The L.A. City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to make permanent a city pilot program that diverts police away from some mental health crisis calls.<\/p>\n
Since launching in 2024, clinicians with the city\u2019s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response have handled more than 17,000 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. According to city reports, about 96% of those calls were resolved without police.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t keep deploying armed officers to handle mental health crisis calls because the outcome is Angelenos paying with loss of life and millions of their tax dollars for legal settlements,\u201d Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who co-authored the motion to enshrine the program, said at Tuesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
According to Hernandez, in 2023, more than a third of LAPD shootings involved someone experiencing a mental health crisis.<\/p>\n
Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n
If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less. <\/p>\n
Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson said the data from city reports was “incontrovertible and unassailable,” showing the program\u2019s success at diverting police and fire first responders away from mental health crisis situations. <\/p>\n
Council members said the move to make the unarmed model permanent was also a matter of fiscal responsibility. According to a news release from the offices of Hernandez and Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, on average it costs the city roughly $85 per hour to dispatch LAPD officers, while a response from a UMCR team costs roughly $35 per hour.<\/p>\n
Last fall, progressive policy advocacy group LA Forward, convened a summit<\/a> of local and state officials with the goal of making UMCR permanent and expanding it.<\/p>\n Godfrey Plata, deputy director of LA Forward, told LAist his group was \u201cincredibly excited\u201d to see the city make the pilot program permanent.<\/p>\n Plata said he sees enshrining the program as a first step in expanding the program citywide, which his group hopes to do by the 2028 Olympics.<\/p>\n How the program works<\/p>\n In 2024, the city partnered with three nonprofit <\/a>organizations \u2014 Exodus Recovery, Alcott Center and Penny Lane Centers \u2014 to provide teams of trained clinicians in service areas spread across L.A. The teams are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week within the Police Department\u2019s Devonshire, Wilshire, Southeast, West LA, Olympic and West Valley divisions.<\/p>\n Crisis response workers are trained in de-escalation techniques, mental health, substance use, conflict resolution and more, according to a report on the program from the Office of City Administrative Officer<\/a>. The teams don\u2019t have the authority to order psychiatric holds for people in crisis, but they can work with them to find help locally, and spend more time on follow up than law enforcement can.<\/p>\n