Mayor's team unveils crisis-response dashboard tracking 217,000 calls through November
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Summary
The mayor's office presented a crisis response dashboard tracking 217,000 municipal dispatch calls through November, new metrics on Narcan administrations and safety-center utilization, and pilot-driven increases in Mobile Crisis Team outreach; presenters said more historical data and interagency data-sharing remain to be added.
Ben Matheson, a data analyst with Anchorage's innovation team, and Thea Agnewbenben, special assistant to the mayor, presented a new crisis-response data dashboard designed to show demand (911/311/officer-initiated), response (mobile teams and safety patrol) and destinations (safety center and other stabilization services).
Matheson said the dashboard consolidates inputs from APD dispatch, fire department teams, mobile crisis teams and the safety center and that the current dataset (January through November) records about 217,000 calls into the system. He described a June–September outreach pilot that increased mobile-team contacts and said unique individuals served by MCT rose each year to about 2,476 in 2025 (partial year).
The dashboard breaks out transfers to Caroline (the mobile crisis referral partner), outreach activity versus dispatched responses, Narcan administrations (AFD versus public-administered), housing-status coding (housed, unhoused, unknown) and safety-center admissions and unique clients (example: January showed 579 admissions and 261 unique clients). Presenters emphasized the dashboard focuses on operational outputs (calls, transports and placements) rather than long-term outcomes and said work remains to enhance outcome measures and enable secure client-data sharing across departments for coordinated care.
Committee members asked whether seasonal patterns exist and whether high-frequency safety-center users are voluntary attendees or involuntary referrals. Matheson said the outreach pilot and increased staffing explain much of the recent MCT growth and that distinguishing voluntary from involuntary safety-center visits is a reporting improvement planned for future versions. He also said the team hopes to present year-over-year comparisons once full 2025 data are available.
The presentation concluded with an affirmation that the dashboard will be updated quarterly for the MOA behavioral crisis response work group and that additional health-department metrics are forthcoming. Public comment later raised sampling and access concerns, noting that many unhoused people lack phones and therefore may not appear in dispatch-derived metrics.
