MACRO Survey Project
Oakland built a way to send help that isn't the police. We want to help it work for more of us. MACRO has sent trained, unarmed responders to Oaklanders in crisis since 2022. BSL and its partners want to learn more about what is working, what is not, and why.
Start Here
For a long time, police have been the default answer to almost every kind of emergency, including many that are not crimes at all: a neighbor in a mental health crisis, someone living outside who needs care, a wellness check on an elder, a dispute that just needs calming. Cities across the country have reached the same conclusion. Sending an armed officer to calls like these is expensive, and it can turn a moment that needed care into one that causes harm. A better approach has been spreading: trained, unarmed responders whose job is to de-escalate, offer care, and connect people to help.
MACRO is Oakland's version of that idea. The Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland is what residents fought for over years of organizing, and the city launched it in April 2022 through the Fire Department. It is something Oakland and its community built together, and it helps real people in hard moments every week.
Crisis response programs have tremendous potential:
Albuquerque's has handled more than 100,000 calls and now routes over 85 percent of them away from police and fire.
Denver's cut low-level crime by 34 percent, with no rise in violent crime, at about a quarter the cost of a police response.
We want to ensure that MACRO is meeting its potential with respects to its original mandate to support East and West Oaklanders with a focus on our unhoused residents. To do so, we are working with our coalition partners to survey Black East and West Oaklanders, and unhoused Black Oaklanders, to learn more about who they call when they need help, what happens next, and how they feel about the response.
By The Numbers
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Researchers estimate 21% to 38% of 911 calls can be answered by trained civilian responders. A 2021 analysis of Oakland's own calls for service found categories that fit well. Here are some examples: Priority 3 medical calls (5.3% of all calls), disturbances (10.8%), mental health calls (2.8%), and welfare checks (1.4%).
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A Stanford study of Denver's STAR program found it reduced low-level crime by 34% with no increase in violent crime, at about one-quarter the cost of a police response, roughly $151 per offense compared with $646.
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In the first quarter of 2025, MACRO responded to more than 3,400 calls, but most reached it through its own community line rather than a 911 transfer. The programs that divert the most calls all have a direct connection to their city's 911 dispatch. Building that connection in Oakland is one of the clearest ways to help MACRO reach more people.
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MACRO answers about 0.3% of Oakland's 911 calls. Comparable programs in Albuquerque, Denver, and Durham, which have been running about as long, answer 4.8% to 7.2%, and at its peak Eugene's CAHOOTS reached about 18%. The model clearly works. The question is whether MACRO’s current approach focused on proactive engagement is an effective substantive for what’s working in Albuquerque, Denver, and Durham.
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Oakland is working to close a budget gap of about $115-$145 million annually, and needs to employ all best practices available to achieve its goal. Replacing police with unarmed responders is one promising way to do so: in Denver, sending a civilian team cost roughly four times less than a police response to the same kind of call.
Survey Project
Black Solutions Lab and its partners, Parent Voices Oakland, Wood Street Commons, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and Community Ready Corps, are conducting one-on-one surveys with Black Oaklanders across East and West Oakland, including unhoused residents, about how they actually experience crisis and emergency response: the times they called for help, the times they decided not to, what happened when they did, whom they trust to show up, and what they want these systems to become. For residents without a phone or steady internet, trained people from partner organizations will sit down and go through the survey in person.
The question driving the work is simple, and rarely asked directly: how do Black Oakland residents actually experience the public safety systems in their city, and what do they want them to look like? The goal is to gather data that can be used to build a community-driven agenda for improving crisis response in Oakland, with a focus on ensuring that the MACRO program is working as intended and meeting the needs of Black East and West Oaklanders.