Noteworthy
The motel desk clerk didn’t mean to call the police when she dialed 911. The man roaming the motel property was “not a threat,” the clerk said, but he was clearly in distress, crawling on the ground and asking for his mother. Yet instead of diverting the call to the city’s behavioral health response team, the call taker dispatched the police.
The incident was cited in a 2024 report by the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division as an example of how the Phoenix Police Department “discriminate[s] against people with behavioral health disabilities when dispatching calls for assistance and responding to people in crisis.”
Sociology and Criminal Justice Professor Jessica Gillooly—who has consulted with the DOJ on three such reports and is currently working with the ACLU to analyze call center data for two lawsuits claiming cities aren’t providing emergency services that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—sees similar scenarios playing out in data from 911 call centers across the country.
Why does it keep happening?
Gillooly notes that the underutilization of alternative response teams is often blamed on resource constraints—too little funding, too few staff, or limited hours. “Those challenges are real,” she says, “but they miss a deeper issue: These teams can only help when calls are routed to them in the first place.” That decision rests with 911 dispatchers.
Many jurisdictions have turned to structured tools—scripts, protocols, decision trees—to guide those dispatch decisions. But Gillooly finds that without careful design, real-world testing, and strong training and support, such tools fall short. “When there’s any uncertainty, call center protocols default to sending the police because something bad could happen,” she says. “This focus overlooks the harm that sending the police might cause.”
Drawing on firsthand experience—as a grad student, she worked as a 911 call taker—and deep analysis of call center data, Gillooly advocates for redesigning the guidance call takers receive from their organizations to help cities reimagine emergency response.
She stresses that call takers must be part of the process for refining the tools they use. Departments should also be clear about their values and why they’re trying to implement alternative responses in the first place.
“Dispatchers need more than a script—they need a North Star,” says Gillooly. She argues that 911 centers should embrace their own guiding principles—such as a preference toward nonpolice responses—to help call takers navigate situations where the protocols fall short. —Andrea Grant
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fall 2025
Photograph by Michael J. Clarke
