Senior with dementia and aphasia trades $14 worth of products for broken arm

[C(-)ris]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
Portland is trying. They just started a new group called Portland Street Response (PSR), but just last Friday had a call on someone with a gun and sent typical police response. Person was killed.

That is interesting. They seem to be very limited in the calls they will be dispatched to and the hours and area they cover. 10am-6pm M-F and only one neighborhood. I would have thought that nights and weekends would have been the prime window for the PSR to operate. They do plan to expand in 2022 to 24/7.

Looks like 84 total dispatches in 3 months. 95% of the calls had no transport and the police called PSR in 3 times to handle situations that police were originally dispatched to.

That last statistic is probably the most notable. That means that officers responded and then determined that the best course of action was to call PSR instead of engaging and possibly escalating.

Will be interesting to see if they can make this work and be cost effective. $2 Million is a big chunk of change. Nevermind, the police budget alone is $248 Million, $2 Million to give this a try isn't going to hurt anything.