Jessica Gillooly

Dr. Jessica Gillooly: 911 Mental health crisis response - SciLine Discover how U.S. cities are rethinking 911 responses to mental health crises. Dr. Jessica Gillooly shares insights on alternative approaches and their challenges.

Covering how 911 systems respond to mental health crisis calls? Reporters—request our free TV bundle (VOSOT, soundbite, raw video & transcript) with Dr. Jessica Gillooly (Suffolk U.) about the research on what cities need to know before making changes. bit.ly/4oLjyav

@jessicagillooly.bsky.social

1 year after fatal Independence police shooting, mental health crisis response gains momentum A tragic police shooting in Independence involving a mother struggling with postpartum depression has renewed focus on alternative crisis response programs that could prevent similar tragedies.

Shared some thoughts on-air with @kshb41.bsky.social about how cities can deploy alternative responders to behavioral health crises. In Durham, HEART teams called for police backup in less than 0.5% of responses — an encouraging sign for places like Kansas City.
www.kshb.com/news/local-n...

Vital City | The Devil Is in the Details (of 911 Dispatch) Helping people with serious mental illness hinges on giving better tools and guidance to those who take emergency calls.

Everyone’s talking about alternative response — but few are looking under the hood at how 911 dispatch actually works. My new piece with @barryfriedman1.bsky.social in @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social explores why the design of dispatch protocols matters so much.
www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/the...

Great point. We compare Denver and SF in the paper. SF uses ProQA, and your concern came up often. The city could make some tweaks, but it wasn't easy. Lots of room for cities to push vendors on flexibility.

Good protocol design isn’t one-and-done. It takes reflection, learning, and revision. We believe greater attention to these tools can help cities build dispatch systems that expand alternative response.

So what’s the fix?

Protocols should be redesigned and supplemented with additional guidance that helps dispatchers navigate uncertainty. That means smarter question design informed by frontline experience — and clear value statements to give dispatchers a north star when the protocol falls short.

When protocols don’t give enough guidance — or recommend first responses that seem wrong — dispatchers rely on their own judgment. Some bend the rules to send an unarmed team; others default to police.

Either way, the tools as designed aren’t reliably supporting alternative response.

Dispatch protocols are meant to help workers make those tough calls. But today’s protocols often struggle with the messy realities of crisis work — when callers give incomplete info, or when words like “violence” or "threat" mean different things to different people.

Policymakers say that alternative responders will handle behavioral-health calls when it’s “safe and appropriate.”
But it’s typically call-takers and dispatchers who decide whether any particular call meets that standard.

Rethinking rules for 911: Dispatching alternative responders in Denver and San Francisco Research Summary Alternatives to police response to 911 calls have emerged as a leading public safety reform strategy. A key policy implementation challenge lies in determining whether alternative r...

New paper out! My co-author @barryfriedman1.bsky.social of @policingproject.bsky.social and I explore how 911 dispatch protocols can unintentionally undermine the goals of alternative response — and what to do about it.
Out in Criminology & Public Policy: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Jessica Gillooly helps cities reimagine 911 responses Sociologist Jessica Gillooly (PhD ’20) has used her deep knowledge of call taking and dispatching, along with some compelling new theoretical ideas, to become one of the leading experts on this issue....

As a leading expert on 911 responses, PSC alum @jessicagillooly.bsky.social is helping to shape the development of alternative response systems in American cities. ICYMI, her work is featured in @umfordschool.bsky.social's State & Hill: fordschool.umich.edu/news/2025/je...

Appreciate my work on 911 being featured in State & Hill @umfordschool.bsky.social

21. 911 Call Centers JPAM's Closer Look · Episode

Lastly, resharing my podcast episode with host Seth Gershenson about my Vernon Memorial Award-winning article on the important role that 911 call centers play in shaping police behavior at the scene.

Tucson

Denver

San Francisco

Resharing reports I worked on with the @policingproject.bsky.social about alternative response in San Francisco, Denver, and Tucson—now on Bluesky since I'm making the switch from Twitter. Important lessons on reducing police involvement in crisis response!

How 911 callers and call‐takers impact police encounters with the public: The case of the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest Research Summary The Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest provides an illuminating case study to show how the omission of dispatch in police reform conversations limits our understanding of police officer a.....

Check out my study in @CPPJournal
that shines light on a previously overlooked 911 call-taker function—risk appraisal—by showing how the call-taker in the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest played a pivotal role in escalating caller uncertainty.

Collaborative gatekeeping: Consensus-seeking practices among emergency call-takers Abstract. The police are involved in many aspects of social life in the US, and much of their involvement stems from the emergency call-for-service system.

Emergencies don’t follow a script. That’s why excellent 911 call-taking requires the ability to improvise. Read my article on collaborative gatekeeping to learn how agencies can better prepare call-takers to navigate ambiguity over the phone.

“Lights and Sirens”: Variation in 911 Call‐Taker Risk Appraisal and its Effects on Police Officer Perceptions at the Scene Until now, 911 dispatch centers largely have been the “black box” of the criminal justice system. This article opens that black box. It documents systematically a new mechanism in the policing proces...

📢 Sharing my pub in JPAM. I use an IV approach to show how 911 call-takers affect policing.

As I move to Bluesky, I'm reposting some work ICYMI.

Why is the police role so broad in the US today?@dtha15.bsky.social and I argue that it's a story about an out-of-control call-for-service system; a Frankenstein’s monster that took on a life of its own and eventually came back to haunt us.

Memphis Police Used Excessive Force and Discriminated Against Black Residents, Justice Dept. Finds The Police Department had been under scrutiny since January 2023, when officers fatally beat Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, after pulling him over on his way home from work.

Breaking News: The Memphis police used excessive force and treated Black people more harshly than white people, the Justice Department found.

@appam.bsky.social

APPAM 2024

📢 Emergencies don’t follow a script. That’s why excellent 911 call-taking requires the ability to improvise. Read my new article on collaborative gatekeeping to learn how agencies can better prepare call-takers to navigate ambiguity over the phone. doi.org/10.1093/poli...