from the New York Times, June 5, 2020
“One model that members of the Minneapolis City Council cite is Cahoots, a nonprofit mobile crisis intervention program that has handled mental health calls in Eugene, OR since 1989.
CAHOOTS employees responded to more than 24,000 calls for service last year — about 20 percent of the area’s 911 calls — on a budget of about $2 million, probably far less than what it would cost the Police Department to do the work, said coordinator Tim Black.
“There’s a strong argument to be made from a fiscally conservative perspective,” Mr. Black said. “Public safety institutions generally have these massive budgets and there’s questions about what they are doing.”