Councilmember Mike Bonin
1 hour
The best way to help a person having a mental health crisis is to send a trained mental health professional, not a police officer with a gun. That is what we start doing on the Westside tomorrow.
Beginning Sunday, Fire Station 59 in West LA will be the second location in LA to be part of a City and County program dispatching trained mental health workers to respond to 911 calls about nonviolent mental health calls. This is what advocates and I have been talking about when we have called for reimagining public safety. It is about using the best and most appropriate resource to handle a problem.
Too often, calling 911 to report a loved one having a mental health crisis means an armed police officer with little training in mental health issues shows up, often escalating the situation. It can inflame tensions, resulting in arrest, violence and even death. With this new pilot program with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, we can send professionally trained mental health workers to defuse situations and provide the help that people really need.
And when police officers are not dispatched to mental health calls, it means they are free to more quickly answer 911 calls for other emergencies, or they have time to spend patrolling our neighborhoods.
Los Angeles has a long way to go before we truly reimagine public safety and invest our public dollars in preventing crime and building communities. But this is an important step in the right direction. Kudos to Mayor Eric Garcetti, my colleague Monica Rodriguez, the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, Supervisor Sheila Kuehl and Los Angeles Fire Department for helping to make this happen.
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We need to have trained first responders for each issue, such as homelessness, mental illness, and protests, instead of just sending a cop with a gun we need to send trained professionals for each specific issue.
Salute,
Tony V.
Poll
