Woohoo! A well earned meal

Here’s the thing. You’re the one asserting that it’s inefficient, so it’s really up to you to make sure your evidence and reasoning is right.

You keep asking for analysis from me, but I don’t need to provide my own analysis to point out the false assumptions you’ve made in yours, resulting in potentially misleading analysis. The correct action to take is to either correct the assumptions, or state that those are assumptions you are making in your analysis.

The fundamental thread behind your analysis is that 130 employees don’t divert enough calls to justify their existence, when in reality you didn’t realize that those calls aren’t the sole responsibility the group has. So how much water does the analysis even hold?

I’m not saying you’re a bad person. I’m saying you’re looking to “offer a more realistic view of what this actually is” before having a full understanding of what it actually is. The acs page linked to the article has a transparency page with regular reports like the one I shared. I’d consider those to be good primary resources. Go ham!

This infographic has more relevant info from 2023.

Also note that taking calls isn’t the only thing the group is responsible for. They do things like needle pickups, homeless outreach, etc additionally, acs doesn’t only respond to 911 calls:

While responding to 911 calls is our primary focus, ACS responders will be dispatched through additional methods, including referrals, self- dispatch, and 311 tickets. ACS will also respond to calls from 988, the national behavioral health crisis hotline, when it launches in 2022.

Taking some good news and immediately trying to portray it in a bad light is not exactly the way to push society forward. Actively looking to portray the start of such programs as “inefficient” and being a waste of taxpayer dollars can discourage other such programs from starting, which is a shame especially if the analysis wasn’t fully informed.

Is that really what convinced people though?

Don’t imagine the folks with megaphones actually convert many folks.