substance.

Named critics from law enforcement include Tim Davis, president of the Sacramento Police Officers Association, who argued that “our 911 dispatchers do an amazing job and are the perfect people to handle those in crisis” and that “it is imperative that 911 remain under the direction of the police department.”¹⁷ Tom Saggau, a spokesman for police unions in Los Angeles and San Francisco, described restructuring proposals as outgrowths of the “defund the police” movement.¹⁸

How Dispatchers Experience It

Dispatchers are the gatekeepers of the entire system. If they don’t route calls to the crisis team, the program exists on paper but not in practice. And the dispatch perspective is more complicated than most leaders expect.

NYU researchers studying Denver’s STAR program found two distinct patterns.

The Liability Concern

For me, in the chair, if STAR can’t protect themselves, I’m not sending them by themselves. It’s a liability that falls on us as the dispatcher. ‘Why did you send them there? Now they’ve gotten hurt. Now it’s your fault.’ You really need to go with your gut for what’s risky, that you never want someone to get hurt.

Denver 911 dispatcher⁷

This dispatcher shared that on intoxication calls, calls that STAR is technically eligible for, she always adds police backup as a precaution. She does the same for suicidal calls. Her logic isn’t opposition to the program. It’s fear of being personally responsible if something goes wrong.⁷

The Muscle Memory Problem

Some dispatchers don’t resist, they simply forget. Researchers found that dispatchers had “overwhelming appreciation for STAR” but sometimes “forget to utilize this new ‘fourth option.'”⁸ One dispatcher: “I don’t think there’s a lot of hesitancy in terms of, ‘Oh gosh, I don’t want to add STAR to this,’ it’s more of a, ‘Oops, I forgot,’ because it’s just newer, so it takes time to adjust to everything.”

After decades of routing every call to police, adding a new option requires rewiring old instincts. Austin addressed this by embedding 24 clinicians directly in the 911 center. Denver added auto-prompt logic in the computer-aided dispatch system and gave STAR teams in-vehicle CAD terminals.⁸

The Responder Perspective

I had a dispatcher the other day who was like ‘God, I just hate sending STAR to an apartment or house because it’s like you’re going in and all this stuff could happen.’ I’m like, ‘We’ve delivered groceries and medications and picked people up. We’re used to going into people’s homes. We’re used to meeting people in alleys. We’re used to meeting people in parks.’ Send them. We got this. You have our back. You know where we are. We’ll call for help if we need it.

Denver STAR crisis responder⁹

STAR clinicians told researchers “they feel very comfortable going inside apartments and houses with individuals in crisis largely because they have done so many times in previous job positions.”

NYU researchers documented the gap between dispatcher caution and responder confidence as a recurring pattern in Denver’s STAR program.⁹

How Families Experience It

A mother in Harris County calls 911 because her teenage daughter has taken pills and locked herself in her bedroom. She needs help desperately, but she fears what happens when a sheriff’s deputy arrives. She worries armed officers will escalate an already volatile situation. The dispatcher sends the county’s mobile crisis team instead. The team talks to the teenager. She comes out. She gets care.

In Portland, a study found that 57.9% of unhoused respondents reported feeling “unsafe calling 911.”¹⁵ That dynamic extends to families: the fear of needing to call 911 but being afraid of the response.

In St. Petersburg, a family was calling 911 multiple times daily because of a teenager’s behavior, breaking windows, running away, getting physical with siblings. Police kept responding. Nothing changed. When the CALL program took over, they worked with the entire family for months — connecting both the teenager and her mother to support services. The result: “The child is now employed part-time, attending school, getting excellent grades, and there have been no calls for service at that residence since.”¹⁰

We have really been welcomed even more than originally thought.

Abena Bediako, Durham HEART social worker¹¹

Durham HEART Director Ryan Smith shared stories from the field:¹² “They showed up to a downtown business and the person said ‘I was really hoping it was going to be you who showed up.’ They were driving on the freeway and someone passed them and did the heart sign and said, Thank you. Thank you.”

In rural Iowa, Jeff White, who struggles with depression and schizophrenia, described years of the old system: “They don’t know how to handle people like me.”¹³ What he actually needed during a crisis was someone to help him calm down and find follow-up care. Now, instead of calling 911, he can contact a state-run hotline and request a visit from mental health professionals serving 18 mostly rural counties. And in Eugene, Oregon, Rebecca Hill credits CAHOOTS with saving her life across five separate crises over 15 years. “In 2006, I was up on top of the famous parking garage¹⁴ that folks like to jump from,” she told KLCC. “Thankfully, they called CAHOOTS. The response time was almost immediate. They spoke to me for over an hour.” After the program shut down in April 2025, Hill and hundreds of other community members mobilized to bring it back, a measure of how deeply these programs can embed in the lives of the people they serve.

In Portland, a study of clients served by Portland Street Response revealed both how much the alternative matters and how fragile trust in the old system is. Initially, 57.9% of unhoused respondents reported feeling “unsafe calling 911.”¹⁵ After two years of the program, that dropped to 44.9%. Clients consistently described feeling treated “with compassion and dignity,” saying responders “treated us like humans.”¹⁵

I don’t worry anymore. I can say I need Portland Street Response.

Portland Street Response client¹⁵

How The Budget Office Experiences It

City managers and budget directors ask different questions than elected officials: Where does this sit in the org chart? What are the HR classifications? What happens when the grant runs out?

Programs that stalled often did so because the administrative infrastructure wasn’t ready before the public launch, not because of political opposition.

$902¹⁶

Net savings per call. Durham’s HEART program costs $1,191 per response but generates $2,093 in fiscal savings.

Harris County transitioned from contractors to in-house county employees for better retention and accountability.¹⁹ Portland designated crisis responders as formal first responders with full employment benefits.²⁰ Durham hired staff as city employees rather than contracting.¹²

How City Council Members Experience It

Council members bring different concerns to mobile crisis votes. Cities that built durable support documented four distinct patterns.

The Swing Vote

The member in a mixed district who cares about crime optics and political survival. She wants quarterly metrics, district-specific data, and the ability to say “I voted for a pilot with accountability built in” rather than “I voted for a new program.” She supports if the risk looks manageable. She walks if the narrative gets ahead of the results.

The Public Safety Traditionalist

Aligned with police, backed by safety PACs, and skeptical of anything that sounds like it’s replacing officers. His trust drivers are clear: a fallback protocol that keeps police in charge when things escalate, joint testimony from the police department and health department, and explicit language that officer staffing is untouched. What kills his support: any language suggesting police failed, any equity framing without a law enforcement voice, any celebration of the program that excludes officers.

The Progressive Reformer

Supports the program on principle but will walk if it’s a half-measure — if the community isn’t in decision roles, if hiring doesn’t reflect the neighborhood, if the program collaborates with police in ways that feel like co-optation. Her trust drivers are equity in hiring, lived-experience representation on the team, an advisory board with real power, and transparency when things go wrong.

The Institutionalist

Doesn’t care about the politics. She cares about whether the backend works — HR classifications, dispatch integration, vendor readiness, interagency MOUs. She’ll support a clean rollout and kill a messy one through committee. Her trust driver is a backbone memo covering HR, budget, dispatch, and legal before the first press conference.

Cities that built durable council majorities addressed all four simultaneously: police involvement in the design, representative hiring, clean HR and budget infrastructure, and quarterly metrics by district.

The Bottom Line

Line officers in Minneapolis, St. Petersburg, and Denver described mobile crisis as taking unwanted calls off their plates. Police chiefs in Sacramento, Albuquerque, and Helena publicly endorsed the programs. Union inclusion in the design process correlated with smoother launches. Dispatchers in Denver showed two distinct resistance patterns, liability fear and habit, both documented by NYU researchers. Families, from Harris County to rural Iowa to Portland, described relief at having a non-police option. Named critics include Tim Davis (Sacramento Police Officers Association) and Tom Saggau (police union spokesman, LA and SF), who frame the programs as related to defund-the-police efforts.