Public comment: Personal stories about CAHOOTS
13 min read
Presenter: CAHOOTS allies shared stories with the City Council April 14, about how ‘Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets’ made a difference in their lives. Angela Dunham:
Angela Dunham: My name is Angela Dunham. Tonight I share an advocacy of a 14-year small business owner and an advocacy of basic humanity. We operate in the heart of downtown and we love being downtown business owners, but also know our efforts are not sustainable if resources continue to be stripped. Our city contract with DPI Security was terminated in January and we now lose the support of CAHOOTS.
[00:00:33] We operate under one of the primary parking structures that people use to end their lives. I share this story: On a Friday afternoon, a human jumped from the parking structure and landed in front of our windows, while we were actively leading a class with small children.
[00:00:51] CAHOOTS came to engage our youth with trauma-informed care. They stayed for hours and answered questions, practiced breathing, and offered continued resources for an experience that’s hard to articulate.
[00:01:03] CAHOOTS is a huge loss for us as business owners and also an underserved population of humans being discarded and lost in bureaucracy. We interact with the police weekly and appreciate all they do and they also do not deserve to have more added to their plate.
[00:01:19] Having said that, losing this resource will continue to overwhelm the police and pull them from situations where they’re desperately needed. In our experience, when we call the police, as it’s not an emergency, we often have no support, which is left to ourselves or underqualified faculty.
[00:01:36] To denote this as ‘a challenging situation created by contractual termination’ minimizes the reality that our families and clients feel vulnerable, our staff is overwhelmed and fearful, and as business owners we’re left picking up the pieces constantly.
[00:01:49] This meeting feels like you’re listening to placate and not problem-solve. There’s no money to help downtown business and people are dying on our doorstep, but we have expensive electric bike bays and an expensive pavilion that’s constantly empty and closed in an incentive to better downtown.
[00:02:06] CAHOOTS is a vital downtown resource. We ask for funding and care of people in community.
[00:02:11] Presenter: Rebecca Hill:
[00:02:13] Rebecca Hill: Hello, my name is Rebecca Hill, I’m an adult mental health peer support specialist. I work in a permanent supportive housing program here in Lane County. I’m also a member of LEAGUE, which is a committee under the (Lane County) PHB (Poverty & Homelessness Board). I’m the co-chair.
[00:02:26] I’m here to speak on my behalf and on behalf of the community in favor of CAHOOTS. They’re a vital resource for everyone in our community. People from all walks of life have utilized their services, myself included.
[00:02:40] CAHOOTS saved my life in 2003 by providing safe, trauma-informed, compassionate care after I was the victim of a violent assault. They also provided me transportation to the hospital where I received the psychiatric care that I desperately needed.
[00:02:57] Again in 2006, they talked to me off of a literal ledge, saving my life again.
[00:03:02] My adult child has been on the streets now for 15 years. She just turned 30 years old this week. She has been saved by CAHOOTS multiple times, as well as three weeks ago, my stepmother was saved by CAHOOTS and taken to the hospital to a psychiatric bed when they were told that there were none. CAHOOTS helped me advocate for her and she is now alive and safe in a protected care facility.
[00:03:31] As hard as it is, I’m speaking out today, not only for my family, but for every family in this community, for everyone who doesn’t have the strength or the voice to come and speak tonight.
[00:03:44] Thousands of lives have been saved in this community by CAHOOTS. Their dedication, compassion, and person-centered care is uncomparable. They’re a national model for a reason. It works.
[00:04:00] We should be honored and proud as a city to have CAHOOTS, and it is a disgrace. It is a disgrace to the city and to the community members that they are not here. We didn’t ask for Lane County Mobile Crisis Services, the units. We didn’t ask for them. The community did not ask for them. We asked for CAHOOTS.
[00:04:24] Presenter: Kevin Kopsco:
[00:04:25] Kevin Kopsco: Hi there. My name is Kevin Kopsco. I’m the founder of Eugene Neurodivergent Support. I’m here to speak for supporting the funding or finding the funding or any kind of finding the funding for CAHOOTS the program.
[00:04:39] This is kind of a situation where when you don’t have the money to pay for anything, you don’t go out and buy a new car or buy any kind of luxury things, you pay for food. You buy food, what you need.
[00:04:49] Victor Perez was the most recent one of many victims to police violence due to incredible lack of training and lack of humanity. The police are not equipped to handle the large amount of diversity surrounding the autistic experience. One common theme in police shootings of autistics is that they were nonverbal and could not communicate to protect their lives.
[00:05:07] I’m here to express that every autistic person is nonverbal given the proper amount of stimulus. We intake 42% more information than the normal brain, which requires heavier processing power, much like a high-spec computer. The likelihood of overload is far higher.
[00:05:20] It takes eight seconds for a neurotypical person, on average, to understand that there’s a difference between us and normal people. This difference once labeled us crazy. This difference once labeled us deserving to be electroshocked. You don’t think the police are any different? They notice the difference, but sometimes we have evidence that they see crazy.
[00:05:38] It shouldn’t be the job of police to handle such complex situations like this. Their time is far better handled elsewhere. Autistics and neurodivergents needs a crisis intervention program that will not kill them if they’re not acting neurotypical enough. Please act in a way to allow the important crisis service not to disappear.
[00:05:54] Presenter: Victoria Acosta:
[00:05:55] Victoria Acosta: I want to start off by saying I’m 18 years old. I’m not mad, but instead, mourning the hundreds of kids who are similar to me who will no longer be able to access the same love, dedication, and care I received while fleeing an abusive house situation. CAHOOTS was more than just a crisis response. CAHOOTS for me was a family.
[00:06:15] In December of my sophomore year, after a physical altercation, I fled my house in the middle of the night. While sitting on a neighbor’s couch with no shoes on my feet, visibly distraught, I had a police officer tell me I should go to church more, and proceed to leave without offering any crisis assistance or information.
[00:06:34] It was only while at school I heard and received proper crisis assistance from CAHOOTS and accurate emergency housing and helped to deal with the trauma I had just gone through. I was a scared, beat down, 15-year-old girl. I didn’t need a police officer. I needed a hug.
[00:06:49] I’m truly disappointed in the city for not advocating and fighting more and even more heartbroken for future little girls like me who will not have access to the help they so rightly deserve.
[00:07:00] I also want to take this time to thank every single one of the CAHOOTS members who, despite everything that they have gone through, continued to help me, and continue to support me even when I did not need their services anymore.
[00:07:13] I’m 18 years old, I’m a full-time recipient of multiple different grants and scholarships, I was Miss Teen Springfield Volunteer, and this success was only possible because of the love and dedication and hours and time that CAHOOTS put into me, and I want to really thank them for that and really truly truly plead with you guys to reconsider. Thank you.
[00:07:35] Presenter: Vanessa Lepe:
[00:07:36] Vanessa Lepe: My name is Vanessa Lepe and to my right is Mae Sowards, my colleague. Mae and I are sociology PhD students at the University of Oregon and in collaboration with Associate Professor of Sociology Dr. Claire Herbert at UO, as well as the National Alliance to End homelessness, we have brought for you a summary of social scientific research on alternative mobile crisis response programs across the U.S., many of which are modeled after CAHOOTS.
[00:08:03] Our city struggles with some of the highest rates of homelessness in this country and research shows that programs like CAHOOTS play an important role in resolving this social problem as well as promoting public safety.
[00:08:14] Before you we are presenting literature and research based on the mobile crisis response such as CAHOOTS.
[00:08:23] Mae Sowards: Mobile crisis response programs or MCRs have been expanding across the U.S. since 2020. MCRs commonly pair a behavioral health specialist and EMT to respond to nonviolent concerns typically routed to police such as calls about disorderly subjects, welfare checks, loitering, trespassing, or vandalism.
[00:08:40] Program evaluations and social science research has begun to identify the impacts of MCR programs. This research shows that MCRs are highly successful at serving people experiencing mental health distress, substance use disorders and homelessness and connecting them with services.
[00:08:54] MCRs promote public safety and decrease burdens on other high-cost institutions like police, EMS and emergency rooms. And community members and stakeholders view MCRs as an important component of local crisis response.
[00:09:06] Research also shows that people served by MCRs are highly satisfied. MCRs are effective at building relationships and connecting people with services, they decrease hospital usage for people in crisis, and decrease interactions with criminal justice institutions.
[00:09:20] This research also shows that the broader services CAHOOTS provides in comparison with services like Lane County’s Mobile Crisis is crucial for why these models are so effective. Research suggests that awareness of mobile crisis programs is important for success. Dispatches and residents know to call CAHOOTS and clients want CAHOOTS.
[00:09:38] I can attest to this. I spent my summer interviewing people experiencing homelessness in Lane County and multiple participants described CAHOOTS as essential to accessing services.
[00:09:48] Presenter: Sarah Kerr-Daly:
[00:09:50] Sarah Kerr-Daly: So another group of people that has not been mentioned is the caregiver, the family members who live with a severely mentally-ill person.
[00:10:01] And I don’t know if a lot of people realize, but there isn’t respite, there isn’t a break. If they go into the hospital and are held for five days, you sleep for five days without worrying about their safety.
[00:10:15] So for 15 years, a loved one’s father and myself have been caring and keeping him sheltered and safe and it has been exhausting, absolutely exhausting. And the stories I could tell. But I won’t.
[00:10:32] So the reason I am here is to support CAHOOTS and to give them a thousand, thousand thank-yous because what a lot of people don’t realize is they come to—we live in a nice neighborhood in South Eugene—they come to our home when our son has been psychotic, sometimes hours in a, you know, just really a difficult way, or days. And they can redirect, they have the skills to, you know, to support and hear them and redirect that psychosis that is not manageable with medication.
[00:11:10] I hear so many people say, ‘Well, if they just took their meds.’ What a lot of people don’t realize is those medications actually make them worse many times. And finding the right medication when you don’t really have a community with an expert psychiatrist and expert in mental illness—mental health and mental illness are two different things.
[00:11:32] And mental illness, you need to really go to the East Coast to McLean Hospital. You need to go to a state that isn’t ranked 50 out of 50 for mental health treatment. So when you are doing it on your own and you are the front line to them not becoming homeless, or drug-addicted, or any of the things that when you are confused with your thinking you might become.
[00:11:57] So thank you CAHOOTS. They saved us. They have helped him and he is now a year and a half doing really, really well because of a medication that actually works. So thank you.
[00:12:09] Presenter: Kaci Spoor:
[00:12:10] Kaci Spoor: Kaci Spoor… I think what people are asking is to do something. We’re here hurting, scared, sad for our community, and we’re saying: ‘Do something. We’re begging you to do something.’
[00:12:24] I don’t work in health care, but my best friend works in health care, my husband works in health care and I just had an experience with a very good friend where I witnessed, for, firsthand, I witnessed the system fail her.
[00:12:36] I begged for help at the emergency room. I was told—I sat there with her until 3 in the morning until I couldn’t anymore—and was told: You’re probably not going to be seen. It could be tomorrow afternoon. I have a job and a family and a child, and I begged them to listen to me and they didn’t.
[00:12:58] I was told I could call the alternative mobile line and I called them and I begged them for help and they said, ‘Well, it’s past 11 p.m.’ And they said, ‘Well, we could send a police car.’ She wasn’t going to get in a police car. It would’ve absolutely made the situation so much worse. And they said, ‘Or you can call us again tomorrow at 2 p.m.’ Because people only have mental health crises between 2 p.m. and 11 p.m. even though I sat in the emergency room from 11:45 until 3:30 begging for help.
[00:13:35] Some people may be angry, maybe some people are uneducated, but I think more than anything, people are just here begging you to do something because you guys are the people that are, are in power. We can do research, we can educate ourselves, but you guys are the ones that can actually do something.
[00:13:51] So we’re begging you. Please do, so I don’t ever have to sit in a emergency room again with a friend who’s in a psychotic episode who—it ended in her committing a crime and hurting herself and somebody else before she was able to get help.
[00:14:06] Let’s keep CAHOOTS around so they can actually respond maybe outside of 2 and 11 p.m. Thanks.
[00:14:14] Presenter: Lindsey Shields:
[00:14:15] Lindsey Shields: My name is Lindsey Shields. I’m the co-owner and co-director of Flex Studios, a local dance studio in the heart of downtown Eugene, home to 350 students and their families. CAHOOTS has been by far one of the most successful support systems throughout our 13 seasons downtown. Several years ago, my business partner, Angela and I, were unloading costumes, her five months pregnant.
[00:14:32] I looked up at our parking garage and saw someone standing there with blood dripping down the side. I knew right away it was vital to get to this person as Angela called for support services. After that day, I unknowingly received a ‘Lifesaving Civilians’ award from the police chief, praised for my efforts, something I realized after the fact, I didn’t want to have to receive.
[00:14:47] I’m a small business owner, a mother, many things, and on that day I was taking on a job I was not trained for. This was not an isolated incident, and I have encountered many similar situations over the years. I stand firm in knowing that it takes all of us to create community, but there are times when I think we need to redefine what community means. Many times it means leaders go first.
[00:15:09] In the past 13 years, we have called on CAHOOTS hundreds of times, and what I have witnessed is when we continue to fill spaces, it creates impact and positive restoration to a seemingly hopeless situation. And I have a responsibility to make informed decisions to keep my clients—who are our very community—safe.
[00:15:25] In just the last few years we have experienced sexually explicit content, unhoused humans in our alleyway showing need of mental health, drug deals, humans shooting up, human feces, cleanup, and even watched a man pass on her front door. We keep Narcan on hand because we are community.
[00:15:39] We take pride in being the quiet helpers, doing our part. The journey to healing will be a challenge, but with programs like CAHOOTS, that goal seemed much closer. As government continues to move the goalposts, you lose the people vital to the success of our unsuccessful systems. Healthy leaders dip out because they know how taxing it is for them as individuals and in turn creates an imbalance.
[00:15:58] We understand it is up to the individual to choose healing and to be a vital part of that example is something I do not take lightly.
[00:16:05] I believe that due to poor management of city funds, we have lost a successful program. If the expectation of me as a small business owner is to pay taxes, talk down someone from jumping off our parking garage and distribute Narcan successfully, then certainly my expectation for the city is to be able to manage the funds allocated in a more productive and successful way.
[00:16:24] Thank you for your time. I look forward to seeing CAHOOTS as a staple of our city programs where small business owners can thrive, humans can heal, and dance teachers can get back to teaching dance. Thank you.
[00:16:35] Presenter: Community members speak on behalf of CAHOOTS, in Part 2 of an extraordinary public comment session April 14. Part 3 features speakers making the case for restoring CAHOOTS funding in the city budget.
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This story produced by John Q. and supported through the Whole Community Time Bank by generous listeners of KEPW 97.3, Eugene’s PeaceWorks Community Radio.
