inspiring canadians to live better.

healthing leaf

inspiring canadians to live better.

healthing leaf
get healthing in your inbox with the morning checkup and weekender newsletter!
home / 世界杯决赛2022

cahoots: can a groundbreaking public safety model work in ottawa?

in two oregon cities, emergency calls that come into the centralized police-fire-ambulance communications centre are often redirected to a mobile crisis intervention unit.

by matthew lapierre

jan 5 2022
read time 4 minute read
join the conversation
sandy smallwood is the vice-chair of the ottawa police services board. errol mcgihon / postmedia
a man is having a mental crisis in a public place. bystanders notice and dial 911, but since the man seems to offer no threat to others, no police car with blaring sirens arrives.
instead, a white van pulls up and two people wearing street clothes emerge. they ask the man what he needs, if he is hungry, or even offer him a cigarette. they draw on years of training and experience in de-escalation and provide the man with information on local resources that can help him; they offer to drive him if he wants a lift.
this type of response, advocates and researchers say, leads to better outcomes for some people who struggle with addiction or mental health problems and who would otherwise be dealing with armed police officers.
on the streets of eugene and springfield, ore., this type of response is a reality: emergency calls that come into the centralized police-fire-ambulance communications centre are often redirected to cahoots, a mobile crisis intervention unit.
officially founded in 1989, cahoots, which stands for crisis assistance helping out on the streets, offers an alternative to armed police interventions. recently, in the wake of the murder of george floyd, and as new attention turns towards rethinking policing and public safety models in general, greater attention has turned towards cahoots and other programs like it.
powered by
canadian centre for caregiving excellence

advertisement

here in ottawa, city council approved a police board plan to send some money that might otherwise have gone to the police instead towards a pilot project to develop an alternative mental health response team. in discussions leading up to that decision, cahoots was frequently mentioned as a successful example of a co-responder model — where police work in partnership with other groups to respond to some calls.
the biggest lesson that ottawa can learn from cahoots, according to sandy smallwood, the vice-chair of the ottawa police service board?
“we can learn it works,” smallwood said in an interview. “the other thing which is really important is understanding that different types of responses are required for different situations and an armed response, a use-of-force response, is not always the best response.”
smallwood, a veteran of several civilian police oversight bodies who, prior to sitting on the opsb, was an eight-year member of the canadian association of police governance, recently attended an info session about cahoots. the city of eugene is proud of the program and cahoots offers consultations to representatives from other cities and jurisdictions.
the white bird clinic, a community health centre in eugene, provides staff for cahoots — although much of the funding for the program comes through eugene’s police department. cahoots runs on an annual budget of approximately $2 million us, which funds the 24/7 response capacity from multiple teams, who ride in marked vans and include a medic who is either a nurse or an emergency medical technician, and a crisis worker who has at least several years of experience in the mental health field.
powered by
obesity matters

advertisement

the white bird clinic estimates that cahoots has led to a drop of more than 15 per cent in the number of calls that the eugene police department has to respond to and eugene statistics suggest that the program is saving the city $8.5 million us annually. in 2019, cahoots said it received roughly 24,000 calls for service and called for police backup only 150 times.
police statistics differ slightly. epd estimate that the program diverts between five and eight per cent of police calls.
but despite the slight variance in statistics, what is clear, smallwood said, is that both parties — white bird clinic, who staff the program, and the police, who work with cahoots responders — agree that it is a success.
“some of the cahoots calls are a joint response,” an epd website post reads, “or cahoots is summoned to a police or fire call after it is determined their services are a better match to resolve the situation. however, cahoots remains a primary responder for many calls providing a valuable and needed resource to the community.”
but cahoots has been around for 32 years, and, as smallwood notes: “there’s a huge difference in the way eugene is and ottawa,” so there remain questions about whether the program could be adapted here.

advertisement

“anybody could poke holes in what i’m saying and say, ‘well it’s not fair to compare,’ and you’re right, it’s not. they (eugene and ottawa) have different problems,” he said, “but i guess what you could do is say there would appear to be evidence of a real opportunity for a different response, a casual, street-friendly response without weapons, with people with different training.”
ottawa’s police chief, peter sloly, has pointed to cahoots as an example of a co-response model that works and helps to divert calls away from the police, but he has noted a number of caveats, specifically that, in ottawa, it could take years to build the same type of infrastructure that eugene has with cahoots.
but smallwood signalled his optimism that the appearance of a cahoots-like program in ottawa was no longer a far-off fantasy. city council voted in december to grant the police service a smaller increase than it had asked for and to move some of that money into the community. a portion of it, $550,000, will go towards developing an alternative call referral program in ottawa like cahoots — a small, possibly timid step, smallwood conceded, but a historic one nonetheless.
“it is very important,” he said, “and it is the beginning of something potentially very positive and i’m excited by the possibility that we will actually see the change that has been so elusive over the years.”

comments

postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. we ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. we have enabled email notifications—you will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. visit our community guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.