Welcome to Don’t Call The Police

Welcome to dontcallthepolice.com! Our site is crowd-sourced database of national and local community-based alternatives to calling the police or 911, broken down by city. We believe that you should not call the police when a better, non-violent alternative is available.

Only a small percentage of calls to police, in every city, are regarding a violent crime – and only a small percent of those are made as the crime occurs. (1,2) In the other 90% or so of situations, the calls could be better addressed by people with expertise, and without guns. We provide listings for resources that provide emergency or crisis services related to housing/homelessness, mental health, LGBTQ+, domestic violence and sexual assault, youth, elders, substance abuse, and crime victim services.

Our goal is to give people resources that provide the assistance they need, without fear of violence. In the long-term, we hope to work with activists to develop community-based systems of public safety that keep all of us safe. In the meantime, we encourage people to redirect calls to these community-based organizations when possible. If enough people divert calls to specialized groups, eventually, allocation of funding will have to follow suit.

You can help us grow this resource, and provide the most effective possible alternatives to police, by submitting resources in your city. Reimagine public safety. Don’t call the police.

Updated May 22, 2021

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1. New York Times, “How Do The Police Actually Spend Their Time?,” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/upshot/unrest-police-time-violent-crime.html

2. Los Angeles Times, “LAPD responds to a million 911 calls a year, but relatively few for violent crimes,” https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-05/lapd-911-calls-reimagining-police