The City of Minneapolis has tasked a workgroup with creating alternatives to Minneapolis Police response where appropriate. The two opportunity areas for an alternative response that have been identified by the workgroup are Mental Health Calls and Report-Only Calls. The workgroup is working with the Performance and Innovation Team, who is supporting the workgroup with researching, developing, and testing the feasibility of alternatives to police response for the identified opportunity areas.
A big part of their process is centering the work they do around the end-users, as these are the people most directly impacted by the solutions and recommendations. Therefore, it is important for them to hear the lived experiences of the end-users through interviews, surveys, focus groups, etc. They created a survey to engage community members who would like to share their experiences. The primary purpose of the survey is to gain insight from individuals who have either experienced or witnessed a mental health crisis, who may or may not have had interactions with services such as 911, police, crisis response teams/helplines, etc.
The survey responses will be anonymous as they will not be collecting any identifying information.