Cities Ask if It’s Time to Defund Police and ‘Reimagine’ Public Safety’
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.”
