The vast majority of the time, the team doesn’t need to call for police backup. In fact, in 2019, CAHOOTS handled about 24,000 calls, and of those calls, just 150 warranted police help, according to the program. The program costs about $2.1 million annually, according to the website, and the team handles about 17 percent of the Eugene police department’s calls. The program also saves money. From 2014-2017, it’s estimated that assigning those cases to CAHOOTS rather than police saved the city about $8.5 million on average annually. https://www.boston.com/news/local-n...source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation ‘Unarmed response teams’ may be coming to a Massachusetts city near you, and soon Lynn just allocated funding for its program to reassign certain functions currently handled by police, while Cambridge is actively discussing a proposal.