Tucson Police will not send officers to non-urgent calls

Tuscon's Mayor Regina Romero’s security detail will shrink under a Police Department plan to address a staffing shortage by no longer sending officers to non-urgent calls, reported Arizona Daily Star.

Two full-time members of the team that protects the mayor will return to patrolling the streets when Romero is not at high risk of harm — one of nearly 20 “critical changes” Tucson’s police chief said are necessary to cope with the department’s chronic staffing shortage.

Calls TPD will no longer handle include reports of non-criminal homeless activity on public property, minor noise complaints, panhandling, requests for welfare checks and suicidal subjects who are not a threat to others.

Many of those calls will go instead to mobile crisis teams, which are staffed with specialists in mental health, substance abuse or homeless outreach and are funded by state and federal tax dollars.

TPD will continue to respond to calls of any type that involve violence, large, disruptive gatherings or an immediate threat to public safety, Police Chief Chris Magnus said.

The transfer of some police calls to support services is in line with public sentiment favoring a non-police response in non-violent situations, Magnus said. And it’s necessary to ensure enough patrol officers are available to respond to serious threats, he said.

TPD already isn’t responding to many lower-priority calls due to its officer shortage, Magnus said.

“The reality is some of these calls are holding all night. If you call us at 9 p.m. saying your neighbor’s stereo is too loud and we can’t get there until seven the next morning, why are we even going?” he asked rhetorically.

Some of the other call types to be phased out over time include:

• Reports of contraband at schools, hospitals and courts (except firearms.)
• Deaths at medical care facilities.
• Requests for rides to places such as homeless shelters or addiction treatment facilities.
• Reports of city bylaw violations.
• Financial crimes.
• Runaways.

Magnus released the new plan internally last week and has faced questions about whether he did so to pressure city leaders to approve a multi-million-dollar pay raise for his officers.

The chief rejects the suggestion he is trying to force the council’s hand. There’s no need for pressure tactics, he said, because city leaders already know what’s at stake if police officers continue to quit and go elsewhere at the rate they have been.

“I believe they are taking it seriously,” the chief said of his recent presentation to council, which cited a recent study that found TPD officers make an average 13.4% less than surrounding police agencies. It would cost about $10 million a year to make TPD pay rates competitive, he said.

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Less than 20 percent of 911 calls are for serious crime

Michael Gelb of The Crime Report wrote:

Less than 20 percent of the 240 million 911 calls each year report a serious or violent crime in progress; the most frequent calls related to nuisance complaints and low-level crimes, according to a report issued by the Vera Institute of Justice.

In fact, the most common type of incident relayed to 911 dispatchers was noncriminal (i.e., a complaint or a request for a welfare check) —  calls which nevertheless consumed a “substantial proportion” of police officers’ time, wrote S. Rebecca Neusteter, Megan O’Toole, Mawia Khogali, and Abdul Rad – the report’s lead authors.

Despite the frequency of these “resource-intensive calls for service that do not involve a crime,” there is limited information about their causes and consequences.

To strengthen existing knowledge of 911 responses, the authors first analyzed the nature and outcomes of 911 calls as well as computer-aided dispatch data in Camden County, NJ; Tucson; Detroit; New Orleans; and Seattle.

The researchers then devised a so-called “system processing map” that tracked 911 calls from receipt through closure.

The data for this processing map was collected via focus groups, interviews and field observations in police departments and emergency communications centers in the five cities mentioned above.

Lastly, the Vera Institute convened police officers, dispatchers and researchers to discuss the report’s findings and examine “community-based responses that can help prevent a default to [law] enforcement and allow for more appropriate responses to calls for police service.”

In addition to concluding that most 911 callers reported noncriminal and nonemergency incidents, the report found that data collected and disseminated by dispatchers influences police officers’ decisions on the ground.

In Tucson and Camden, when dispatchers labelled incidents violent, as opposed to nonviolent, police officers were more likely to arrest someone.

Meanwhile, incidents characterized as nonviolent were more likely to result in an arrest when initiated by a police officer, as opposed to a 911 call.

These findings led the authors to believe that additional research is necessary to explain and lessen the differential outcomes between police contacts that begin with a 911 call and those that do not.

Furthermore, most mental health- and medical-related incidents were diverted from law enforcement, a trend which benefits both civilians – because they have easier access to treatment outside prison walls – and police officers – because they can spend more time responding to serious and violent crimes.

In light of these and other findings, the authors offered the following recommendations: 

• Adopt alternative reporting practices to minimize police response to 911 calls;
• Implement universal and specialized call-taking training;
• Explore and adopt alternatives to 911 hotlines;
• Expand the 911 response to include resources for dealing with mental health and drug overdose crises, conflict resolution strategies that are unlikely to result in injury, suicide ambulances, and social net services;
• Secure funding to 911 call centers and their employees; and
• Implement national standards for 911 data collection procedures.

Whatever path dispatchers and law enforcement agencies take, the authors argue that creating alternatives to 911 and reducing unnecessary police response should be central to future reforms.

Rebecca Neusteter was formerly the director of the Vera Institute’s Policing Program and is currently the executive director of the University of Chicago Health Lab, and Megan O’Toole was formerly a research associate in the Policing Program.

Mawia Khogali was formerly a research associate in the Policing Program and is currently a research associate in the Center for Policing Equity, and Abdul Rad was formerly a research associate in the Policing Program and is currently an associate fellow at the R Street Institute.

The report’s authors, in addition to the ones mentioned above, include Frankie Wunschel, Sarah Scaffidi, Marilyn Sinkewicz, Maris Mapolski, Paul DeGrandis, Daniel Bodah, and Henessy Pineda.

The Vera Institute of Justice’s full report can be accessed here.

More of the Vera Institute’s research publications can be accessed here.

Additional reading: “Phila. Behavioral Health Expert Helps Answer 911 Calls” by Crime and Justice News, The Crime Report, October 12, 2020

See also: “Police get 911 Calls about Coughs, Toilet Paper,” by Crime and Justice News, The Crime Report, March 19, 2020

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