Before Jackson County votes on Question 1, ask what 911 system should really be doing
Question 1 on the Nov. 3 ballot for Jackson County voters proposes a technical and monetary fix for the 911 emergency call system. My question: Why would we be voting on an item so important now, when law enforcement reforms are foremost on many people’s minds? Have we, the residents of the county who are the users of 911, been engaged in evaluating this central point of entry to our emergency response system?
Policing is at the front and center of our community. It is essential to making the people feel protected and safe. But today, there are cries for much-needed reforms to how we enforce the law. Part of those reforms should be evaluating the 911 system, and that demands the people’s involvement.
Why does 911 need a community-wide evaluation? The system has been oversold, overused and misused, and it has become a budget driver. Police are sent to situations they are not equipped or skilled to handle. In my profession of social work, one of our guiding principles is “least drastic measure first.” Overreaction makes for wasted resources.
911 is the single point of entry for all emergencies, but also for too many situations that do not require immediate attention. People with untreated mental illness are involved in 25% to 50% of all fatal encounters with police, according to the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center. Identifying a caller who is having a mental health crisis and not treating it as a law enforcement matter can save lives. In one example I know of, 10 uniformed police officers showed up at a housing development because of a reported single-person disturbance. Officers with high-powered weapons in their holsters, acting in paramilitary mode, can generate unneeded chaos, overreaction, injury and sometimes death. Unnecessarily putting officers in harm’s way is not good for their own welfare, either.
911 was brought to the metro area by the Mid-America Regional Council’s board of directors in the 1970s. I was then a member of its citizens advisory council, and we participated in the planning of this tool. Decades later, the United Way of Greater Kansas City created its 211 system to provide social service resource information, covering roughly the same geographic area. The Kansas City regions also has the First Call substance abuse prevention and recovery service, as well as hotlines for the homeless shelter and domestic violence victims. Existing resources can address many of the issues people now call 911 for.
How can we reform 911 to serve its proper role? Evaluations are a basic function of public and private organizations. What the 911 system needs is community-wide evaluation using multiple methods such as town halls, email surveys and feedback questionnaires, which could be inserted into landline and cellphone bills. Neighborhoods and universities have the tools and know-how for gathering public input.
What needs to be examined? First, look at the ways the 911 system sorts calls — how it differentiates among life-threatening situations, mental illness episodes, medical problems or drug and alcohol-related incidents. Second, a redesign of the system should weed out racial and gender bias. We live in a metropolitan area of fast-growing populations of color. Women and girls represent more than half of those people, and they need to be a part of this much-needed reevaluation. Women bring different and valuable insights to how our emergency system could work better for all of us.
911 needs to be layered and appropriately nuanced. Then we can become better-informed users of the system. If we are going to reform law enforcement in our metropolitan area, 911 needs to be a part of the big picture. It must be reevaluated before technical and monetary fixes are put in place.
Alice Kitchen is a social worker. She is a former Kansas City Health Commission and Housing Authority of Kansas City commissioner and currently serves on the Community Mental Health Fund Board.