911 Was Never Designed to Handle Mental Health Crises
The Fatal Flaw of 911
Rebecca Neusteter's new book, "911, What's Your Emergency?", reveals how the emergency line's default to armed police has made it a fatal flaw for mental health calls. Drawing on over a decade of research inside call centers, she explains why 8,000 local systems with no national standards produce wildly different outcomes—and how a triage-first model could finally fix it.
The fear is so real that a response by law enforcement with a gun has the potential to escalate.