September 23, 2025
LOS ANGELES— In a groundbreaking collaboration, nonprofit technology organizations Trek Medics and Tech Matters have partnered to deliver a custom-built crisis response platform for the City of Los Angeles to support unarmed response to crises involving the city’s unhoused population.
This partnership brings together Trek Medics’ expertise in emergency dispatching with Tech Matters’ extensive experience in crisis hotline management. The result is a real-time, interoperable platform that enables the City of Los Angeles’ CIRCLE program (Crisis and Incident Response through Community-Led Engagement) to coordinate efficiently between unarmed crisis responders during homelessness-related incidents. The system leverages cloud-based call handling, geospatial data, and mobile tools for crisis responders to help ensure people in crisis receive timely, appropriate support and access to services — whether that means access to mental health services, shelter or referrals to other City services.
With homeless service providers spread out across the City of Los Angeles, the unarmed crisis response teams needed a smarter, faster way to coordinate operations in order to respond to the most urgent needs of Los Angeles’ unhoused population. This new platform provides the City’s teams with the tools to act quickly, collaboratively, and with compassion.
Funded through the Mayor’s Office of Community Safety (MOCS), the initiative aims to set a new standard for municipal crisis response. Since its launch on April 1, the CIRCLE program has averaged nearly 2,500 crisis responses per month in seven operating areas across the city.
“Our mission has always been to improve access to critical services for vulnerable populations through our Beacon Crisis Dispatch platform,” said Jason Friesen, executive director of Trek Medics. “Together with Tech Matters, we’re making it possible for Los Angeles to respond to those experiencing homelessness with the urgency, dignity, and coordination they deserve.”
“Through our collaboration with the City of Los Angeles and Trek Medics, we’ve created a new model together,” said Nick Hurlburt, the executive director of the Aselo contact center program at Tech Matters. “This new model for crisis dispatch can be replicated widely in cities working to provide critical supports and better response to people experiencing homelessness.”
For more information, please contact:
Josué Díaz-Berrios
Trek Medics International
[email protected]
(213) 555-4832
Joyce Johannson
Tech Matters
[email protected]
(612) 927-4543
About Trek Medics Intl
Trek Medics is a nonprofit technology organization that builds the Beacon Crisis Dispatch platform, used by emergency and crisis response agencies to alert, coordinate and track local response networks using readily-available mobile technologies. Trek Medics is an Equal Opportunity Affirmative Action Employer.
Learn more at trekmedics.org.
About Tech Matters
Tech Matters is a nonprofit organization that builds Aselo, an open source contact center platform built specifically for the needs of crisis hotlines and helplines. Tech Matters’ other social impact projects include Terraso, an open source platform designed to provide community leaders with software tools to address local sustainability, and the Better Deal for Data, a standard for social impact data sharing Learn more at techmatters.org.
About CIRCLE
CIRCLE, which stands for Crisis and Incident Response through Community-led Engagement, is a 24/7 unarmed response program that deploys trained teams to address non-urgent LAPD calls related to unhoused individuals. CIRCLE is managed through the City of Los Angeles’ Mayor’s Office of Community Safety (MOCS). Learn more at: mayor.lacity.gov.
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