Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets, a mobile crisis-response service in Eugene, Oregon, that for 36 years dispatched medics rather than police to mental-health emergencies. It ended all services in the city on April 7th 2025.
In 1969 a handful of anarchist hippies founded the White Bird Clinic in Eugene, which offered free mental-health services. For its first two decades White Bird worked informally with the police, who frequently dropped off people having bad acid trips at the clinic. In 1989 the Eugene police and White Bird formalised their co-operation, creating CAHOOTS. The name was also an acknowledgment that the hippies were uneasy working so closely with cops.
CAHOOTS workers responded to 911 calls involving mental-health crises, offering calm, non-police intervention. The service was funded 40% by the Eugene police and at its peak employed 50 people operating four vans around the city 24 hours a day. Researchers at the University of Oregon estimated that, because of CAHOOTS, police were dispatched to 23% fewer calls, and that the programme reduced the probability of a 911 call ending in arrest by 76%.
In January 2021 the Daily Show described CAHOOTS as a "trial run" for defunding the police. Portland and Denver created services modelled on it. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon introduced the CAHOOTS Act in Congress. But the programme was not ready for the spotlight: it could bill Medicaid only if it collected data to measure effectiveness, and, afraid this would lessen trust among its many homeless clients, CAHOOTS resisted and missed out on the funding. White Bird underwent internal turmoil as the freewheeling organisation attempted to adopt a formal structure. Workers unionised in 2022. A CAHOOTS medic alleged she was raped and later slapped by a co-worker; White Bird lost its director in February 2025 and in October 2025 settled the resulting federal lawsuit for $600,000. The service continues to operate in Springfield, Eugene's sister city. Zohran Mamdani, New York City's mayor-elect, cited CAHOOTS as a model for handling mental-health crises without police during his campaign.
Nothing is ever a total loss; it can always serve as a bad example.