911 Alternate Response Strategy
Clients: Chicago Office of The Mayor, Chicago Office of Emergency Management & Communications, Chicago Police Department, Chicago Department of Public Health
Partners: Northwestern University (Undergraduate Fellow), University of Chicago Crime Lab, University of Chicago Health Lab
Challenge: The field of alternate response has matured significantly over the past few years, particularly within the context of a nationwide push to reimagine public safety. A recent report found that the majority of Chicago’s 911 calls are related to non-urgent matters like car accidents, mental or physical health issues, or noise complaints. Deploying police to respond to these calls can produce mismatched responses of over-enforcement and unnecessary contact with the criminal legal system. It can also prevent police from responding to higher-priority crimes. Many jurisdictions – including Chicago – have experimented with different models of alternate response to mitigate these harmful impacts. For example, Chicago’s mental health crisis response program has shown positive results. Recognizing a lot of unexplored potential, the City seeks the most effective ways to expand alternate response.
Action: Civic Consulting Alliance was asked by the Mayor’s Office to develop data-driven, evidence-based, and community-informed recommendations for alternate response expansion in Chicago. We helped the City articulate its overarching vision and goals for alternate response, researched the landscape of current alternate response models in the city, leveraged analysis of calls for service data by the University of Chicago Crime Lab, as well as national best practice research by the University of Chicago Health Lab. We also designed a process to understand community preferences. In 2025, we will leverage this research and community input to make recommendations for alternate response expansion for the City to implement in 2026 and beyond.
Result: The alternate response model recommendations will enable the Mayor’s Office to make an informed choice on what long-term models to pursue in 2026 and beyond. We also provided the Mayor’s Office with recommendations for more immediate options to maximize use of current alternate response options, which include help lines such as 211, 311, and 988.
This work will also advance the initiatives in the People’s Plan for Community Safety and accelerate the City's goals to improve resource allocation and service delivery for Chicagoans.
