Can a program that diverts mental health crisis calls away from police expand in LA?

A Los Angeles pilot program that diverts mental health and other crisis situations away from police handled thousands of calls during its first year.

Supporters say it's a good start and want to see the Unarmed Model of Crisis Response program expanded and made a permanent part of the city’s infrastructure.

A group of more than a dozen city, county and state officials, service providers and community organizers came together for a summit Thursday, where they strategized on how to accomplish that goal by the 2028 Olympics.

The summit was convened by progressive policy advocacy group L.A. Forward and City Council member Eunisses Hernandez.

“These type of teams could have been a lot of help to many of our community members that have been harmed and have lost their life... So I’m grateful that we’re here,” Hernandez told LAist.

Council members Eunisses Hernandez and Bob Blumenfield gave opening remarks at the summit on the LA City Unarmed Model of Crisis Response.

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Robert Garrova / LAist

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Last year, an LAist investigation found that nearly one-third of LAPD shootings since 2017 involved someone living with a mental illness and/or experiencing a mental health crisis.

During a March 2024 meeting of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, then interim LAPD chief Dominic Choi said he was “fully supportive” of the budding Unarmed Model of Crisis Response effort. “It’s taking some of the workload away from us and shifting it to the appropriate resources for our community,” Choi said.

How the program works

The city partnered with three nonprofit organizations — Exodus Recovery, Alcott Center and Penny Lane Centers — to provide two teams in three service areas spread across L.A. The six teams are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week within the Police Department’s Devonshire, Wilshire, Southeast, West LA, Olympic and West Valley divisions.

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. The teams don’t 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.

In its first year, Los Angeles’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response sent teams of unarmed clinicians to  more than 6,700 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. Only about 4% getting redirected to LAPD. Average response times have been under 30 minutes.

Examples of these interactions include members of the teams taking food to a woman who was crying and hungry, working with a business owner to engage with someone sleeping in a parking lot and sitting with a family for nearly three hours to help resolve a conflict involving a relative.

Can it be expanded? 

Currently the pilot program operates in six LAPD divisions and the city has allocated funding to expand it to nine. But city officials and organizers alike said it might be difficult to get more funding for the program during a time when L.A. is facing an ongoing budget crisis.

City officials estimate it could cost nearly $40 million a year to expand the program citywide.

Pointing to the first year data compiled by the Office of the City Administrative Officer, Council Member Hernandez made clear her support to make the additional investment.

“This is proven. How do we get the money to make it happen?” Hernandez said during her opening remarks at the summit.

Council Member Bob Blumenfield, who also attended the summit, said in order for the program to work seamlessly across L.A.’s neighborhoods, it needed to expand citywide.

Hernandez said she and Blumenfield introduced a motion that would move forward an Office of Unarmed Crisis Response within the city that seeks to codify the pilot program within the city government.

“This needs to have its own department so that we can have a mechanism to fully fund and outlive this political moment that we’re in and give it the credibility and the home that it deserves,” Hernandez said.

A good investment?

Supporters of the city pilot say expanding it not only better serves Angelenos in crisis, but it also makes fiscal sense for the city.

According to the Office of the City Administrative Officer, it costs the city about $35 for the average Unarmed Model of Crisis Response intervention, versus $85 for LAPD, assuming they spent the same amount of time on scene.

Jason Enright, a community organizer with L.A. Forward who has advocated for years for the city to adopt an unarmed response model, said expanding the pilot program should also reduce the number of bad outcomes arising from mental health crisis calls handled by law enforcement.

“This is a program that will limit liabilities in the future for police, which is a big part of why we’re in a deficit. And so I think this is a wise investment for the city,” he said.

The push for an expanded unarmed crisis response is personal for Enright. His nine year old son has autism and he worries that as his son gets older, a situation could arise in which armed police respond to him in crisis.

“The city, even in this down [budget] time, is investing in the Olympics to get a good outcome. And this is something they should be investing in as well. Just like building new stadiums -- whatever -- this is an infrastructure that the city lacks that we should be building,” Enright said.