Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • An Oregon city's decades-old alternative to police

    January 28, 2021 |

    Crosscut |

    Podcast |

    Over 15 Minutes

    Response Location: United States, Eugene, Oregon

    Like many cities, Seattle is looking to Eugene, Oregon, for a model to shift resources from police to unarmed crisis responders handling 911 calls about mental health, addiction, family conflict, and other non-criminal problems. Eugene's CAHOOTS program has been doing such work for half a century, and since 1989 sending medic-and-counselor teams on calls. In 2019 it saved $8 million in police costs and $14 million for ambulances and emergency room visits. But, while taking police out of situations where they might cause more problems than they solve, it's only as good as its region's social services.

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  • The Free Hotline That's Saving Women's Lives by Disarming Dangerous Men

    January 22, 2021 |

    Medium |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: Colombia, Bogotá

    The Calm Hotline takes calls from men in Bogotá, Colombia, in an effort to address the root causes of domestic violence: a culture of machismo. Four psychologists take emergency calls – about 700 calls came in the service's first month – and works to refer the callers to an eight-week "gender transformation program" that will attempt to change men's toxic attitudes that can lead to violence. The program is patterned on a counseling hotline in the Colombian city of Barrancabermeja that was associated with a steep decline in domestic violence.

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  • After shootings hit new high, Durham to spend $935,000 on an alternative to police

    January 20, 2021 |

    The News & Observer |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Durham, North Carolina

    Because two Durham neighborhoods using the Cure Violence method of "violence interruption" bucked the citywide trend toward higher gun violence, the city will expand its Bull City United violence-prevention program to four more neighborhoods. The additional $935,488 cost will pay for 16 employees, many of them formerly incarcerated, who will mediate disputes after a shooting, to prevent retaliation, and who will conduct outreach to people at risk of gun violence.

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  • In Eugene, Oregon, civilian response workers—not police—are dispatched to nonviolent crises

    January 19, 2021 |

    The Christian Century |

    Text |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Eugene, Oregon

    Eugene's well-established CAHOOTS program for replacing police as first responders to certain types of 911 calls has become a model for multiple cities as they seek to replicate its success in an era of questioning the role of police. While it saves its city money and replaces arrests and possible violence with social and health services for people needing housing or mental health care, or suffering from addiction, CAHOOTS is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of programs responding to these challenges. Communities' differences will dictate what works best for them.

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  • How Asian Canadians Are Fighting Racism During the Pandemic

    January 19, 2021 |

    Reader's Digest Canada |

    Text |

    Under 800 Words

    Response Location: Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia

    By establishing online platforms to make anonymous reports of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, two Canadian organizations elicited hundreds of stories that help victims to process their experiences. The first platform, Elimin8hate, was the creation of a filmmaker who understands the therapeutic value of storytelling as means of coping with trauma. Her Vancouver group's alliance with a Toronto organization attracted funding to train discussion leaders who will lead anti-racism discussions in government and businesses.

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  • Albuquerque's vision for non-police first responders comes down to earth

    January 17, 2021 |

    New Mexico In Depth |

    Text |

    Over 3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Albuquerque, New Mexico

    In response to the 2020 policing protests, Albuquerque was among the first cities to embrace a major change in handling mental-health-crisis calls to 911. But its new Community Safety Department has foundered in its first year, a victim of inadequate planning and resources. The plan to send unarmed first responders on such calls, to reduce the risk of a violent over-reaction by the police, depended on reassigning city workers from other agencies, none of whom were mental health professionals. City councilors have sent the planners back to rethink the latest in a history of failed responses.

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  • Criminalizing Mental Illness, Part 2

    January 14, 2021 |

    KALW |

    Podcast |

    Over 15 Minutes

    Response Location: United States, Los Angeles, California

    Los Angeles County's Office of Diversion and Reentry has moved about 6,000 people out of jails and into programs providing mental health care, drug treatment, housing, and job training at a cost that is about one-fifth that of incarcerating people with mental illness. Like Eugene, Oregon's CAHOOTS program, ODR provides an alternative to the default model in the U.S. of incarcerating people with such health problems. L.A. County is now shifting as much as $500 million from policing to supportive services because programs like ODR and CAHOOTS fall far short of the actual need.

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  • Five Days Without Cops: Could Brooklyn Policing Experiment be a ‘Model for the Future'?

    January 03, 2021 |

    The City |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, New York, New York

    For 50 hours over five days, police and community members collaborated on the Brownsville Safety Alliance pilot project, which kept police officers away from a longtime crime hotspot so that community members could provide for police-free public safety. During the experiment, no one in the neighborhood called 911 to report a serious crime. Criminologists caution that the test does not prove that police can step away permanently. But residents say that after longstanding friction over policing, they and the police struck a new tone of cooperation in community-led crime prevention that they hope can continue.

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  • In Brattleboro, a new kind of police patrol pushes treatment, not jail

    January 02, 2021 |

    Sentinel Source (The Keene Sentinel) |

    Multi-Media |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Brattleboro, Vermont

    Police officers paired with substance abuse counselors go onto Brattleboro's streets to offer no-strings-attached help to people using drugs. Without using arrests or other coercion, the Project CARE "recovery coaches" have connected dozens of people to rehab and other needed services since the program began in July 2018. Modeled on bigger, successful programs in Gloucester and Brockton, Massachusetts, CARE's effect on overdoses is unknown and the involvement of police is seen by some as a drawback. But the outreach has let the community know help is available for the asking – even from cops.

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  • An Alternative to Police That Police Can Get Behind

    December 28, 2020 |

    The Atlantic |

    Text |

    Over 3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Eugene, Oregon

    A street-level view of White Bird Clinic's CAHOOTS program in Eugene explains its appeal as a cost-saving, humane alternative to sending the police to 911 calls concerning mostly minor problems involving homelessness, mental illness, and substance abuse. From the decades-old program's countercultural beginnings to today's 24/7 presence, the private agency's publicly funded teams of a medic and crisis worker have helped keep problems from escalating into violence and jail time. But a number of factors call into question how scalable this approach would be in larger, more diverse cities.

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