But implementation has been a little more difficult. Many of these services like responding to mental health calls or marriage counseling calls have been police calls for service for some time. So hoo handled these calls before the police? No one. And now the tricky part. Figuring out what calls require the police and which ones require someone else? All of these calls for service involve incomplete and incorrect information. Some callers will deliberately mislead 911 call takers for various reasons. Every city that has implemented an alternative response model is one ugly call away from dispatching the police first to “make the scene safe”. Kind of like how it works now for many Fire Departments, hoo stage down the street waiting for the “all safe and secure” before they come in. And I can’t say that I blame them, but it really defeats the point of freeing up the police.