There's widespread agreement among both Los Angeles city and county leaders that it makes sense to move away from armed law enforcement officers responding to someone in mental health crisis.
But what about when those psychiatric emergencies happen while someone is on the road?
The answer in a draft report commissioned by the City of L.A. is yes, then too. The report, among other things, calls for “unarmed teams of care-centered, behavioral health specialists to respond to traffic-related calls for service when a clear behavioral health issue is present.”
The long-awaited recommendations tie back to a City Council motion that passed back in October 2020. That motion called for a study on the feasibility of using civilian enforcement of traffic laws for motorists and other forms of transportation.
Among the reasons for recommending a shift: “underlying behavioral health issues that can escalate traffic stops.” The city, instead of sending armed LAPD officers, could consider using existing models to respond to traffic-related calls, the report says.
Such models include the Therapeutic Transport Van program, which currently dispatches out of five fire stations across the county. Each unarmed team is made up of a driver, a licensed psychiatric technician and someone who has personal experience with mental illness.
According to the LAPD’s use of force report for 2022, 26% of incidents where officers used force (like shooting someone or striking them in the head) “occurred during field detentions based on officers’ observations (i.e., pedestrian and traffic stops).”
Community members and police reform activists have long called for pulling police back from traffic-related incidents. According to an analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for ending mass incarceration among other issues, there’s a national trend of cities looking to curtail police involvement in traffic-related incidents and other non-violent calls for service.
A 2022 Brennan Center analysis of the 50 U.S. jurisdictions with the largest law enforcement agencies found that at least 15 jurisdictions created new co-responder programs (which pair law enforcement and unarmed specialists) between January 2020 and July 2022.
“We ask our police to respond to too many calls that they are not trained on, where they might increase the temperature of certain situations,” Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center, told LAist.
In January, a traffic-related incident turned deadly after an LAPD officer tased 31-year-old Keenan Anderson multiple times. LAPD Chief Michel Moore claimed Anderson had been involved in a traffic collision and was attempting to flee. In police body-cam video released later that month, Anderson appears distraught and says at one point that someone is trying to kill him.
An officer can be seen repeatedly tasing Anderson. At one point Anderson says “They’re trying to ‘George Floyd’ me.” Hours after he was tased, Anderson went into cardiac arrest and died at a Santa Monica hospital. Anderson’s family said he was a dedicated English teacher in Washington D.C. and was coping with the recent death of two of his students due to gun violence.
Anderson’s death, as well as two others who died at the hands of police during apparent mental health crises, renewed calls for reform from lawmakers. According to a department spokesperson, the LAPD’s specially trained Mental Evaluation Unit was not called in any of the three incidents.
“Let’s fund unarmed professionals, trained in crisis management, care and deescalation to respond to our loved ones,” Patrisse Cullors, Black Lives Matter co-founder — and Anderson’s cousin — said at a press conference outside City Hall in January.
Melina Abdullah of Black Lives Matter Grassroots told LAist outside of LAPD headquarters in January that the incidents underscored the need for reforms.
“Mental health challenges and crises are not crimes,” Abdullah said. “It’s very easy to get to the solution that we need police out of mental health calls, we need police out of traffic stops and we need to invest those dollars in mental health resources."
In an email, a spokesperson for the L.A. Department of Transportation said the final report on alternatives to armed traffic enforcement is “expected in the coming weeks.”
The report makes the following recommendations:
