WHEN EVERY EMERGENCY GETS A BADGE, SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THE DISPATCH SYSTEM.

JUSTICE · SOCIAL JUSTICE

Published by Langhorne P. Breedlove

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2026 · 12:45 AM ET

Tags: Social Justice · Police Accountability · Civilian Response · Civil Rights · Public Safety

Dear fellow American proletariat: If someone breaks into your home, you want trained help. If someone is having a psychiatric crisis, you want trained help. Those are not necessarily the same kind of help. Yet we have spent decades asking a single emergency number to send an armed police officer to an astonishing variety of human problems. The officer may be excellent at law enforcement and still be the wrong specialist for the moment.

American Proletariat proposes two connected reforms: policing that answers to independent civilian scrutiny, and a genuine civilian emergency-response system for eligible nonviolent crises. Accountability should not depend on whether an agency feels like investigating itself; crisis care should not depend on whether the person calling for help can endure an armed encounter.

THE MANDATE

Establish transparent national minimum expectations for use-of-force reporting, independent review of serious misconduct, accessible complaints, fair investigations, and timely publication of aggregate outcomes, using lawful federal standards and state or local implementation. Expand dispatchable civilian behavioral-health, medical, social-service, and community crisis teams for incidents that can safely be managed without police.

No one should mistake this for abolishing emergency law enforcement or sending unprotected counselors into armed confrontations. Dispatch triage must distinguish credible threats, weapons, violent crimes, medical emergencies, and situations appropriate for civilian care. Police, fire, emergency medical services, and civilian teams should be able to support one another under clear safety procedures.

A reform worthy of the name protects residents, officers, civilian responders, victims, people in crisis, and the rights of anyone accused of misconduct. Discipline and criminal prosecution require evidence, lawful authority, appropriate procedures, and due process. Oversight is not a presumption of guilt; it is a system for finding out what happened without allowing the investigated agency to control every step.

ROOTS · THE LAW ALREADY HAS A STANDARD

In Graham v. Connor, decided May 15, 1989, the Supreme Court held that claims of excessive force during an arrest or investigative stop are evaluated under the Fourth Amendment's objective-reasonableness standard, taking account of the facts and circumstances facing an officer at the scene. The Court did not establish that every use of force is forbidden; it required constitutional assessment rather than a test based simply on whether an officer had malicious intent (Source 01).

Congress has also given the United States attorney general a civil enforcement mechanism against patterns or practices of law-enforcement conduct that violate federal rights, now codified at 34 U.S.C. § 12601. That provision addresses systemic unlawful practices; it is not a substitute for separately examining every individual allegation or proving a criminal offense (Source 02).

The resulting legal landscape is fragmented. Police departments answer to local or state employers, prosecutors and courts apply different bodies of law, civil-rights enforcement has its own procedures, and union agreements or civil-service rules may shape discipline. A new national policy must identify which actor can lawfully require each reform, rather than pretending a presidential speech automatically rewrites thousands of municipal charters.

THE PUBLIC ACTUALLY USES THIS SYSTEM

The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that 49.2 million U.S. residents age sixteen or older—about 19% of that population—had contact with police during 2022. Approximately 46% of people who initiated their most recent police contact were reporting a possible crime. These numbers are from a nationally representative survey about 2022 experiences, published in October 2024; they do not mean 19% of Americans were arrested or subjected to force (Source 03).

The point is straightforward: policing is an essential public institution, and its legitimacy affects people who seek help as well as people who are stopped, questioned, searched, arrested, or investigated. Serious oversight must examine the quality of services, the treatment of victims, the frequency and context of force, disparities, complaint handling, and whether communities can rely on emergency response.

A system can be too quick to use force and too slow to answer a victim's call. Both failures matter. The mandate must measure both instead of choosing whichever statistic makes our favorite argument sound heroic.

WHAT INDEPENDENT OVERSIGHT SHOULD ACTUALLY DO

Independent civilian oversight should be established by enforceable law with predictable funding, conflict-of-interest rules, qualified investigators, documented authority to obtain records where lawful, protection for complainants and witnesses, and procedures for referring potentially criminal conduct to the proper prosecutor. Oversight bodies should publish findings, policy recommendations, case processing times, substantiation rates, and the reasons recommendations were accepted or rejected.

The model need not be identical everywhere. Some jurisdictions may establish independent investigative offices for serious incidents, others auditors examining policies and trends, others review commissions with substantial investigative power. The crucial tests are whether independence is real, evidence can be obtained, findings can be scrutinized, and corrective action actually follows.

Officer rights count as well. Records should be protected where required, witnesses must not be coerced, and workers should receive notice, representation and appeal rights consistent with applicable law. An independent process that becomes a political punishment machine would fail its own mission. The purpose is reliable fact-finding, not a competition to see who can issue the angriest press release.

SEND THE RIGHT PEOPLE TO THE RIGHT CALL

The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration describes mobile crisis teams as trained behavioral-health professionals and peer workers who can assess distress, de-escalate, make safety plans, and connect people to follow-up care. SAMHSA distinguishes clinician-led mobile teams from co-responder models involving law enforcement or emergency medical personnel; both can have roles when the situation warrants them (Source 04).

Denver's Support Team Assisted Response program provides a real-world example. The city dispatches behavioral-health clinicians and paramedics to low-risk calls involving mental-health distress or substance use when there are no significant safety concerns. Denver's 911 system can route eligible calls to STAR, while life-threatening emergencies still require conventional emergency services (Source 05).

Research on Eugene, Oregon's CAHOOTS program offers more evidence, though not a universal blueprint. A May 2025 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper used two complementary research designs to evaluate expansions of mobile crisis teams and found reductions in arrest likelihood and increased access to medical services for relevant calls. The working paper's estimates apply to its studied setting and assumptions; they should not be lifted into an unsupported promise of identical national results (Source 06).

A February 2026 Urban Institute report examined Denver's STAR and co-responder programs, including program reach, costs, and later criminal-justice outcomes. Its comparison of distinct response types underscores why civilian-only and joint-response options should be evaluated separately, including service access and safety, rather than reduced to a single slogan about replacing police (Source 07).

A NATIONAL CIVILIAN RESPONSE FRAMEWORK

AP proposes a funded system of crisis teams operating through coordinated 911, 988, emergency medical and local-service infrastructure. Dispatchers would use evidence-based triage protocols; eligible behavioral-health, welfare-check, housing-related or nonviolent public-distress calls could receive a trained civilian response. Teams need clinical backup, language access, disability accommodations, safe transportation options, incident documentation and follow-up services.

Dispatch safety is nonnegotiable. A caller's report may omit a weapon or imminent threat; a situation may escalate after arrival. Teams require real-time communications, clear withdrawal procedures and the ability to request police or EMS quickly. Conversely, sending armed officers by default to all low-risk calls should be tested against the outcomes of a suitable civilian alternative.

The framework should not make someone wait for a counseling appointment when they need an ambulance, nor treat every unhoused person as a psychiatric emergency. Housing assistance, behavioral-health care, transportation, and routine social services must be available beyond the emergency response itself. A clinician can resolve the immediate crisis but cannot prescribe a vacant apartment into existence.

THE LEGAL PATH · WHO CAN REQUIRE WHAT?

Congress could create grants, reporting conditions, training support and federally enforceable protections within constitutional limits. State legislatures could establish independent investigative powers, update use-of-force policy requirements, clarify access to records and create regional crisis-response authorities. Counties and cities could adopt local dispatch protocols, civilian response teams, bargaining arrangements and transparent complaint systems as authorized by their laws.

Federal civil-rights statutes, constitutional due process, public-records obligations, privacy protections, collective-bargaining rights and state criminal procedures must be reconciled. In particular, nationwide data reporting would require clear definitions of incidents, injuries, force categories, complaints, dispositions and agency coverage. An incomplete dataset should be labeled incomplete, not sold as a national truth.

The implementation sequence should begin with inventories and baseline measurements, independently evaluated pilot sites, training and dispatch integration, scaled investments in participating jurisdictions, and public annual assessments before broader expansion. A large city, a rural county, a Tribal Nation and a campus jurisdiction will not necessarily use the same staffing model.

THE TEN-YEAR LEDGER

A credible ten-year fiscal plan would quantify independent investigators, civilian oversight staff, training, data systems, legal review, complaint intake, body-camera and evidence retention where applicable, civilian crisis teams, vehicles, dispatch modernization, clinical staffing, supervision, insurance, interpretation, evaluation and 24-hour coverage. It must distinguish federal grants from state and local spending and private-provider contracts.

Offsets must be documented rather than imagined. Some eligible civilian responses might avoid arrests, emergency-room visits or unnecessary police deployments, but those changes do not automatically reduce a city's payroll or a hospital's fixed costs. Police staffing can be redeployed, not necessarily eliminated. A program might improve outcomes while increasing near-term public spending; that difference belongs in the ledger.

AP has not yet determined national coverage levels, salary schedules, eligible call volume, responder-to-population ratios or regional service models. We therefore cannot honestly claim a precise national annual price tag or guaranteed net savings. The completed proposal must include low, central and high assumptions, start-up and operating costs, incident outcomes and annual recalibration.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

A civilian responder may be dispatched to a call that becomes unsafe. Poor dispatch screening may delay a necessary police response. An oversight body can become politicized or lack investigative power. Local agencies may withhold records; complainants may fear retaliation; officers may fear unfair discipline. Programs may work well in a densely staffed city and badly in a sparsely populated county.

One opposing argument is that additional oversight creates delay, expense, and defensive policing. Another is that civilian responders can be less equipped to handle unpredictable hazards. These concerns warrant staffing plans, independent evaluations, rapid backup, transparent due process and attention to response times; ignoring them would put workers and residents at risk.

The opposite error is to assume that no existing police procedure should be questioned. The issue is not whether all officers are virtuous or all officers are dangerous. It is whether the institution delivers lawful, effective, fair public protection—and whether someone outside the institution can prove it.

MEASURING SUCCESS

Publish response times by call category, civilian-call eligibility and completion rates, escalation to police or EMS, injuries to residents and responders, arrests, repeat crisis contacts, connections to care, complaint filing and resolution, investigation independence, substantiated misconduct, disciplinary outcomes, public trust, racial and geographic disparities and per-call costs. Make comparisons within comparable populations and jurisdictions.

Oversight reports should include what improved, what did not, and what the data cannot establish. An effective reform is one that protects rights, provides the right service, responds when residents need help, and earns confidence through evidence. It should also be able to admit a mistake without consulting the public-relations department for permission.

A badge is a public responsibility. A civilian crisis team is a public responsibility. Neither deserves blind faith. Both deserve a system capable of holding them to the same basic promise: protect people, respect their rights, and tell the truth.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

01 · U.S. Supreme Court — Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/490/386

02 · U.S. House Office of the Law Revision Counsel — 34 U.S.C. § 12601, Pattern or Practice of Unlawful Law Enforcement Conduct. https://uscode.house.gov/us/usc/t34/s12601/

03 · U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics — Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2022 (October 2024). https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/contacts-between-police-and-public-2022

04 · Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration — 988 Frequently Asked Questions: Mobile Crisis Care. https://www.samhsa.gov/mental-health/988/faqs

05 · City and County of Denver — Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) Program. https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Public-Health-Environment/Community-Behavioral-Health/Behavioral-Health-Support/Behavioral-Health-Outreach/Support-Team-Assisted-Response-STAR-Program

06 · National Bureau of Economic Research — Mobile Crisis Response Teams Support Better Policing: Evidence from CAHOOTS, Working Paper 33761 (May 2025). https://www.nber.org/papers/w33761

07 · Urban Institute — Aligning Crisis Response with Community Needs: Evidence from Denver's STAR and Co-Responder Programs (February 9, 2026). https://www.urban.org/research/publication/aligning-crisis-response-community-needs

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WE ARE ONE.  ·  E PLURIBUS UNUM.