Three colleagues—a criminologist, a crime analyst, and a cop—meet at a bar to discuss a recent proposal in city council that would reallocate a large portion of the police department’s budget to health care providers. These providers would assume responsibility for most 911 calls involving a person with mental illness (PwMI). The three friends settle in and start to debate the feasibility of the proposed change. Their discussion quickly turns to the prevalence of PwMI in police calls for service (CFS).

The criminologist orders a martini, and then informs the other two that just 2.23 percent (±.42 percent) of their city’s CFS involve a PwMI. This is based on 15 published studies from other jurisdictions that looked at mental health flags coded by dispatchers. The cop orders a beer and declares that the criminologist has never handled a police call and has little insight into the issue. Over the past month, two-thirds of the officer’s own calls involved a PwMI, someone who was intoxicated or high, or someone experiencing an emotional crisis. The crime analyst laughs at both of these estimates, quickly geo-locates all of the local breweries, visits PubQuest to ensure the accuracy of the results, and then selects a craft beer. The analyst proceeds to argue that the real figure is 21 percent. This finding was generated by analyzing thousands of narratives from the agency’s CFS database and extrapolating the total police resources devoted to mental health–related calls.