it appears keeping the pressure on is getting somewhere. keep fighting the good fight.
“Portland got the idea from Eugene, where a nonprofit called Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets, or CAHOOTS, has operated for 30 years. In 2019, it handled about 24,000 calls and only requested police backup about 150 times.”
“Portland’s program will be different—it will be staffed by city employees rather than nonprofit workers, for instance—but the goal is the same: to provide an appropriate response and, ideally, to avoid some of the bad outcomes, including police shootings, that disproportionately involve people suffering mental health crises.”