Eugene city councilors heard a mixed review of the city’s police alternatives, which highlighted an overburdened CAHOOTS and a lack of coordination between emergency departments, during a work session on Jan. 18.
The review came from a study commissioned by the council in May 2022 and was conducted by BerryDunn consulting group. It was led by Michele Weinzetl, a former police chief who now works in police reform.
Weinzetl summarized the study into 13 key findings, three of which she highlighted as critical: the city needs to change how it responds to emergency calls, CAHOOTS is overburdened with non-crisis calls and there is a lack of coordination between response departments.
“At the end of the day, it’s about being efficient and effective,” Weinzetl said.
Her team found a lack of clear distribution of work between response teams, which has led to redundancies such as multiple departments responding to the same call.
She said the scope of CAHOOTS’ responsibilities has expanded over decades and called on councilors to update call protocols to limit how often the department is deployed to non-crisis calls. Acting Communications Director Cambra Ward Jacobson, gave an example of CAHOOTS providing transportation to some residents.
“It’s become detrimental to the point that city departments are reluctant to even summon them because there’s an underlying thought that they won’t be available,” Weinzetl said.
Additional findings included a recommendation to improve the city’s data management so it can collect more data, better share data between departments, streamline the emergency call center and provide more job stability.
Weinzetl praised some areas. She pointed to a city change to redesign ambulances and deploy emergency medical services separately from fire fighters, which has improved operations for both departments.
She also praised the city’s resources for the unhoused.
“You are providing what I would suggest, is an unprecedented level of service to your community that we haven’t seen,” she said.
An additional recommendation that got councilors’ attention was that the city hire a community paramedic, someone who could provide “low-level” health care to those who need it, particularly unhoused people, and further help reduce the volume of EMS calls.
Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner said his department would look to implement some of BerryDunn’s recommendations.
He said different kinds of officers can deflect responsibility to each other and need to be brought under one framework. “I think there’s a way we can coordinate our resources better in the city, and so I’m thinking about what that might look like,” Skinner said.
Councilors were receptive to the findings.
“I know and understand that CAHOOTS is deeply under-resourced, is asked to do things that it was not originally charged to do, and one of the things that we really need to do is realign our systems so that they perform more efficiently,” Councilor Greg Evans said.
However, they expressed concern over how to pay for some of BerryDunn’s recommendations.
“How do we get to the point where we can really enhance our capacity sans being able to ask at the state level at, the legislative level, for the kinds of resources that we need?” Evans asked.
His concern was shared by several other councilors. They and city employees at the work session frequently referred to the city’s “budget crisis.”
Weinzetl said the city could apply for state-level funding, but it would first have to improve its data collection.
“We need to have that kind of granularity and understanding so that we can monitor effectiveness, and that often leads to the ability then to convince people, whether it’s legislatively or wherever, that additional resources are warranted,” she said.
Weinzetl also acknowledged the city will likely have to choose between recommendations because of budgetary constraints.
Councilors Emily Semple and Mike Clark expressed concerns about Eugene’s high level of services, with Clark saying the city is providing more services than people in Eugene expect it to and Semple, who said she got onto the council advocating for people without housing, suggesting the amount of services may be contributing to Eugene’s high population of unhoused people.
“It’s just horrifying to hear and know that we are the highest per capita of homeless in the country. How do we stop doing that? And then the other part of that is that we are providing an unprecedented level of service –– and I can’t believe these words are coming out of my mouth, but they may be connected,” Semple said.
But, as a whole, councilors acknowledged a need for change.
“I watch these incredible growth swings and calls for service, and I watch the street level resources that we have that have changed very, very little since 1980, when I started here. So it’s very interesting, and it’s something I think we need to keep at the forefront,” Councilor Randy Groves said.
Weinzetl declined a request for an interview, citing BerryDunn’s policy to not speak to the media. CAHOOTS did not respond to a media inquiry in time for this article’s publication.
